Effective date: August 14, 2026
This policy explains what information Availa collects, how it's used, who can see it, and how it's stored. It's written to accurately describe what the app actually does — not generic boilerplate. If anything here changes, we'll update this policy and change the effective date above.
Availa is developed by Sharon-Marie Eadie (Individual developer). If you have questions about this policy or your data, contact us at hello.availa@gmail.com.
The rest of this policy explains all of that in more detail.
When you create an account, we collect:
Your email and password are managed directly by Firebase Authentication (Google's authentication service) — Availa's own database never stores your password, and only stores your name as part of your profile.
To calculate when you're free, Availa stores the details of your work pattern, including (as applicable to how you've set it up):
If you add a location to a personal event or work shift, it's stored as plain text, exactly as you typed it. Availa does not access your device's GPS or precise location, does not request any location permission on iOS or Android, and does not geocode or track your location in any way.
If you tap a location to get directions, Availa shows you a chooser and opens your own choice of maps app (Apple Maps or Google Maps) with that address — this just hands the text you already entered to the maps app you pick, the same as if you'd typed it in yourself. Availa's own servers aren't involved in that step.
When you create or join a group, we store:
When a catch-up (planned get-together) is created within a group, we store its title, icon, date and time, who created it, and — only if someone chooses to leave it — which members have removed themselves. We also store lightweight in-app notifications about group activity, like "a catch-up was cancelled," including who triggered it and which members have seen it.
We store small personal preferences, like whether you prefer a 12-hour or 24-hour time format, and which groups you've pinned to the top of your list.
Availa can be used without creating an account, via "Continue without an account." In this mode, everything above (your work pattern, commitments, work shifts, day-status overrides, saved templates/rotations, and preferences) is stored only on your device, using standard local app storage (shared_preferences) — not in Firebase, and not on any server we or Google operate. It never leaves your device unless you sign up.
Guest mode doesn't support groups or catch-ups, since those require a real account to identify who you're sharing availability with.
If you sign up while using guest mode, your local calendar data is copied into your new Firebase account so you don't lose anything, and the on-device copy is then deleted. If you delete the app, or clear its storage, before signing up, guest data is permanently lost — since it was never backed up anywhere else, we have no way to recover it.
We use the information above only to run the app's actual features:
We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not build any kind of profile about you beyond what's needed to run these features.
This is the part of Availa's design we care about most, so we want to explain it precisely rather than just say "we protect your privacy."
In the app itself, your groupmates only ever see a computed availability signal for each day — shown as green ("everyone's free"), yellow ("some overlap, here are the hours"), or red ("no good overlap") — never your specific commitments, work hours, or the reason you're busy. This is true for every screen in the app; there is no view, for any group member, that lists out anyone else's individual schedule.
How this works technically: that calculation happens on your own device and your groupmates' own devices, not on a central server we control. For that on-device calculation to be possible, the underlying schedule data it's based on (your work pattern, commitments, and day-status overrides) is technically retrievable by the Availa app running on another signed-in user's device — but Availa's interface is built so that data is only ever used to compute that shared green/yellow/red signal, never displayed to anyone but you directly. We want to be upfront about this distinction: our privacy guarantee is about what the app shows, not that the underlying data is cryptographically unreachable by other users' devices. We chose this on-device approach deliberately, rather than building additional server-side infrastructure that would itself become another place your data could be exposed.
Your saved shift templates and saved rotations — reusable presets for your own convenience — are never accessible to anyone but you, under any circumstances.
Group information (a group's name, icon, and member list) is visible to any member of that group, and to anyone who has that group's join code, since the code is needed to preview a group before joining it.
Guest mode data isn't visible to anyone, including us — since it's stored only on your device and never transmitted anywhere unless and until you sign up.
If you're using guest mode (no account), your data is stored only in your device's local app storage, not on Firebase — see "Guest mode" in Section 1. Once you have an account:
Availa is built on Google Firebase, specifically:
We don't operate any separate servers of our own — Firebase is the only infrastructure your data is stored on. Google's own privacy and security practices for Firebase apply to how that underlying infrastructure is run; you can read Google's policies at firebase.google.com/support/privacy.
Availa uses very few third-party services, and none of them are advertising, analytics, or tracking companies:
We do not use any analytics, crash-reporting, or advertising SDKs of any kind. We don't run ads in the app, we don't sell your data to anyone, and we don't share your data with data brokers or marketers.
You can update your name and time-format preference at any time in the app's Settings and Edit Profile screens. You can leave any group at any time, which removes you from that group's member list and catch-ups going forward.
If you're using guest mode: there's no account to delete, since your data was never uploaded anywhere. You can remove it at any time by clearing the app's storage or uninstalling the app in your device settings. Signing up moves your data into a real account, after which the "Deleting your account" section below applies.
Deleting your account: You can permanently delete your account at any time from the app's Settings screen, via "Delete account." For your security, this asks you to re-confirm who you are first (your password, or a fresh sign-in for Google/Apple accounts). It permanently deletes your account, your schedule, and your membership in any groups, and can't be undone.
Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights over your personal data (for example, to access, correct, or export it) under laws like the GDPR or CCPA. Contact us at hello.availa@gmail.com to make a request, and we'll do our best to help.
Availa is not directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has created an account or provided us with information, please contact us at hello.availa@gmail.com and we'll delete it.
If we make material changes to this policy, we'll update the effective date at the top and, where appropriate, let you know in the app.
Questions about this policy or your data: hello.availa@gmail.com
This section isn't part of the policy itself — it's a practical reference to help map Availa's actual data collection onto Apple's App Privacy ("nutrition label") and Google Play's Data Safety categories when filling out store listings. Double-check current category names against each store's latest guidelines, since these are occasionally renamed.
| Data type | Collected? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Yes | Account profile |
| Email address | Yes | Via Firebase Auth |
| User ID | Yes | Firebase Auth uid |
| Password | Yes (Apple: usually exempt from disclosure; stored only by Firebase Auth, never in plain text by us) | |
| Precise location | No | Never requested or collected |
| Coarse location | No | Never requested or collected |
| Physical address | Optional / user-entered | Free-text only, if the user chooses to add one to an event/shift |
| Photos or camera | No | No camera/photo permission requested |
| Contacts | No | Not accessed |
| Search/browsing history | No | |
| Identifiers (device ID, advertising ID) | No | No ad SDK, no advertising ID collected |
| Usage/analytics data | No | No analytics SDK present |
| Crash data / diagnostics | No | No crash-reporting SDK present |
| User content (schedules, group/catch-up data) | Yes* | Core app functionality, described above |
| Purchases | No | App has no in-app purchases at time of writing |
*For guest-mode users (no account), this data stays on-device only and isn't transmitted to us — relevant if a store's "collection" definition is scoped to off-device transmission.