Deeplight — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 19 August 2026

Deeplight is a game about not using your phone. Time you spend away from the screen is the only thing that moves it forward, so the app has to know when your screen is on. That is very nearly the whole of what it knows, and this document is mostly about how narrow that is.

It is written to be read rather than to be defensible. If something here is unclear, that is a fault worth reporting.

What is collected

• When your screen turns on and off. Android broadcasts this to the app. Deeplight records the moment it happened and nothing else about it. This is the entire mechanism of the game: light drains while the screen is on and returns while it is off.
• Your battery level, and whether the device is charging. Read to judge roughly how hard the screen is working, so that watching video costs more than reading still text. It is not stored as a history.
• What the game derives from those two things. An event log, and from it your depth, your light, your Essence, and a record of each day. All of it is computed from the timings above and is kept on your device.

What is not collected

• Not which apps you use. Deeplight does not request PACKAGE_USAGE_STATS, QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES, or accessibility access. It cannot see what is on your screen, only that the screen is lit.
• Not your location, contacts, photos, microphone, or camera. None of these permissions are requested.
• No account, and no name or email address. There is no sign-in.
• No advertising identifiers, and no advertising.
• No analytics, and no third-party crash reporting. Nothing about how you use the app is sent anywhere, because the app has no way to send it.

Who else sees it

Nothing about how you use the app is sent anywhere. There is no server of ours, no account with us, no analytics, and nothing is sold or shared with advertisers or data brokers. What follows is the complete list of what leaves the handset.

Google, if you sign in to Play Games. Deeplight can save your progress to Play Games Services so it survives a new phone. This is optional and off unless you sign in. If you do:

• Google gives the app a player identifier for you. It is issued per game and is not your email address.
• Your saved game — the record of your screen-on and screen-off timings that the game is computed from — is stored in your own Google account. We cannot read it and it is not sent to us.
• Google knows you play Deeplight, as it does for any game you sign into.

Declining sign-in costs you nothing but the cloud save. Every part of the game works the same without it, and there is no prompt to get past on launch.

Android's own backup. Separately from the above, Deeplight allows Android Auto Backup, so your progress survives a new phone or a factory reset even without Play Games. Your save is copied into your personal Google account's backup, in the same way as for other apps you have not disabled it for. It is encrypted, it counts against your Google account rather than any service of ours, and neither we nor anyone else can read it. If you would rather it did not happen, turn off backup for Deeplight in Android's settings — the game keeps working, and your progress simply stops surviving a reset.

Data may be disclosed if legally required. Nothing else.

How long it lasts

The event log is pruned to the last ninety days. Day records — one row per day, holding your depth, your screen time and your Essence — are kept for as long as the app is installed, because a long record is the point of a long game.

Uninstalling deletes everything. All of it lives in the app's private storage, so removing the app removes the data with it. Nothing survives elsewhere except the Android backup described above, which Google deletes according to your account's own backup settings.

What you can do

• Clear the data from Android's app settings, at any time. The game starts over.
• Uninstall, which removes everything.
• Turn off backup for Deeplight in Android's settings, if you would rather your progress not be copied to your Google account.
• Refuse notifications. The game asks once. It is more pleasant with them and entirely playable without.

If you are in the UK or EU: because nothing about you leaves your device and no account exists, there is no personal data held by anyone for you to request or have erased. The controls above are exercised directly, without asking anyone.

Children

Deeplight is not intended for children under 13, and is not directed at children. It is not enrolled in the Play Families programme.

Security

Data sits in the app's private storage, which Android isolates from other apps. The only network traffic the app makes is to Google Play Games, over HTTPS, and only once you have signed in.

No system is perfect. If you find a way to read something you should not be able to, please report it to the address below.

Changes

Material changes will be announced in the app before taking effect, not backdated into this page.

Changed on 19 August 2026: an earlier version of this page said Deeplight held no internet permission and that nothing at all left your device. Play Games sign-in and cloud saves were added, so it now holds one, and the section above describes exactly what crosses it. The game still sends nothing to us, and signing in remains optional.

If online leaderboards are added they will use the same Play Games sign-in described above and no other service. That will be announced here before it ships.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or a report that something here is wrong:

https://github.com/MrSinisterX/deeplight-privacy/issues

A public issue tracker rather than an email address, deliberately: it is monitored, it does not put a personal address into a document that search engines will index, and a privacy complaint answered in the open is answered for everybody who had the same question.

If you would rather not raise it publicly, say so in an issue with no detail and a private channel will be arranged.