Curio: Privacy Policy

Last updated November 3, 2026

The short version

Curio is an alarm clock. It keeps your data on your device, apart from the challenge results, the optional ads on the free plan, and the US ad measurement described below, and does not sell it. There is no account and no sign-in. This policy explains what the app touches and why.

The voice you hear

The voice that reads the trivia aloud is synthetic, not a recording of a person. Most trivia play a clip that was generated ahead of time and ships inside the app, so it works with no internet connection and nothing about the trivia is sent anywhere to produce it. Anything without a prepared clip is spoken by your iPhone's own built-in speech, which also runs on the device.

Location and weather

If you allow it, Curio uses your approximate location, at reduced accuracy, to show the local temperature on the home and wake screens. Those approximate coordinates are sent to Open-Meteo, a weather service, to look up the temperature. Curio does not store your location or attach it to any identity, and there is no account to attach it to. You can decline it and the app still works; you just will not see the temperature.

Your sleep, from Apple Health

If you allow it, Curio reads your sleep and your step count from Apple Health, to show last night's sleep beside your morning and whether you were up and moving after the alarm. It only reads; it never writes to Apple Health. This data stays on your iPhone: it is not sent to Curio's server, to analytics, or to any advertiser. You can turn it off at any time in the Health app or in Settings, and the app still works.

Alarms, answers, and stats

Your alarms, your answer history, and your coins and stats are stored locally on your device using standard iOS storage. They are not sent to any server, except as described below. Removing the app removes this data.

Daily Curio rankings

When you play the Daily Curio, Curio sends that day's result (your coins, tries, and time) to Curio's server, along with a random ID made for your phone. The ID is not linked to your name or Apple ID. Curio uses it only to tell you how your result ranks against everyone who played that day. Other people never see your result.

Challenges you send

When you share a trivia, its link carries a code made on your phone. When somebody plays it, on curioalarm.com or in Curio, their result is sent to Curio's server so it can reach you: the name they gave, if any, their tries, time and coins. To deliver it, the server keeps a random id for your copy of Curio, which trivia you shared with your own result, and, if you allow notifications, the token Apple provides to reach your phone. It never receives your name, email, Apple ID or contacts. Results are kept until you erase them in Settings, or deleted after a year without opening Curio.

Challenges you play

If you play a trivia somebody sent you, your result goes to them the same way: the name you enter (optional), your tries, time and coins. Everyone who plays the same link also sees a ranking of everyone's results on it: each player's name, if they gave one, and their coins. Without a name you appear as a numbered player. On curioalarm.com, the page keeps a random id in your browser so playing it twice counts once. Your network address is stored only in scrambled form, to stop one person flooding results.

Coming from a challenge link

If you played trivia on curioalarm.com before installing Curio, the page can put your name, your coins, and your head-to-head record on your clipboard so the app can carry them over. Curio never reads your clipboard on its own. It checks only whether a link is likely to be there, which iOS answers without revealing the contents, and it reads nothing unless you tap the button offering to bring your record over. iOS shows its own paste confirmation at that moment, and declining costs you nothing but the record.

Referrals

If you install Curio after playing trivia someone sent you and answer your first alarm, the app tells Curio's server which link you came from, using a random ID for your phone, so the person who sent it can be credited with coins.

How long it is kept

Results, shares, and referrals tied to a phone that has not used Curio for a year are deleted from the server.

Purchases

Curio's subscription is sold through Apple's App Store using StoreKit. Apple processes the payment and shares only what is needed to grant your subscription. Curio never sees your card or payment details. One-time purchases of packs and sounds are handled by Apple the same way.

Analytics

Curio uses PostHog to understand how the app is used, so it can be improved. What is sent is anonymous: there is no account, no name, no email, no advertising identifier, and no attempt to recognize you in any other app. PostHog does generate a random id for your installation so that repeat events can be counted as one person rather than many; it is not linked to your name or your Apple ID, it is shared with nobody, and deleting and reinstalling Curio replaces it. The events record things like which topic an alarm uses, whether an answer was right, and how long the wake screen took to pass. Each event also says whether this copy of Curio came from the App Store or from a test build, so our own testing can be kept out of the numbers; that describes the app, not you, and Settings has a switch to mark a phone as ours. Two of those matter most and explain why this exists at all: how long it takes to answer, and how often the alarm has to repeat, because together they say whether the app is actually waking people up. What is never sent: the answer you gave, your name, your alarm labels, your location, or the temperature. If you rate how hard a trivia was, that rating is sent with which trivia it was. Each event also carries the hour and minute on your own clock, because a wake-up app has to know what 6am looks like where you are rather than where a server is. That is a time of day, not a place. If you installed Curio after tapping one of its ads on the App Store, Apple tells the app which of Curio's campaigns the ad belonged to, so we know which ads are worth paying for. That is a campaign number of ours, not anything about you, and no tracking permission is involved. You can turn analytics off entirely in Settings, and nothing further is sent from that moment.

Advertising and tracking

On the free plan, Curio can show a video ad, but only when you choose to watch one for another round of trivia. These ads come from Google AdMob, which receives information about your device to show the ad and count it, such as the device model, iOS version and network address. Curio never asks to track you, so AdMob does not get your advertising identifier, and the ads are limited to a general audience rating. Where the law requires it, you are asked for consent first. Curio Premium has no ads. Google's own use of this data is described at policies.google.com/privacy.

Curio does no cross-app tracking. Nothing it collects is used to build a profile of you, sold, or shared with data brokers.

Ad measurement. If your iPhone uses the US App Store, Curio uses Meta's software to report that the app was installed and opened, and when a subscription starts, your first alarm is set, and your first alarm is answered, so we can tell which of our ads on Facebook and Instagram lead to people actually using Curio. These reports carry no name, no email and no advertising identifier, and Curio never asks to track you. Meta uses them in aggregate to measure our ads. Outside the US it is never switched on, and turning off analytics in Settings stops it.

Children

Curio is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Changes

If this policy changes in a meaningful way, the date above will be updated and the new version will appear here.

Contact

Questions about privacy can be sent to [email protected].