Privacy Policy — Plain and Simple Tools

Last updated: August 30, 2026

Plain and Simple Tools is a container app that holds small tools, each doing one thing. There are no ads, no purchases, no subscriptions, no accounts, no analytics and no tracking, and nothing is downloaded after you install it.

One tool sends something off your phone, and only to somewhere you chose. Steps to HA sends your daily step count to your own Home Assistant. Everything else happens on the device. This page says exactly what that means, because it is the one thing iPhone will never ask you about on your behalf.

Nothing is sent to us

There is no Plain and Simple server. There is no account, no sign-in, and no analytics of any kind — nothing counts which tools you open or whether you open the app at all. No third-party SDKs, advertising networks or trackers are in the app.

We never receive your photos, your step count, or anything else you do in the app. The App Store privacy label reads "Data Not Linked to You" — Photos or Videos, used for App Functionality, not linked to your identity, and not used for tracking. Apple's definition of collect includes access on the device. Sort looks through stills already on this iPhone. We never get them.

What leaves your phone, and what does not

Steps to HA — your daily step count, and the name you chose to label it with. It goes to the Home Assistant address you entered, and nowhere else. It is sent when you tap send, and — if you switch it on — in the background so your dashboard stays current without you opening the app.

Your Home Assistant address and webhook ID never leave the phone. They are held in the iPhone Keychain and marked device-only, which means they are not in iCloud, are not in an encrypted backup that could be restored onto a different phone, and do not follow you to a new device. If you move phones you pair again.

The webhook ID is the credential — anyone holding it can write a step count into your Home Assistant — which is why it is kept there rather than in ordinary app storage.

Sort does not send photos to us. It looks through stills on this iPhone and files them into albums named Vertical and Horizontal. Work stays on the device. If iCloud Photos is on, album membership may appear on your other devices — that is yours, not an upload.

Nothing else in the app sends anything to us. Charge, Negatives, Shrink, Before You Share, and the Lock Screen widget do not contact a server we run. Steps to HA is the one tool that sends, and only to the Home Assistant you pointed it at. App Store links behind Rate and Share are handed to iOS to open and are never fetched.

Permissions belong to the tools, not to the app

The shell — the shelf, the tab bar, Settings — asks for nothing. A tool declares what it will ask you for, and the shelf shows you that on its card before you tap it. A tool you have never opened is never started, so it can never ask for anything.

Nothing is requested when a screen merely appears. A tool asks at the moment you use the part of it that needs the permission, and not before — so a tool sitting on your tab bar that you have not opened does not ask you for anything, ever. Three tests hold this: one fails the build if permission code appears outside a tool's own folder, one if the app declares a permission that no tool asked for, and one if a permission is requested from anything other than a control you operated.

What the app accesses

• The camera — Negatives and Steps to HA, for unrelated reasons. Negatives looks at a film negative and turns it into a photograph, on your phone. Steps to HA reads the pairing code your Home Assistant shows you. In both cases the picture is used as it arrives and is never recorded, saved or sent anywhere. In Steps to HA you can skip the camera entirely and paste the link instead; the app tells you why it wants the camera before iPhone asks.
• Apple Health, read-only — Steps to HA only. Only your daily step count, and only so it can be sent to your Home Assistant. The app never writes anything to Health, and it reads nothing else from it — not your weight, your heart rate, your workouts or anything else. A test fails the build if any other kind of Health data is ever named in the code.
• Your local network — Steps to HA only. A Home Assistant usually lives on your home network rather than out on the internet, and iPhone treats reaching it as something to ask about.
• Your photo library — Sort reads; Negatives, Shrink, and Before You Share only add. Sort looks through stills on this iPhone and files them into albums named Vertical and Horizontal. Work stays on the device. Negatives, Shrink, and Before You Share still only add pictures they make — they never see ones already there.

The Charge tool asks for nothing at all. It reads the battery level that iOS already publishes to any app.

The app does not access your contacts, your location, or your microphone.

Data storage and deletion

Everything the app keeps is stored on your device:

• Which tools you have pinned to the tab bar.
• The last charger Charge measured, so the Lock Screen tile has something to show.
• Your Steps to HA setup — the Home Assistant address, the webhook ID and the name you chose — in the Keychain, marked device-only, as above.

Deleting the app removes all of it. Your Home Assistant keeps whatever it already recorded; that is yours and the app has no way to reach back into it.

Photographs made by Negatives, Shrink, or Before You Share, and albums Sort files into, live in your own photo library and are yours. If iCloud Photos is on, they may appear on your other devices — that is yours, not an upload. The app cannot delete them for you.

Children's privacy

We receive no data from anyone. The app is not directed at children.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this same URL with a new "Last updated" date.