AssistiveDot – Privacy Policy

1. What We Collect

Nothing, unless you write to us. AssistiveDot has no accounts, no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising identifiers and no third-party tracking SDKs. We do not know how many people use the app, what they do with it, or whether it is running. The only thing that ever reaches us is a message you choose to send (see Messages You Send Us).

2. What Stays On Your Device

• Your settings — the button’s position, size, opacity, blur, which tiles you chose and in what order, your gesture bindings, pinned apps and recording quality. These live in the app’s private storage and are removed when you uninstall.
• Your screenshots and recordings — saved to your device’s shared media folders, exactly where your phone’s own capture tools put them. They are yours, they stay there, and uninstalling the app does not delete them.

3. Network Use

AssistiveDot connects to the network for two purposes: confirming with Google Play whether you have bought the one-time Pro unlock, and, only if you write to us, sending your message and fetching our reply. The purchase check contains no information about you, your screen, your captures, or how you use the app.

Everything else is local. Text recognition uses a model bundled inside the app and works in aeroplane mode. Screenshots, recordings and cropping never leave the device. We have deliberately not added analytics or crash reporting, even though they would be useful to us, because this app can see enough of your screen that we would rather it could not report anything at all.

3a. Messages You Send Us

When you use Contact us or Request a feature in Settings, or tell us what went wrong after giving the app 1 to 3 stars, we receive what you type, the topics you tick, the number of stars (for rating feedback) and, if you attach one, the screenshot you choose. To help us fix problems, the message also carries the app version, your device model and Android version, your language and country setting, whether you have Pro, whether the app’s overlay, accessibility and system-settings permissions are on, and an identifier for this app on your device, so we can tell that several messages came from the same person. That identifier is made from Android’s app-specific device ID and scrambled one way; it is not your advertising ID and it is not linked to your name. If you give us an email address, we use it only to reply to you.

Messages are sent over an encrypted connection to our own server and stored in our support system, which only RiekApps staff can access. We do not sell or share them, and we do not use them for advertising. They are kept for up to 24 months so we can follow up on recurring problems, then deleted; you can ask us to delete yours earlier at riekapps@gmail.com. After you have written to us, the app checks our server for replies when you open it. If you never write to us, the app never contacts our server.

If you give the app 4 or 5 stars, we open Google Play’s own rating sheet, which Google provides under its terms. The number of stars you pick is not recorded anywhere unless you send us feedback.

4. The Accessibility Service

AssistiveDot is an assistive-button app: it puts the system’s own controls — Back, Home, Recents, Lock — into a floating button, for people who find hardware buttons or system gestures difficult or painful to use. Android exposes those controls only to an accessibility service, which is why the app uses one.

Accessibility services are powerful, so what this one asks for matters. It is declared with the narrowest capabilities that make the feature work:

• It does not request window content. The service does not set the canRetrieveWindowContent capability, so Android never delivers it the text, fields or structure of any screen — including your messages or your banking app.
• It does not record what you type. No keystrokes, no form contents, no passwords. There is no mechanism in the app that could.
• It does not observe which apps you use.

The service performs global navigation actions, dispatches a scroll when you ask for a long screenshot, and captures the screen when you tap a capture tile. That is the whole of it.

5. Permissions

• Display over other apps — draws the floating button. Without it there is no app.
• Accessibility service — Back, Home, Recents, Lock, notification shade, quick settings, and screenshots without a confirmation dialog.
• Notifications — the ongoing silent notice Android requires of any app running in the background, and a tap-to-open notice when a capture is saved.
• Microphone — optional. Records your voice into a screen recording, only while a recording is running. Recordings work silently without it.
• Screen capture — for screen recording. Android asks for your explicit consent every single session; no app can suppress or remember that.
• Modify system settings — optional, for the rotation lock tile.
• Do Not Disturb access — optional, for the ringer tile.
• Internet — purchase verification with Google Play, and messages you choose to send us. Nothing else.

6. Screenshots & Recordings

Captures are written directly to your device’s media storage and are never uploaded, scanned, processed off-device or transmitted. What ends up in a screenshot or recording is whatever was on your screen when you took it — please be as careful sharing those as you would with any capture from your phone’s built-in tools.

7. Purchases

The Pro unlock is a single one-time purchase handled entirely by Google Play. We never see or store your name, email, or payment details; Google tells the app only whether the purchase exists. There is no subscription and nothing recurring.

8. Children’s Privacy

AssistiveDot is a general-purpose utility and is not directed at children. Since it collects no data whatsoever, it collects no data from children either.

9. Data Security

The strongest security property of this app is that there is almost nothing to secure: no accounts, no collected data beyond messages you send us, and no transmission of anything you create with it. Your settings sit in Android’s per-app private storage, which other apps cannot read.

10. Policy Changes

If the app ever changes in a way that affects this policy, this page will be updated before that version ships and the change will be described in the release notes. The date at the top always reflects the current version.

11. Contact

Questions about this policy or the app: riekapps@gmail.com, or via the contact page.