Privacy Policy

What we collect

Nitrate has no sign-up and no user profile. The data below is created by using the app and is stored on your device, and — if iCloud is on — mirrored to the private iCloud database belonging to your Apple Account.

How it's used

Playback positions restore your place. Your watchlist and settings follow you between devices. Membership status decides whether ads are shown. None of that leaves your devices and your own iCloud.

We do not sell or rent personal data, and we do not share it with data brokers. The analytics we do run measure the app, not the viewer: they tell us which screens are used and where the app crashes, in aggregate, and they are not joined to your watchlist or your resume points.

Sync across devices

Your watchlist and playback positions sync so that an iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV signed into the same Apple Account stay in step. This uses Apple's CloudKit, writing to the private database of your own iCloud account. That storage is yours: the developer of Nitrate has no access to it and cannot read, export, or recover its contents.

To stop syncing, turn off iCloud for Nitrate in your device's Settings under your Apple Account. The app keeps working; that device's watchlist and resume points simply stay local and stop reaching your other devices.

The film catalog itself is delivered from a separate, read-only public database. Reading it sends no personal data and requires no iCloud account.

Analytics

Nitrate uses Google Firebase to measure how the app is used and to find out when it breaks. This runs on all four platforms — iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV — unlike the ads, which are iPhone and iPad only.

What it reports is the app's behaviour rather than yours: launches, which screens are opened, how long a session lasts, and crashes, alongside device model, operating system and app version, a coarse region inferred from your IP address, and a randomly generated app-instance identifier. That identifier is not your name, your Apple Account, or anything we could resolve back to you.

Which films you watch is not part of it. Titles, your watchlist and your resume points are not sent to Firebase; they stay on your device and in your private iCloud storage, and that is still the only place they exist. We can see that a screen was opened, not what was on it.

Google processes this data as our processor under Firebase's privacy terms. It is not used to build an advertising profile, and it is not joined to the ad data described below.

Advertising

Nitrate is free to use, and on iPhone and iPad that is paid for with a single full-screen ad shown on the way into the player. Films are never interrupted mid-playback. The Mac and Apple TV apps show no ads at all, and neither does any platform for an active member of The Nitrate Society.

Ads are served by Google AdMob. To select, cap, and measure them, Google may process device identifiers, coarse location inferred from IP address, and app usage signals as an independent controller under Google's own privacy terms. We do not send Google your watchlist, your viewing history, or any identifier of our own.

In the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland, consent is gathered through Google's User Messaging Platform before any ad is requested — declining means no ads are requested and the app carries on. You can revisit that choice at any time in Settings → Ad Privacy Options inside the app. On iPhone and iPad, Apple's own App Tracking Transparency setting applies independently and is controlled in iOS Settings.

Membership & payments

The Nitrate Society is an optional auto-renewing subscription, sold in monthly and yearly plans. Every purchase, renewal, refund, and cancellation is handled entirely by Apple through the App Store.

We never see or store your card number, billing address, or Apple Account credentials. What the app reads is a single verified entitlement from StoreKit on the device — whether a subscription is currently active, and which plan — and nothing else. See the Terms for the subscription's own terms.

Third parties

Using Nitrate can send data to four places. There are no others.

Retention & deletion

Because your watchlist and playback positions live on your device and in your own private iCloud storage, you control their lifetime directly. Deleting the app removes the local copy. Removing Nitrate's data from your Apple Account's iCloud settings removes the synced copy from every device.

We still hold no account and no copy of your library. The one dataset we do have is the Firebase analytics described above, which Google retains on our behalf for a limited period and then deletes; because it is keyed to an app-instance identifier rather than to you, reinstalling the app starts a new one and orphans the old. Crash reports also reach us through Apple's own service, in aggregate and without identifying you, and only if you have chosen to share analytics with developers in iOS or macOS settings.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or erase personal data held about you, and to object to certain processing. Most of what Nitrate creates is already in your possession — on your devices and in your own iCloud account — where you can inspect or delete it without asking us, and where we could not reach it if you did ask.

The exception is the analytics above. It is not tied to your identity, so we usually cannot single out "your" records from an email address alone — but if you send us the app-instance identifier, or simply ask us to stop, we will act on it. For advertising data the controller is Google, and requests about it should go to Google. For data held in iCloud or in your App Store purchase history the controller is Apple. We are glad to help you route a request to the right place — write to us at the address below.

Children

Nitrate isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect data from them. Films in the catalog carry period-original certifications, which are not modern ratings — parental discretion applies.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially, we will update the effective date above and note the change in the app before it takes effect.