The microphone

Blanket shapes its sound to cover the noise around you. To do that, it needs to know how loud that noise is in each of eight frequency bands. The microphone is the instrument that measures this. The app opens it in three situations, and in no others.

When
For how long
What happens to the audio
You press Play with "Adapt to surroundings" on
4 seconds
Reduced to eight numbers, then discarded
"Adapt to surroundings" stays on while the sound plays
5 seconds, once a minute, while the surroundings are quiet. Longer only while a change is being confirmed or followed.
Reduced to eight numbers, then discarded
You tap "Measure again"
4 seconds
Reduced to eight numbers, then discarded

The eight numbers are sound levels: one value per octave band from 63 Hz to 8 kHz. They describe how loud the surroundings are at each pitch. They do not contain speech, and no audio can be rebuilt from them. The audio samples themselves exist only in memory during the analysis, which takes a fraction of a second, and are then overwritten.

Concretely, the app never does any of these things:

  • It never records audio to a file.
  • It never sends audio, or anything derived from audio, to a server.
  • It never keeps audio in memory longer than the analysis needs.
  • It never opens the microphone while "Adapt to surroundings" is off.

The orange microphone indicator in the status bar is controlled by iOS, not by the app. It shows the truth: on a quiet night it lights for about five seconds each minute.

You can withdraw microphone access at any time in Settings › Privacy & Security › Microphone. The app then plays without measuring, and the sound is the tone set in Settings.

What is stored on the phone

The app saves a small amount of information in its own storage on your phone, so that it can start the way you left it. This information stays on the phone and is deleted when you delete the app. The counts described in the next section are the only thing the app can send, and they are made separately.

Your settings
The tone, the volume, the "Can rise" limit and the sensitivity for Adapt, and the other switches in Settings.
The last measurement
The eight band levels from the most recent measurement. With them the home screen can draw the shape of your surroundings, and the sound can start already shaped on the next Play.
The morning line
How long the sound played last night, when it stopped, and the times at which Adapt raised or lowered the level. This is what produces "Played 7h 42m" on the home screen. It contains no audio.
Playback state for the widget
Whether the sound is playing, shared with the Home Screen widget through an app group that only this app and its widget can read.

Anonymous usage counts

The app can send a daily count of what is used, so that we can see which parts of the app matter and where it fails. This is off until you turn it on. The first-run screen asks once, and the switch "Share anonymous usage counts" in Settings turns it on or off at any time.

When it is on, the app keeps one number per event per day and sends the previous day's numbers the next time it is opened. An event is a short name with a few fixed words attached. The complete list:

Play
The output (speaker, earbuds, headphones, car, TV).
Adapt
Whether "Adapt to surroundings" was turned on or off.
Measured
That a measurement completed, and whether it was for a speaker or for earbuds. Not the measurement itself.
Night
How long the sound played, as one of five ranges (under 15 minutes, up to 1 hour, 1 to 4 hours, 4 to 8 hours, over 8 hours), how it ended (stopped, stopped at the set time, paused by another app, a device disconnected, a call, or unexpectedly), and whether Adapt was on.
Setting
Which setting was changed and its new value: theme, start, "Can rise", sensitivity, "Play with other apps", the stop time.
First run
Whether the first-launch sheet was closed with Done or by a swipe.

With every day of counts the app sends the app version and the iOS version (major and minor, for example 26.0), and one random token that is made for that day and deleted with it. The token lets the server count how many phones sent counts on one day. It cannot connect two days, and it cannot be connected to you.

Concretely, the counts never contain any of these:

  • Your name, an account, an e-mail address, or any identifier of you or of your phone.
  • Audio, the eight band levels, or any other number derived from the microphone.
  • The time of day of anything. Only the date, in UTC.
  • Your location, your IP address, or the device model. The server does not store the address the counts came from.

The counts are sent over HTTPS to a server we operate (usage.livyden.com) and stored there for at most 12 months. They are not shared with or sold to anyone, and no third-party analytics service is involved. Turning the switch off stops the counting at once and deletes any counts that have not been sent yet; counts already sent cannot be identified, so they cannot be deleted individually.

Siri, Shortcuts and the widget

Start, Stop, and Toggle are App Intents. You can use them through Siri, the Shortcuts app, the Action button, or the Home Screen widget. In every case iOS runs the intent inside the Blanket app on your phone. The app receives no information about you from these requests, and sends none.

Children

The app collects no personal data from anyone, including children. The anonymous counts above contain nothing that identifies a person.

Changes to this policy

A future version of the app may change what it does with the microphone, with stored information, or with the anonymous counts. If so, this page will be updated. The effective date at the top will change, and the version that the change applies to will be stated here.

13 October 2026: the section "Anonymous usage counts" was added, for version 1.0. Before this change the policy said that the app made no network connection.

Contact

Questions about this policy: support@livyden.com.