Privacy Policy

The short version

This policy explains what RunFirst (“RunFirst”, “we”, “us”) — the iPhone app and this website — does with information about you. RunFirst is made by Devesh Babbar, who is responsible for your data. Questions: deveshbabbar09@gmail.com.

Your account

You need a RunFirst account to use the app. Accounts are run by our sign-in provider, Clerk (clerk.com), which processes this data for us:

• Sign-in details: your email address, and your name if Apple or Google shares it when you sign in with them. With Sign in with Apple you can hide your real email; Apple then gives us a private relay address.
• Your profile: the answers you give during onboarding (name, age range, fitness level, goals, daily phone hours, the kinds of apps that distract you, where you heard about us) and the date your 90 day journey started.

We keep these so you can sign in and pick your journey up on a new iPhone. Your account never holds Apple Health data, runs, routes, moods, video clips or which apps you lock. Delete your account any time in the app under You > Delete account; this erases it from Clerk and wipes RunFirst's data on that iPhone.

What stays on your iPhone

To work, RunFirst keeps the following in its private storage on your device (shared only with RunFirst's own Screen Time extensions on the same phone):

• Your answers from onboarding: the name you typed, age range, fitness level, goals, daily phone hours, the apps you said distract you, and where you heard about us.
• Your settings: exchange rate, daily goal, lock hours, rest days and strictness mode.
• Your journey: each day's distance, minutes earned and spent, goal status, rest days, mood check and the runs you tracked.

None of this is uploaded to us, except what the leaderboard and Fight mode sections below describe. Deleting RunFirst deletes it.

Apple Health

With your permission, RunFirst reads steps, walking + running distance and workouts from Apple Health. It never writes to Apple Health.

Health data is used only to measure your progress toward today's goal and to calculate the screen time you've earned. It is processed on your iPhone and never leaves your device. We never share Health data with third parties, never use it for advertising or marketing, and never sell it. Entries typed into Apple Health by hand are ignored.

You can change access anytime in Settings → Health → Data Access & Devices → RunFirst.

Location

RunFirst uses your location only while a run you started in the app is active, to measure the distance you cover. The run's distance and duration are kept on your device, along with a simplified outline of your route so your Run Reel can draw it. The distance and time are also sent to the leaderboard (see below) unless you hide yourself. The route never leaves your iPhone unless you choose to show it in a Run Reel and share that reel. RunFirst draws your route on Apple Maps while you run and afterwards; to draw the map, Apple receives the area being shown (under Apple's privacy policy), never your route. RunFirst does not track your location at any other time. iOS shows a location indicator whenever a run is being measured.

The weekly leaderboard

Each run you track in RunFirst is sent to our server (run on Vercel, with its database at Neon in the United States) for the weekly leaderboard: when it started and ended, the distance your iPhone's GPS measured, and the number of steps your iPhone counted during it. The steps are used only to check that the distance was run or walked rather than ridden. Your location and route are never sent.

On the leaderboard you appear as a nickname the server makes up for you (like “Swift Panther”; you can pick another made-up name under You > Leaderboard) with your country's flag (which you can change under You > Country) and your minutes and km for the week. Your real name never appears. You're on it unless you turn it off in the app under You > Leaderboard; turning it off also deletes the runs you'd sent. Leaderboard runs are deleted when you delete your account.

Motion & Fitness

With your permission, RunFirst reads your iPhone's step count (Motion & Fitness) for the time of a run or a fight, and sends that number with the run or the fight's progress so the distance can be checked. It doesn't read anything else from motion data. You can turn it off in Settings > RunFirst; Fight mode then won't start, and your runs won't be sent to the leaderboard.

Fight mode

Fight mode is optional. When you start or join a fight, RunFirst sends our fight server (run on Vercel, with its database at Neon in the United States):

• your RunFirst account ID from Clerk, so the server knows the fight is yours;
• a nickname the server makes up for you (like “Swift Panther”), which you can swap for another made-up name, and which is all strangers see of your name;
• your first name, shown only to a friend who joins your fight with your invite code;
• your country, to show a flag: the one you pick under You > Country, or your iPhone's region setting if you haven't picked one;
• the distance you've run since the fight started and the steps counted since then, every few seconds while it lasts, and the fight's result.

Your opponent sees your nickname (or first name, for a friend), your flag and your distance. Your location and route are never sent: only the distance number. Fights are kept so results can be shown and are deleted when you delete your account.

Screen Time and the apps you lock

RunFirst uses Apple's Screen Time (Family Controls) framework. When you pick apps to lock, Apple gives RunFirst anonymous tokens — not app names — so we can't see which apps you chose or what you do inside them. Usage is measured by iOS; RunFirst is told only when the locked apps together have been used for a number of minutes, so it can relock them when your balance runs out.

Anonymous product analytics

To understand where people get stuck and to improve RunFirst, the app may send anonymous product events to our analytics provider, PostHog. Events are tagged with a random identifier created on your device — not your name, email or Apple ID.

Events include things like: which onboarding screen was reached; your onboarding answers (age range, fitness level, goals, daily phone hours, the kinds of apps that distract you, where you heard about RunFirst); whether you started a trial or a subscription; that a run started or ended, that a daily goal was completed and that a mood check was answered (never the distance, duration, minutes earned or the mood itself); and how many apps you chose to lock.

We never send your name, the raw data RunFirst reads from Apple Health, your location or route, or which apps you lock. Analytics are never used for advertising, and we don't sell or rent them.

Purchases

Subscriptions are processed entirely by Apple. We never receive your payment details. RunFirst uses RevenueCat (revenuecat.com) to check whether your subscription is active: RevenueCat receives the App Store's record of your RunFirst purchases (which plan, when it started and renews, trials and refunds) together with your RunFirst account ID, so your subscription works on any iPhone you sign in on. RevenueCat processes this for us and doesn't receive your card details, your Health data or your location.

Notifications

RunFirst's notifications — for example “You earned 45 minutes” or your trial reminder — are created on your device. There is no push notification server and no notification data is sent to us.

Camera

If you choose to film a 3-second start or finish clip for your Run Reel, RunFirst uses the front camera only while that camera screen is open. It records video without sound, and the clips are stored only on your iPhone. They are never uploaded by RunFirst.

Sharing your Day Card and Run Reel

Day Cards, Week Cards and Run Reels are images and videos generated on your iPhone. They're shared only when you tap Share or Save, and only with the app you choose (for example Instagram or Photos), under that app's own privacy policy.

This website

This website has no accounts, forms, ads or tracking cookies. It is hosted by Vercel, which processes standard server logs (such as IP address and browser type) to deliver and secure the site. Fonts are served by Google Fonts.

Children

RunFirst is not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has used RunFirst in a way that sent us information, contact us and we'll delete it.

Your choices and rights

Most of your data never leaves your iPhone, so you control it directly: change permissions in iOS Settings, or delete the app to erase everything. Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR, the UK GDPR, the CCPA or India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act), you may have rights to access, correct or delete personal data and to object to processing. Delete your account in the app to erase your fights and leaderboard runs, or hide yourself from the leaderboard to erase just those runs. For anything else, including analytics events, email deveshbabbar09@gmail.com.

Retention

On-device data is kept until you delete the app. Fights and leaderboard runs are kept until you delete your account (or, for runs, hide yourself from the leaderboard). Anonymous analytics events are kept only as long as they're useful for improving RunFirst and then deleted.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update this page and the effective date below. Material changes will also be shown in the app.

Contact

Devesh Babbar (RunFirst)
Email: deveshbabbar09@gmail.com
Or message us on Instagram.

Effective date: October 22, 2026