Effective August 16, 2026.
No account, no profile
There is nothing to sign up for. We never ask for your email, phone number, or location, and we do not build advertising profiles. Onset shows no ads, and we never sell data or share it for marketing.
What stays on your phone
Your saved stories, reading progress, notification choices, and reading settings are stored on your device. Deleting the app deletes them.
What reaches our servers
A random code. The first time the app talks to our servers, it invents a random code and keeps it on your phone. Requests carry that code so an Ask conversation can keep its thread. The code is not your Apple ID and is not derived from anything that identifies you. Deleting the app destroys it.
Your questions. When you ask Onset about a story, your question and the recent turns of that thread go to our servers and to the AI service that writes the answer. Questions are kept in our logs so we can fix bad answers. Please do not put personal details in a question.
A notification token. If you turn notifications on, Apple issues a delivery token for your device and we store it to send story alerts. Turning notifications off stops it working.
Test builds measure reading
In test releases installed through TestFlight, the app reports which stories were eligible for and placed on your front page, which cards were actually visible, which stories you opened and read, roughly how long you spent reading, and answers you give, such as whether a story was worth your time. Those reports are tied to the random code above, plus a first name if you chose to give one. We use them to judge which stories earn readers’ time. App Store builds do not send these reports.
Where things run
Our servers run on Railway and store data with Supabase. The website is served by Vercel and loads its typefaces from Google Fonts, so your browser requests the font files from Google. The website sets no cookies and runs no analytics.
Children
Onset is general news reporting and is not directed at children under 13.
Changes
When this policy changes, this page changes, with a new date at the top.