Privacy policy

Last updated 16 October 2026

Yaavi is a journal app made by Happy Owl Labs ("we", "us"). This policy explains what Yaavi collects, why, who helps us run it, how long we keep things, and what you can do. If you have a question, write to hello@yaavi.app.

The short version: what you write is encrypted with a key that belongs to your account alone, it is never sold, shared with advertisers, or used to train AI, and you can export or delete all of it whenever you like. Your email is the one thing about you we keep readable to ourselves, for signing you in and reaching you. Privacy and safety explains how this works in plain words.

What we collect

Your account

• Your email address. When you sign in with Google, Apple, or an emailed code, we check your address and keep it, encrypted under a key that is separate from the one that protects your journal. We use it to sign you in, to invite you while Yaavi is invite-only, to send you account and safety notices, to reply when you write to us, and, now and then, to tell testers what changed. We never sell it, and we won't send marketing without asking. Every email like that has a way to say no.
• Settings: your time zone, screen language, look, quiet hours, check-in and notification choices, and the time you confirmed you are 18 or older.
• Your country, for showing the right helpline numbers (encrypted).
• A notification token for each phone you sign in on, so we can send you check-ins.

What you put in Yaavi (encrypted)

• Your notes, voice notes and their transcripts, photos, and recordings you choose to keep.
• What Yaavi learns from them: people and their names, places, themes, plans and worries, and how you like to be talked to.
• Check-ins, weekly notes, conversations with Yaavi and with your friends in the circle, and your friends' names and descriptions.
• Anything you bring in from another journal or from ChatGPT.

Voice recordings are sent for transcription and then discarded, unless you turn on "Keep the recording" for that note. A file you import is read once and not kept.

To make search and memory work

For each note, Yaavi keeps a list of numbers that represents its meaning (an embedding), so you can search your notes and Yaavi can recall related ones. Embeddings aren't encrypted, because they have to be searchable; they contain no words or names, are only ever searched within your own account, and are deleted with the note. Notes you keep out of memory have none.

Technical and usage data

• Counts, such as how many notes were written in a week, and when each account was last active, used to understand how Yaavi is used and to run the test. These never include what you wrote.
• AI usage: how many tokens each AI step used, with no account and no text attached, so we can see what Yaavi costs to run.
• Request records kept by our hosting provider for security and to fix problems, such as the time of a request and the IP address it came from. Our own logs never contain what you wrote.

We don't use advertising trackers. The website and the web app don't set advertising or analytics cookies; the web app keeps your sign-in in your browser's storage.

If you ask to join the testers

While Yaavi is invite-only, asking to join on yaavi.app, or signing in before you're invited, puts your email address (and, from the form, whether you use an iPhone or Android) on our waiting list, encrypted like every email we keep. We use it only to invite you: if we approve you, we email you the invite; if we don't, it's removed.

Why we use it

• To run Yaavi for you: save your journal, learn from it (including what your photos show), write check-ins and replies, and let you search it.
• To keep you safe: when something you write sounds like you might be in danger, to answer with your country's helpline numbers.
• To sign you in, keep your account secure, and stop abuse.
• To improve Yaavi from counts and from check-in quality scores. Check-ins may be scored automatically; only the score is kept, never the text. People at Happy Owl Labs don't read your journal.

We process your data to provide the service you asked for, with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by deleting your account.

Who helps us run Yaavi

We use these service providers, only to run Yaavi, and never so they can use your data for themselves:

• Google Cloud (servers, database, file storage, and encryption keys, in Mumbai, India; and the Gemini AI models on Vertex AI, which don't use your data to train models). Your data is stored in India; the AI models may process a request outside India.
• OpenRouter, for a few small AI decisions, such as which message is worth sending and how to order search results, sent only to providers that keep no data and collect nothing.
• Resend, to email you a sign-in code, and to pass on a request to join the testers. It gets only what that email needs.
• Expo, Apple, and Google, to deliver notifications to your phone. You choose whether a notification shows its text on your lock screen.
• Google and Apple, when you choose to sign in with them.

We don't sell your data, and we don't share it with advertisers. We would disclose data only if the law requires it.

How long we keep it

• While you use Yaavi, we keep your journal until you delete it. Deleting a note deletes it, its embedding, and what Yaavi learned only from it.
• Deleting your account signs you out everywhere and stops all messages at once. Three days later we destroy your account's key, which makes everything unreadable for good, and then delete the data. Signing in during those three days keeps your account.
• Backups are kept for at most seven days.
• Sign-in codes expire after ten minutes; sessions after ninety days.
• If you say you are under 18, the account you just made is deleted at once.

Your choices and rights

• See and correct: the You tab shows everything Yaavi has learned; change or remove any of it.
• Limit: keep any note out of memory, tell Yaavi what not to bring up, turn off friends messaging you first, and hide notification text.
• Take it with you: export everything from Settings.
• Erase: delete any note, or your whole account, from Settings.
• Ask or complain: write to hello@yaavi.app. We'll reply within 30 days. You can also complain to the data protection authority where you live; in India, the Data Protection Board of India.

Security

Each account's data is encrypted with its own key (AES-256-GCM) before it is stored, and that key is protected by Google Cloud's key service. Connections are encrypted, and on your phone you can lock Yaavi with Face ID, your fingerprint, or your passcode. Our systems unlock your journal only to do something for you, such as writing a check-in, and our team's pages never show it. No system is perfectly secure, but we take every step here seriously and will tell you if something goes wrong.

Age

Yaavi is only for people 18 and older. It asks right after you sign in, before anything is saved.

Changes

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top, and tell you in the app if the change matters to how your data is used.

Contact

Happy Owl Labs, India. Email hello@yaavi.app; this address also reaches the person responsible for handling privacy questions and complaints.