NotiVault — Privacy Policy

In short: NotiVault saves the notifications your phone receives so you can read them again later. That history is stored only on your device. It is never uploaded, synced or included in a backup, and there is no account and no server of ours for it to go to. The one thing the app does send is anonymous diagnostics — crash reports and counts of a short, fixed list of actions — through Google Firebase. Those never contain notification content, senders or the names of apps on your phone.

This Privacy Policy explains how the NotiVault Android application ("NotiVault", "the app", "we", "us"), package com.revanthapps.notivault, handles your information. By using the app, you agree to the practices described here.

1. Notification access and what it is used for

NotiVault's only purpose is to keep a history of your notifications, including messages that disappear from the notification shade or that the sender later deletes. To do that it needs Notification access, which you grant yourself in Android's system settings. Before sending you there, the app shows a screen explaining exactly what access means and what will be stored. You can revoke it at any time in Settings → Notifications → Device & app notifications (the exact path varies by phone), and capture stops immediately.

With access granted, Android delivers each notification to the app as it is posted. For each one, NotiVault stores in a local database on your device:

the name and package name of the app that posted it;
its title, text, expanded text and sub-text, as shown in the notification;
its category (for example "message" or "email"), when the posting app sets one;
a conversation key, so messages from the same chat can be grouped together;
when it was posted, when it was saved, and when it was later removed from the shade.

Images, attachments and notification icons are not saved. App icons shown in the log are read live from your installed apps and are not stored.

Ongoing notifications — download progress bars, media controls, navigation and similar — are never saved.

About other people's messages. Notifications often contain messages sent to you by other people. NotiVault keeps a copy of what was shown on your screen, on your device, for you. It does not send that content anywhere, and it is not available to us.

2. Sensitive notifications

Notifications can include one-time passcodes, bank alerts and card transactions. The first time NotiVault sees an app, it decides whether to start that app switched on or off. It starts switched off if its package name suggests banking, payments, a wallet or an authenticator, or if that first notification is one the sending app marked as a one-time passcode, a system message or a transport update.

This is a cautious default, not a guarantee. Your SMS app, for example, is usually switched on, so passcodes that arrive by text message will be saved unless you switch it off. You can turn capture off (or on) for any individual app at any time in the app's Apps screen.

3. Where your notification history is stored

Everything described in sections 1 and 2 is stored in the app's private storage on your device, which other apps cannot read. It is never:

uploaded to us or to anyone else — the app has no server and no sync;
included in Google cloud backup — app backup is switched off;
copied during device-to-device transfer when you set up a new phone.

Because nothing is held anywhere else, deleted history cannot be recovered by us or by anyone.

The app also stores a small preferences file holding your retention choice, whether App lock is on, whether you have completed setup, and which apps are switched on or off. That file stays on your device too.

4. What the app does send

NotiVault uses two Google Firebase services: Firebase Crashlytics and Google Analytics for Firebase. Both are anonymous. They exist because notification capture behaves differently on nearly every phone model — some manufacturers' battery managers stop it silently — and without diagnostics those failures would be invisible to us.

Firebase Crashlytics (crash reports)

If the app crashes, Crashlytics sends a report containing the technical stack trace, your device model, Android version, the app version and the time it happened, along with a randomly generated installation identifier that is not linked to you and is reset if you reinstall the app.

Google Analytics for Firebase (usage counts)

Analytics counts a short, fixed list of events:

notification access was granted, or setup was finished without granting it;
background running was allowed from the battery dialog;
a conversation was opened, or a search returned results;
an app was switched off for capture (which app is not sent);
the log was cleared, or a date range was deleted by hand;
old history was trimmed by the retention setting;
capture was found not to be working when the app was opened.

The only extra detail attached to any event is a value from a small fixed set — a capture state such as "disconnected", or a rough size band such as "100–1,000" rather than an exact number. Analytics also records standard device information (model, Android version, app version, language and approximate country), session counts and which screen is open.

Never included, on either service: notification titles or text, senders, conversations, search terms, the names or package names of the apps on your phone, your contacts, your precise location, or any account or contact detail. The app does not currently read your advertising ID: the advertising-ID permission (AD_ID) is removed from the app and advertising-ID collection is switched off in Analytics. Nothing collected is sold.

5. Permissions we request and why

Notification access (granted in system settings, not by a pop-up): to receive and save your notifications, as described in section 1. The app cannot work without it.
Run at startup (RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED): so capture resumes after your phone restarts or the app is updated.
Battery optimisation exemption (REQUEST_IGNORE_BATTERY_OPTIMIZATIONS): lets the app show Android's one-tap "allow background running" dialog. Some phones (notably Samsung's "sleeping apps") stop apps that have not been opened for a few days, which would stop capture. This is optional; you can skip it during setup and change it later.
Biometrics (USE_BIOMETRIC): only if you turn on App lock, to ask for your fingerprint, face or screen lock before the history is shown. Biometric data is handled entirely by Android and never reaches the app.
Internet (INTERNET, ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE): used only to deliver the anonymous crash reports and usage counts in section 4. No feature of the app needs the network.
Install referrer (BIND_GET_INSTALL_REFERRER_SERVICE): added by the Firebase library so Google Play can tell Analytics that an install happened. It reads nothing from your device.

These permissions are used solely to make the app work and for no other purpose.

6. Data retention and deletion

Saved notifications are kept for 30 days by default, after which they are deleted automatically. You can change this to 7 days, 90 days or forever in Settings. You can also, at any time:

delete everything older than a date you choose;
clear a single conversation, a single app, or the whole history;
uninstall the app, which deletes the database and preferences with it.

Before any deletion, the app shows how many notifications will be removed. Deletion is permanent.

The anonymous diagnostics in section 4 are kept by Google under Firebase's retention settings: Crashlytics keeps crash reports for 90 days, and user-level Analytics data expires on a rolling window (two months by default), after which only aggregated, non-identifying counts remain.

7. Sharing and selling data

We do not sell your data, and your notification history is never shared with anyone. The anonymous diagnostics in section 4 are processed on our behalf by Google as part of the Firebase platform, under Firebase's privacy terms and Google's Privacy Policy, and are visible to the app's developer only as aggregate counts and crash reports.

If what the app collects or who it shares it with ever changes, this policy and the app's Google Play Data safety section will be updated before that version is released.

8. Your choices

Revoke notification access in system settings to stop all capture.
Switch capture off for any app in the app's Apps screen.
Shorten the retention period, or delete history by date, app or conversation.
Turn on App lock to require your fingerprint, face or screen lock.

Because the diagnostics are anonymous and carry no account, there is nothing tied to you for us to look up, export or delete. The app does not currently offer an in-app switch for them; uninstalling NotiVault stops all collection immediately. If you have a question or a request, email us at the address in section 12.

9. Children's privacy

NotiVault is a general-audience utility and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children.

10. Security

Your notification history never leaves your device, so there is no account to breach and no server of ours holding your content. It is kept in the app's private storage, which Android isolates from other apps, and App lock can put a biometric or screen-lock check in front of it. Anyone who can unlock your phone and open the app can read the history unless App lock is on, so we recommend enabling it. The anonymous diagnostics are sent to Google over an encrypted connection.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app evolves. Changes will be posted on this page with a new "Last updated" date and, where appropriate, noted in the app.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy? Email jrevanth101@gmail.com.