Privacy policy for KeepText

Effective 7 August 2026

This policy is about the KeepText app. For what this website does, see the website privacy policy.

1. Who we are

KeepText is made and published by Jameson Dog GmbH, Munich, Germany. If you have a question about this policy or about how the app handles your data, write to privacy@jamie.dog.

2. What the app reads, and what it does with it

KeepText reads the text messages stored on your phone for one purpose: to write them into a backup file in a folder on that same phone. When you restore, it reads a backup file you choose and writes those messages back into your phone’s message store.

All of that processing happens on your device. Your messages are not sent anywhere, and there is no step in either operation that involves a server, an account or another computer.

Specifically, the app reads and writes into your backup file:

• the text of each message;
• the phone number it was sent to or received from;
• the date and time it was sent or received;
• whether it was sent or received, and whether it had been read;
• the contact name matching the number — only if you turn on contact names (section 8).

Who this is shared with: no one. There is no recipient, no third party and no processor, because nothing leaves your device. The only way any of it moves is if you choose to share your backup file yourself (section 7).

3. The headline fact: no internet permission

KeepText does not request Android’s INTERNET permission. Without it, the operating system will not let the app open a network connection — so the app cannot transmit your messages, or anything else, anywhere. This is not a promise about our intentions; it is a property of the software you installed, and you can check it yourself:

• On your phone: Settings → Apps → KeepText → Permissions, then look under “All permissions” for anything about network or internet access. It is not listed, because we never asked for it.
• On the Play listing: the App permissions → See more detail will not show “full network access”.
• If you are technical: run aapt2 dump permissions against the APK. The app requests READ_SMS, READ_CONTACTS and POST_NOTIFICATIONS, and no others.

That output also carries a fourth line, dog.jamie.keeptext.DYNAMIC_RECEIVER_NOT_EXPORTED_PERMISSION. It is not a permission the app asks the system for — it is one the app defines for itself, at signature protection level, scoped to its own package. It arrives from a standard Android support library, grants nothing to anyone, and appears in neither Android’s permission list nor the Play listing. It is mentioned here because someone checking our claim will see four lines where we said three, and finding an unexplained one would rightly look like a lie.

4. What we collect

Nothing.

There is no account and no sign-in. There is no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising and no identifier of any kind — no advertising ID, no device ID, no installation ID. The app contains no third-party SDKs. We never see your messages, and we never see whether or how you use the app. There is no data for us to sell, share, disclose or lose, because none of it ever reaches us.

5. How your backup file is kept, and what that does and does not protect

This section is deliberately blunt, because the honest answer is not the flattering one.

Your backup is written to Documents/SMSBackups, an ordinary folder in your phone’s shared storage. That is a deliberate choice: it is what lets you open the file in any file app, copy it to a computer, or restore it with a different tool. A file only this app could reach would not be much of a backup.

The consequence is that the file is not encrypted, and it is not private to this app. It contains your messages as readable text. Any app you grant storage access to can read it, and so can anyone holding your unlocked phone. KeepText holds no password, no key and no secret of any kind — there is nothing for us to protect it with, and we would rather say so than imply a protection that does not exist.

What the app does do:

• The file is written atomically: it stays invisible and incomplete until it is finished, so an interrupted backup never leaves a half-written file that looks like a real one.
• If a backup fails or you stop it, the partial file is deleted before you are told it stopped.
• The app requests no storage permission at all, because writing to this one folder needs none.

What protects the file is your phone’s own protection: your screen lock, and Android’s full-device encryption. If your messages are sensitive enough that a readable file on the device worries you, that is a reasonable worry, and the answer is to move the backup somewhere you control and delete it from the phone.

6. Keeping and deleting

We retain nothing, because we receive nothing. There is no server, no account and no copy of anything anywhere but your phone.

Your backup files are yours and stay on your device until they are deleted. Two things delete them:

• You, from any file app, exactly like any other file.
• The app’s own tidying, if you leave it on. KeepText keeps the most recent few backups — five by default, changeable, or “All” to keep everything — and removes older ones after a new backup succeeds. It removes only backup files it created itself, never a file it did not write, and it tells you on screen when it has removed any.

Deleting the app does not delete your backup files; they are ordinary files in shared storage, not app data. Deleting the app does delete its settings, which are the only thing it stores about you and which never leave the device either.

7. Sharing a backup is you moving your own file

The app has a Share action. If you use it, your backup file goes wherever you send it — an email, a cloud storage app, another device, a computer. That transfer is yours, carried out by whichever app you chose, and it is outside KeepText.

Worth knowing before you do it: a backup file contains your messages as readable text. Treat it the way you would treat the messages themselves.

8. Contacts (optional, and off unless you turn it on)

If you turn on contact names, the app asks Android for permission to read your contacts, and uses it to look up the names matching the phone numbers in your messages. Those names are written into your backup file on your device, and shown in the app’s conversation list. They go nowhere else.

You can decline, or turn it back off at any time. Everything works the same, with phone numbers in place of names.

9. Restoring, and the temporary messaging-app role

This is the most invasive thing the app does, so it gets said plainly.

Android only allows the phone’s default messaging app to write into your message store. So a restore asks you to make KeepText your default messaging app for as long as the restore takes, and asks you to hand that role straight back when it finishes. You are asked by Android’s own prompt, and you can decline — nothing is broken if you do; the restore simply does not run.

Two things follow from holding that role, and both are true only while it is held:

• Texts that arrive during the restore are delivered to KeepText and to nobody else. The app saves each one into your message store exactly as your normal messaging app would, so nothing is lost. Picture messages (MMS) that arrive in that window are an exception and cannot be saved, because storing one would mean fetching it over the network, which this app has no permission to do. That is why the role is held for as short a time as possible.
• KeepText cannot send messages. It is a backup tool, and the compose screen says so rather than pretending otherwise.

The app reminds you until the role is handed back, because being left as the default messaging app without realising it is a real harm. Restoring the same file twice does not duplicate anything.

10. Notifications

The app sends exactly one notification, ever: the reminder to switch your messaging app back after a restore. Permission for it is requested at that moment and at no other time, and if you decline, the reminder appears inside the app instead. There is nothing else it would notify you about — there is no server to send anything.

11. Your rights

The app processes your personal data solely on your own device, on your instruction, and we receive none of it. In the terms of the GDPR, there is no transfer to us and no processing by us: there is nothing for us to give you access to, correct, export or erase, because we hold nothing.

Your backup files are ordinary files in a folder you can open in any file manager. Delete them like any other file.

If you would like to raise something regardless, write to privacy@jamie.dog.

12. Changes to this policy

This policy took effect on 7 August 2026. If it changes, the updated text will be published here with a new effective date, and the matching version ships inside an app update — the copy shown in the app is always the one belonging to the version you are running. There is no server that could change the app’s behaviour, or this policy’s effect on you, without an update you chose to install.