Weekend Buddy

Privacy policy

Last updated 23 September 2026. Applies to Weekend Buddy for iPhone and iPad, version 1.0 and later, and to this website.

The short version

  • Weekend Buddy has no account, no sign-in and no server of its own.
  • It reads your calendars, and optionally your contacts’ birthdays, on your phone to show which weekends are free. What it reads is not sent anywhere.
  • On its own, the app sends three things off your phone: your plans, tags and settings, to your own iCloud; a request for public holiday dates, for regions that aren’t built in; and anonymous usage counts: which screens get used, how the app was opened, and the price of any tip or subscription.
  • Nothing is sold, shared for advertising, or used to track you across apps or websites.
  • If you delete the app, its data on your phone goes with it. Your iCloud data is yours to delete in iCloud settings.
  • If you sign up for launch news on this website, your email address is held by Tally, used for one email when the app is out, and then deleted.

Who I am

Weekend Buddy is made and published by Scott Breen, an individual in Australia. I am responsible for the personal data described in this policy (the “data controller”, in GDPR terms), and I answer questions about it at scott.breen.dev@outlook.com.

What the app reads on your phone

Everything in this section is read on your device to draw the screen. The app does not copy it anywhere, except where the next section says so.

Calendars

With your permission, the app reads the events in the calendars you choose: titles, dates and times, locations, attendees’ names, and whether you accepted or declined. iOS asks for full access because the app has to read events to show a weekend; write-only access would show nothing. You choose which calendars in You › Sources, and you can revoke access at any time in Settings › Privacy & Security › Calendars.

Contacts

Only if you turn on “Use contact birthdays” on the Occasions tab. The app then reads names, birthdays and, if you allow it, photos, to show which weekend a birthday lands on. The only thing it keeps is a contact’s identifier, when you hide that person’s birthday; names, birthdays and photos are never stored or sent. You can turn this off in You › Sources, and revoke access in Settings › Privacy & Security › Contacts.

Your plans, tags and settings

The plans you pencil in (title, date and notes), the tag and “counts as busy” choice you give an event, occasions you add by hand, and your settings. These are yours, and are stored as described in the next section.

Notifications

If you turn them on, the weekend summary and plan reminders are created and scheduled on your phone. They are local notifications; no push notification service is involved.

On-device intelligence

On an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence, the app may ask Apple’s on-device model whether a weeknight event looks social. The model runs on your phone, and nothing about the event is sent anywhere.

What leaves your phone, and where it goes

The app sends data to three places, and none of them is a server of mine.

  1. Your own iCloud, for your plans, tags and settings

    If your phone is signed in to iCloud, the app keeps its records in your private iCloud database, so that your other devices show the same thing. Apple’s servers hold, under your Apple Account and encrypted in transit and at rest: the plans you wrote (title, date and notes), the occasions you added by hand, your settings (except which calendars you picked, which stay on each device), each tag or choice you attached to a calendar event with that event’s identifier, and each birthday you hid with the identifier of that contact or birthday event.

    An identifier is the string an event’s calendar service or iOS uses to tell one event or contact from another, so the same event can be recognised on your other devices. The event’s title, location and attendees, and the person’s name and birthday, are not stored with it. I have no access to your private iCloud database. If you aren’t signed in to iCloud, everything stays on the phone, and the bottom of the You tab says so. Apple’s handling of iCloud data is covered by Apple’s privacy policy.

  2. A public holiday service, for regions that aren’t built in

    Public holidays for Australia are built into the app through 2028, so no request is made for them. For any other country Nager.Date covers, and the states and regions it lists, the app asks Nager.Date (date.nager.at) for that country’s public holidays for a year. The request contains only the country code and the year. As with any internet request, their server sees your IP address. Nothing about you, your calendar or your plans is sent.

  3. Anonymous usage counts, to Firebase Analytics

    To learn which parts of the app get used, the app sends set events to Google’s Firebase Analytics: which screens are opened; how the app was opened (from its icon, a widget and which one, a notification, or Siri and Shortcuts); and things done, such as “plan created”, “Find free searched” (never what was searched for) or “calendar permission granted”. It also sends a small set of settings, such as whether widgets are installed or the weekend has been customised. Every event and setting name comes from a fixed list in the app’s code. A title, date, name, contact or any other text from your calendar can never be included, because the code has no way to put it there.

    Firebase adds its own device information: a random identifier for this installation of the app, the device model, iOS version, app version, language, and an approximate location that Google works out from your IP address. The app never sets a user ID, never reads the advertising identifier, and has ad personalisation turned off. The counts aren’t linked to your name, Apple Account or contact details, and aren’t used for tracking. Collection is on in the released app with no switch, because nothing in it says who you are. Google processes this data under its own privacy policy and keeps event-level data for two months; I only ever see totals.

When you ask the app to share something

If you turn on “Add to calendar” for a plan, the app adds that plan as an event to the calendar you picked. From then on it is held by that calendar’s provider (iCloud, Google, Microsoft or another) under their terms, and it is updated and deleted along with the plan.

If you share free dates as text or a tile, share a weekend from its own screen, or ask Siri or a Shortcut about a weekend, what leaves the phone is what you chose to send, or the answer you asked for. A shared weekend names your own plans; other calendar events are only called busy. Siri’s own processing is covered by Apple’s privacy policy. The app only gives Siri summaries, such as “free”, “partly free” or a date range; an event title is never spoken.

If you leave a tip or become a supporter from the You tab, the purchase is made through the App Store, under Apple’s terms. The app never sees your payment details. What goes to Firebase is the purchase as the App Store reports it — which tip or subscription, its price and its currency — and a count from the same fixed list as above, so I can see what the app earns. Like the rest, it isn’t linked to your name or Apple Account, and the colour you pick is never sent. The app keeps no purchase record of its own: it reads your Apple Account’s purchase history, which is how it can thank you, and recognise you as a supporter, on another device.

What never leaves

The titles, times, locations and attendees of your calendar events. Your contacts’ names, birthdays and photos. Your hidden and private items. The app never sends any of these to me, to Google or to anyone else. There is no Weekend Buddy server for them to go to.

What I don’t do

This website

This website is a set of static pages hosted by Cloudflare. It sets no cookies, runs no scripts and has no analytics. Cloudflare keeps standard server logs (IP address, page requested and time) for a short period to run the service; I don’t use them. Links to the App Store, Instagram and Tally take you to those companies’ sites, where their own policies apply.

Launch news

Until the app is on the App Store, this website links to a form for hearing when it is. The form is hosted by Tally (tally.so), not on this site, and asks for your email address and your country. I use your email address to send you one email when Weekend Buddy is released, and your country to know where people are waiting for it. You won’t be added to a newsletter, the list isn’t shared with anyone, and it is deleted once that email has been sent. Tally stores your answers on my behalf, under its own privacy policy.

Your choices, and how to delete things

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask me what personal data I hold about you, and ask for it to be corrected or deleted. In practice, I hold nothing about you unless you have emailed me or signed up for launch news. Email me at the address below. You can also complain to your privacy regulator: in Australia, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner; in the EU or the UK, your data protection authority.

If you are in the EU, the UK or somewhere with similar laws: the legal basis for calendar and contacts access, which iOS asks you for, and for launch news, which you sign up for, is your consent, and you can withdraw it at any time. The legal basis for the usage counts is my legitimate interest in knowing which features are used; they never include your name, contact details or anything from your calendar. The companies named below may process data outside your country, under their own safeguards.

Third parties named in this policy

Changes

If the app or this website starts collecting or sending something new, or stops, this page is updated first and the date at the top changes. Material changes to the app are also noted in the App Store release notes for the version that makes them.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: scott.breen.dev@outlook.com