Privacy

NihonGO Manabi has no accounts and no server of its own. We collect nothing about you, and nothing you do in the app is sent to us.

What we collect

Nothing. There are no accounts, no sign-ups, no analytics, no tracking pixels, no advertising identifiers and no advertising. We do not build a profile of you, and we have no server that could receive one.

What is stored, and where

Everything the app remembers about your studying is stored on your device, in the app's own storage:

which chapter you are on, and your settings;
your workbook answers and results;
your handwriting record;
your review queue and the cards in it.

If you are signed in to iCloud, this same information is also kept in your own private iCloud storage, so it follows you between your own devices. That is Apple's iCloud under your Apple ID — it is not our server, and we cannot see it. Turning off iCloud for the app in your iOS settings stops this.

When the app uses the network

The book itself — every chapter, every card and every audio file — is installed with the app and works with no connection at all.

There are exactly two times the app talks to the network:

Checking for updated books. On launch the app fetches a small catalogue file from our GitHub Pages address to see whether a book has been updated or added. It sends no information about you. As with any web request, the host (GitHub) can see that a request was made, in the ordinary way a web server sees traffic.
The optional AI sensei, only if you set it up. See below.

No third-party analytics, advertising or tracking service is loaded at any point.

The optional AI sensei

The workbook can have your own sentences corrected by an AI. This is off unless you deliberately turn it on, and the whole book — every exercise, every model answer, the review queue and the handwriting practice — works fully without it.

If you do connect it:

it runs on your own Anthropic account, using an API key you create and paste in yourself;
that key is stored in your device's Keychain and nowhere else. It is never sent to us;
the sentence you wrote goes directly from your device to Anthropic to be corrected. It does not pass through us, and we keep no copy — we have no server for it to pass through;
that exchange is between you and Anthropic under your own account, and is covered by their terms and privacy policy.

You can disconnect at any time in ⚙ 設定 → AI先生, which removes the key from your device.

Audio

Spoken examples are audio files installed with the app; playing them sends nothing anywhere. Where a recording is not available, the app can fall back to your device's own speech synthesiser. No audio is recorded, and none is sent to us.

Handwriting

The handwriting practice compares your strokes to reference data bundled inside the app. It runs entirely on your device: nothing you write is uploaded, and it needs no account and no connection.

Children

The app collects no personal information from any user, of any age. It is not directed at children under 13.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated text appears on this page with a new date below. Anything material will be said plainly here rather than buried.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or anything at all: joshuawamano@icloud.com. A real person reads it.