Minute Early privacy policy

1. Who we are

Minute Early is made by Kindly Made, a small independent app maker in South Africa. In this policy, “we” and “us” mean Kindly Made. For the purposes of South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Kindly Made is responsible for any personal information described here. You can reach us at support@kindlymadeapps.com.

2. Your calendar

When you set Minute Early up, it asks for Android’s calendar permission. With it, Minute Early reads the calendars that are on your phone: the ones your accounts and calendar apps (such as Google, Samsung, Outlook and Exchange) keep in Android’s calendar store. It can only read them. It cannot add, change or delete anything in your calendar.

Minute Early reads:

• Your calendars: each calendar’s name, colour and account, and whether you can add to it. That is how it lists them, puts work calendars first, and keeps calendars that others share with you, such as the colleagues’ calendars that Outlook puts on your phone, switched off until you switch them on.
• Your coming meetings: each meeting’s title, start and end, calendar, location and description, any link its calendar app adds to it, whether it is all-day or cancelled, whether it is marked busy or free, your reply to the invitation, the organiser, and the guests’ email addresses.

Minute Early uses these, on your phone, only to work out which meetings ring and when, to show them in the app and on the ringing screen, and to find a meeting’s join link (such as Teams, Zoom or Google Meet) in those details. It looks at the guest list only to tell whether anyone else is invited, for the “only events with other people” filter, and it does not keep the guests’ addresses.

Your calendar never leaves your phone. Minute Early does not copy it anywhere: it reads it again each time it plans the next ring. If you turn the calendar permission off, Minute Early can no longer read your calendar, and no meeting rings.

3. What Minute Early keeps on your phone

To ring on time, Minute Early saves the following in its own private storage on your phone:

• Your settings: how early and how long it rings, the sound, volume, vibration and gentle start, which calendars ring, the filters you chose (such as video meetings only or your work hours), and whether rings are paused.
• Your choices for single meetings: which meetings you switched to ring or to skip, snoozed or answered. Each is kept as a reference to the calendar event and its start time, not its title, and forgotten two days after the meeting.
• The next ring: when it rings, and that meeting’s title, time, place, calendar and join link. Android does not let apps read the calendar after a restart until you unlock the phone, so Minute Early keeps the next ring to ring it even then.
• A ring log: the last 200 things that happened, such as a ring planned, rung, snoozed or stopped, with the meeting’s title and, when you tap Join, the start of its link. It shows whether a ring was on time.
• Your free trial and Premium: the last answer Google Play gave about whether you have Minute Early Premium, when it gave it, and whether the reminder that your trial ends tomorrow has been shown. The 14 free days are counted from the day Minute Early was installed, which Android records.

This is kept in the part of Minute Early’s storage that Android makes available before you unlock the phone after a restart, so meetings still ring then. Other apps cannot read any of it.

This information never leaves your phone, except your settings in your own Android backup (section 7). We cannot see it. Minute Early works without an internet connection, and it does not even have Android’s permission to use the internet: when you buy or check Minute Early Premium, it is the Google Play Store app on your phone that talks to Google (section 9).

4. Joining a meeting

When you tap Join, Minute Early hands the meeting’s link to Android, which opens it in the meeting’s own app, such as Teams, Zoom or Google Meet, or in your browser. Minute Early itself connects to nothing: the app you join with does, under its own terms and privacy policy. If the link is wrapped by Outlook’s Safe Links or a Google redirect, Minute Early takes out the meeting’s own address first, on your phone, so the meeting opens straight away.

5. Your calendar and meeting apps

To show the calendar and meeting apps on your phone with their own icons, and to open them or their notification settings for you, Minute Early asks Android whether a short list of apps is installed: Outlook, Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, GoTo, Jitsi, Google Calendar and Samsung Calendar. Minute Early cannot see any of your other apps. Android draws the icons on your phone, and nothing about your apps is sent anywhere.

If your calendar app reminds you of the same meetings, Minute Early’s Phone setup can open that app’s notification settings, where you can turn its reminders off. Minute Early cannot change another app’s settings itself.

6. The permissions Minute Early uses

A meeting alarm needs a few of Android’s permissions to ring reliably. When you set Minute Early up, it checks the calendar, notifications and full-screen alarms with you. Android gives it the others when you install it. This is every permission Minute Early has, and why:

• Calendar (READ_CALENDAR): to read your meetings (section 2). You can turn it off at any time in your phone’s settings.
• Alarms and reminders (USE_EXACT_ALARM on Android 13 and later, SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM on older phones): to ring at the exact minute, using Android’s own alarm-clock alarms, which also show the alarm icon at the top of your screen.
• Full-screen alarms (USE_FULL_SCREEN_INTENT): to open the ringing screen over the lock screen and turn the screen on. If you switch this off (Android 14 and later let you), meetings still ring, with a notification to open the ringing screen.
• Notifications (POST_NOTIFICATIONS, Android 13 and later): for the notification that shows while a meeting rings, the “Missed” notification with Join, and one reminder the day before your free trial ends.
• Foreground service (FOREGROUND_SERVICE and FOREGROUND_SERVICE_SYSTEM_EXEMPTED): to keep ringing, with its notification, until you join, snooze or stop it, even with the screen off or another app open. “System exempted” is the kind of service Android allows for apps that ring exact alarms.
• Start at boot (RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED): to put the next ring back after the phone restarts, even before you unlock it.
• Vibrate and wake lock (VIBRATE and WAKE_LOCK): to vibrate while a meeting rings, and to keep the phone awake while it rings.
• Billing (com.android.vending.BILLING): so that you can buy Minute Early Premium through Google Play.
• One technical permission that every modern app has, which only lets Minute Early’s own parts talk to each other inside the app (app.kindlymade.meetingalarm.DYNAMIC_RECEIVER_NOT_EXPORTED_PERMISSION).

Minute Early does not have, and does not ask for, permission to use the internet, to change your calendar, or to use your contacts, location, camera, microphone, photos, files or phone calls. During a phone call, Minute Early rings softly: it can tell a call is on from the phone’s sound mode, which needs no permission and tells Minute Early nothing about the call.

7. Android backup

If backup is turned on for your phone, Android can include Minute Early’s settings (section 3) in your phone’s backup (Android Auto Backup), which Google stores in your own Google account, so they come back when you set up a new phone. Only the settings are backed up. Your choices for single meetings, the next ring and the ring log stay on this phone, and a new phone plans its own rings from its own calendar. Your calendar itself is kept by your calendar’s own account, not by Minute Early.

The backup is made and kept by Google under Google’s privacy policy. We have no access to it. On Android 9 and later, if your phone has a screen lock, the backup is encrypted with it. You can turn backup on or off in your phone’s settings (usually under Settings › System › Backup, or Settings › Google › Backup), and you can delete old backups from your Google account.

8. Google Play

You download Minute Early from Google Play, which Google runs under its own terms and privacy policy. Google gives us statistics about Minute Early, such as the number of installs, ratings and reviews, and the countries, Android versions and phone models it is used on. These come to us as totals. Google also shows us reports when Minute Early crashes or freezes, from people who have chosen to share usage and diagnostics data with Google. Those reports describe the phone model, the Android version and what the app was doing, not who you are. We use them only to fix problems.

If you test Minute Early before it is released, Google Play also shows us the email address of your Google account, because testing is by invitation. We use it only to run the test.

If you write a review on Google Play, it is public, along with the name on your Google account. We may reply to it there. Minute Early itself never asks you for a rating.

9. Minute Early Premium and payments

Everything in Minute Early is free for your first 14 days, with no card needed. After that, every meeting still rings, for free. Minute Early Premium is an optional monthly or yearly subscription that keeps the filters, all the sounds, and the choice of how early and how long it rings.

• Google Play takes the payment. You buy Minute Early Premium through Google Play, under the Google Play Terms of Service and Google’s privacy policy. Google handles your card or other payment method. We never see your card or bank details, and Minute Early never touches them.
• Minute Early only asks whether it is active. To know whether you have Premium, Minute Early asks Google Play, on your phone, whether your Google account holds a Minute Early Premium subscription, and after you buy, it confirms the purchase to Google Play, as Google requires. Minute Early keeps only the answer on your phone. It sends nothing about your purchase or your trial to us or to anyone else, and we have no server that receives it.
• What Google tells us. Like every app sold on Google Play, we can see the orders for Minute Early in our Google Play account: an order number, what was bought, the price, and whether the subscription is active, renewing or cancelled. Google’s sales reports also give, for each order, the buyer’s country, sometimes their state or province and postal code, and the model of phone used. Google does not give us your card details. We can look up an order by its number or by the buyer’s email address, which we do only if you write to us about a purchase. We use this only to look after your subscription, to answer you, and to keep the records that tax and accounting law ask for. Under GDPR, our reasons are to provide the subscription you bought and to meet those legal duties.
• Google Play’s own diagnostics. Google’s billing software is built to send Google some information about how billing is working. Minute Early leaves out the internet permission that needs, so from Minute Early it sends nothing. What the Google Play Store app itself sends is covered by Google’s privacy policy.
• Managing or cancelling is always done in Google Play: open the Play Store, tap your profile picture, then Payments & subscriptions › Subscriptions. Uninstalling Minute Early does not cancel a subscription.

10. What we never do

• We do not show ads, and Minute Early contains no advertising code.
• We do not use analytics, tracking or crash-reporting tools inside Minute Early.
• We do not ask you to create an account or sign in.
• We do not upload your calendar or your meetings, look at them or use them to train anything.
• We do not change your calendar, and Minute Early has no permission to.
• We do not sell, rent or share your information with anyone.
• We do not use your information to build a profile of you or to make automated decisions about you.

11. When you email us

If you write to us, we receive your email address and whatever you choose to tell us, such as a screenshot you send. We use it only to answer you and to improve Minute Early. We keep emails only as long as we need them to help you, and usually no longer than two years after we last hear from you. You can ask us to delete them sooner. Mail to support@kindlymadeapps.com is passed on by Cloudflare’s email routing to a Google (Gmail) mailbox, where it is stored, and may be kept on servers outside South Africa or the European Union, under the protections those companies offer.

Under GDPR, our reason for using this information is our legitimate interest in answering your questions and looking after Minute Early.

12. This website

This website, minuteearly.com, has no ads and no account. To see how people find it and which pages help them, it uses two tools:

• Google Analytics, loaded through Google Tag Manager. It records the pages you look at, how you got here (for example a Google search or a link), what you click, how far you scroll and how long you stay, your rough location (country and city, worked out from your IP address, which Google Analytics does not keep) and your type of device and browser. It sets cookies named _ga and _ga_ followed by a code, which tell visits apart and last up to two years. Google handles this for us: see Google’s privacy policy and how Google uses information from sites that use its services. The site tells Google not to use it for advertising.
• Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits and measures how fast pages load, without cookies and without identifying you.

Your choice. If you visit from the European Union, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, Google Analytics only runs after you choose Allow in the bar at the bottom of the page. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as No thanks. Wherever you are, you can change your choice here: Change my choice

You can also block Google Analytics on every website with Google’s opt-out add-on, or by blocking cookies in your browser. Under GDPR, our reason for Google Analytics is your consent where we ask for it, and elsewhere our legitimate interest in knowing how the site is used, which you can object to as above.

The website’s fonts and pictures come from the site itself. It is hosted by Cloudflare, which handles technical information such as your IP address and browser type to deliver the pages and protect the site from attacks. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.

13. Children

Minute Early is made for adults at work, and its audience on Google Play is people aged 18 and over. It is not directed at children. Minute Early does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, children included: everything stays on the phone. If you believe a child has used Minute Early and want their information removed, uninstalling the app deletes it from the phone, or you can contact us and we will help.

14. Your rights (POPIA and GDPR)

Wherever you live, you can ask us:

• whether we hold any personal information about you, and for a copy of it;
• to correct it, or to delete it;
• to stop using it, or to limit how we use it;
• to object to how we use it.

In practice, the only personal information we could hold is emails you have sent us, the email address Google Play shows us if you test Minute Early before release (section 8), the order records Google Play shows us if you buy Minute Early Premium (section 9) and, from this website, the visit statistics in Google Analytics (section 12), which are tied to a cookie in your browser, not to your name. Your calendar and everything Minute Early keeps are on your phone, so you are in control of them (section 15), and we cannot see, copy or delete them for you.

To use any of these rights, email support@kindlymadeapps.com. We will reply within 30 days. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to South Africa’s Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za) or, in the European Union or the United Kingdom, to your local data protection authority.

15. Deleting your data

• Everything Minute Early keeps on your phone: uninstall Minute Early, or use Settings › Apps › Minute Early › Storage › Clear storage on your phone. Either way, no meeting rings until you set it up again. Your calendar stays exactly as it is: Minute Early never changed it.
• Its access to your calendar: turn the calendar permission off in Settings › Apps › Minute Early › Permissions.
• Android backups: delete Minute Early’s data from your phone’s backup in your Google account (Google Drive › Backups, or your phone’s backup settings).
• Things you sent us: ask us, and we will delete your emails.
• This website: clear this site’s cookies in your browser, or choose No thanks (section 12). Google Analytics then has nothing that links you to your earlier visits.
• Minute Early Premium: cancel it in the Play Store (section 9). Google keeps its own record of your purchases under its privacy policy. The order records Google Play shows us stay in our Google Play account, and we keep copies only as long as tax and accounting law requires.

16. Changes to this policy

If we change what Minute Early does with information, we will update this page and the dates at the top before the change reaches the app. If a change means Minute Early would send anything from your phone, Minute Early will ask you first.

17. Contact us

Kindly Made, South Africa
support@kindlymadeapps.com