Written to be accurate rather than reassuring. Ten Stems keeps your records on your iPhone; this page says what that means, and the few things you can choose to send yourself.
Last updated 11 October 2026
Ten Stems keeps what you enter in its own storage on your iPhone. None of it is synced to iCloud in version 1.0, and none of it reaches us.
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Your birth date, the time if you know it, and the place you pick, with its coordinates and time zone | App storage on your iPhone |
| The name you set in Settings, if any, and your sex if you choose to give it (it only sets the direction of the ten-year cycles) | App storage on your iPhone |
| Your timeline: the events and notes you add and the readings saved to it | App storage on your iPhone |
| Your dreams: your words, the symbols and how you felt when you woke | App storage on your iPhone |
| The people you add: the name you give them, how you filed them and their birth details | App storage on your iPhone |
| Your answers to "Was yesterday right?", your questions and answers in Ask, and your settings | App storage on your iPhone |
If you back up your whole iPhone to iCloud or to a computer, iOS can include the app's data in that backup, as it does for most apps. That backup is yours, kept by Apple or on your computer, not by us. Ten Stems declares its use of user defaults in Apple's privacy manifest with the required reason codes CA92.1 (data only the app reads) and 1C8F.1 (data shared with its own widgets).
Your chart and readings. Your chart, the day's reading, good days, hours, the sky and your Sun, Moon and Rising are computed on your iPhone. You pick your birth city from a list stored inside the app, so what you type is not sent anywhere, and the app never asks for your location.
Ask and dream readings. Answers and dream readings are written on your iPhone from your chart and the day. When Apple Intelligence is available, Ask uses Apple's on-device language model only to work out what a question is about; that model runs on the iPhone itself. Version 1.0 connects to no outside language model, so no question, dream or chart is sent to one.
If you hold the button to say a dream instead of typing it, Ten Stems uses Apple's speech recognition and requires it to run on your iPhone, so your voice is not sent to Apple or to us to be turned into text. If your iPhone cannot recognise speech on the device, voice capture is not offered and you type instead. The app keeps the text, never a recording. iOS asks for permission to use the microphone and speech recognition the first time.
Notifications such as the morning line are local: the app works them out from your chart and settings and schedules them on your iPhone. There is no push server, so we cannot send you notifications and we do not know when you get them. A reminder you ask for on an entry says that you asked to see it again; it never quotes what you wrote.
Widgets work out today's line on their own. While your plan is active, the app keeps a copy of your birth details and your morning-line time in a storage area on the same iPhone that only Ten Stems and its widgets can open. That copy never includes your name, your readings or your records.
Ten Stems Pro is an auto-renewing subscription sold through the App Store. Apple takes the payment and manages the subscription; we never see your name, your Apple Account or your payment details. The app asks the App Store on your iPhone which plan is active, and Apple gives us sales reports that do not identify you. You can cancel at any time in your Apple Account settings. If you have chosen in your iPhone's settings to share analytics with app developers, Apple may also give us crash reports and usage statistics that describe the device and the problem, not what you entered.
Share cards. Pictures such as your animal, your type or a pair reading go through the iOS share sheet to the apps and people you pick. You see the picture before it goes. If you save one to your photo library, iOS asks for permission to add it; Ten Stems never reads your library.
Export. In Settings, Export everything prepares one JSON file with everything you entered. It is made on your iPhone and goes only where you send it; the app deletes its own copy when you leave Settings.
In Settings, Delete everything erases your birth details and chart, your timeline, dreams, people, answers and Ask history from the app on your iPhone, together with the copy the widgets read, the reminders it scheduled and any export file still on the phone. It cannot be undone. Deleting the app removes everything it stored on the iPhone. Neither step cancels a subscription. We hold none of your data, so there is nothing for us to delete and nothing we could restore.
Ten Stems is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. The app does not send personal information to us from anyone.
Because your data stays on your iPhone, you can see all of it (Export everything) and erase it (Delete everything) at any time without asking us. We do not sell or share personal information and do not use it for advertising. For any question about your privacy, write to us; please do not send your birth details, we do not need them to help.
If what the app does with your data changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top moves. A change that lets anything new leave your iPhone will be described here in the same detail as above, before it ships.