UnCubed®

UnCubed

Privacy Policy

Written to be read. It is short because there is very little to tell you.

Last updated 17 October 2026, to say that the app now runs on a Mac as well as an iPhone and iPad, what a Mac keeps when you choose a folder of pictures, that you can make several sets of your own pictures and add photos to them from the Photos app, and that Game Center now also receives the average of your recent race times and your achievements. The update before, on 5 October, said what the app talks to Apple for: the purchase service when you buy, and Game Center. It used to say that the app makes no network requests. The update before that, on 4 October, said what a shared puzzle link holds. The update before that, on 3 October, said that the app now asks, only when you save a picture of a puzzle, for permission to add it to your photos, and not to look at them, and that 2 puzzles do not have a camera, not 4. The update before, on 2 October, said that the support page now runs a script to show the App Store’s price, and what it does and does not do. The update before that, on 1 October, said that 16 of the 20 puzzles now have a camera, that the way to put a puzzle in without it is Input by hand, which works on every one of them, and that there are 3 ways to move to the next step, not 4; and to date a correction made on 21 September, since when this page has said that a race link carries how many times somebody asked for the next move, where it used to say whether they did. The update before, on 18 September, said how what the feedback forms send is sorted, that it stays on the developer’s computer to be sorted, and how anything urgent reaches him, and added Your own pictures, for the photos you can choose to dress a puzzle in Play. The same day, the places in the app this page names were set in the style the site uses for them, with no change of wording. The update before that, on 17 September, set out exactly what a race link carries, removed a description of iCloud sync which the app does not have, described the feedback forms on this website, and, in This website below, said that one page now runs a script, where until that day none did. This policy covers the UnCubed app on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and the uncubed.app website.

The Short Version

We do not collect anything: not your name, not an email address, not an identifier, not a crash report, not a count of how many times you opened the app. You do not make an account, and we do not have a server to send anything to.

The app itself does not talk to any server, ours or anyone else’s. It uses 2 of Apple’s own services: the purchase service when you buy, and Game Center if you are signed in to it. What the app talks to says exactly what each one gets.

The one exception is anything you choose to send us through the feedback forms on this website. That is kept on the developer’s own computer, for the purposes below. Anything urgent reaches him as an iMessage, and a summary of the rest is emailed to him each week.

The camera reads sticker colours on your phone and the frames are thrown away immediately. If you switch on voice control, the microphone is used to recognise the word “next”, on your phone, with the recognition done there and the audio thrown away just as fast. What the app keeps, a puzzle you were part-way through and the races you have sent or received, stays on your phone.

What the App Collects

The app does not collect anything. This section is about the app; what a form on this website keeps is further down.

The app does not contain an analytics package, advertising, attribution or install-tracking code, a crash reporter that transmits anything, or a third-party software development kit of any kind. It does not contain any code written by anyone other than the developer and Apple.

What the App Talks To

The app itself does not talk to any server, ours or anyone else’s. It does not have any code that makes its own requests over the internet. 2 of Apple’s own services do it for the app, and only for the things below. The app on a Mac is the same app and does the same.

  • Buying. When you buy, the app uses Apple’s own purchase service, and Apple handles the payment. We do not see your payment details or your Apple Account.
  • Game Center, if you are signed in to it on your device. When you tap Send to today’s leaderboards after a race, the app sends Apple your score for that day’s leaderboards: a turn count and a time. The button is offered only for your first go at that day’s scramble, taken without a hint. The leaderboards show your Game Center name. The app does not ask you to sign in to Game Center; if you are not signed in, it does not do anything.
  • Also through Game Center, and with no tap. If you are signed in, the app sends Apple the achievements you have earned, and how far along you are on the ones that count towards a total. It also sends your average time on a puzzle, worked out from your last 5 hint-free first goes at a scramble on it, to that puzzle’s own leaderboard. Nothing else about a race goes with it.

Everything else stays on your device: your puzzles, scans, photos and progress. The app works with aeroplane mode on, except for buying and Game Center.

Some buttons hand an address to the system, to open in your browser, the App Store or your mail app. That is those apps talking, not UnCubed.

The Camera

The camera is used for exactly one thing: reading the colours of the stickers on the puzzle you are holding up to it.

  • Frames are processed in memory, on your device, as they arrive. On a Mac that means the Mac’s own camera, or an iPhone used as one through Continuity Camera.
  • The app does not write any image to storage or save anything to your photo library.
  • The app does not transmit any image anywhere. The only things the app sends Apple are the ones listed in What the app talks to.
  • What survives the scan is only the name of the colour on each square.

You do not have to use the camera at all, and some puzzles cannot be read by it. Input works on every puzzle the app solves.

Your Own Pictures

If you choose photos to dress a puzzle in Play, iOS shows you its own photo picker and gives the app only the photos you pick; the app does not see the rest of your library and does not ask to. It keeps a smaller copy of each, at the size the puzzle draws it, in its own storage on this phone and outside the phone’s backup, and deletes it when you remove the picture or delete the app. The copies go nowhere else unless you share a puzzle dressed in them. Then the app asks first, and sends only small copies of the 6 squares to whoever you choose.

A picture of a puzzle dressed in your photos shows them, as you see them on screen.

If someone shares a puzzle with you and sends their photos with it, the app keeps those copies the same way, in its own storage on this phone and outside the backup, for that puzzle only, and keeps the most recent 20. They do not replace your own.

A new phone means choosing them again, because the copies are not in the backup.

You can make as many sets of your own pictures as you like, and name them. You can also add photos to a set from the Photos app: choose photos there, tap Share, then UnCubed, and pick a set. Nothing is sent. The photos go from Photos to UnCubed’s own storage on your device, as a smaller copy of each, and UnCubed does not look at the rest of your library.

On a Mac, UnCubed can read pictures from one folder you choose, using the Mac’s own open panel, and from nowhere else. It remembers that folder’s address on this Mac only, so it can open it again next time, and it only ever reads from it. When you put a picture on a side of a puzzle, UnCubed keeps only a smaller copy of it in its own storage on this Mac, not the original and not its location or other details. None of this is sent anywhere.

The Microphone: If You Turn It On

UnCubed can advance a step when you say “next”, so that you can solve the puzzle without picking your phone up. It is one of 3 ways to move to the next step and it is not the default: the others are a tap and a timer you set.

  • The microphone is requested only if you switch voice control on. Not when the app launches, and not in the hope you might want it later. If you do not switch it on, the app does not ask, and the only things it has asked you for are the camera, and adding to Photos if you have saved a picture of a puzzle.
  • Recognition happens entirely on your phone, using Apple's on-device speech recognition. The app does not send any audio or transcript to a server, ours or anyone else’s.
  • If your phone cannot recognise speech offline in your language, UnCubed refuses to listen at all rather than falling back to a network service. The option is shown greyed out with that reason.
  • Audio is processed as it arrives and is not written to storage. What survives is whether you said one of 3 words.
  • The microphone is open only while voice control is the selected way of advancing a step. Switch to either of the other 2 and it is released immediately.

You can withdraw the permission at any time in the iOS Settings app. The app notices and goes back to the button.

Permissions We Ask For

  • Camera Asked for when you first open the camera on a puzzle that has one. Decline it and you use Input instead, which works on every puzzle the app solves.
  • Microphone and speech recognition Asked for only if you switch on voice control in Options, and not otherwise. If you leave it alone, the app does not request either. Both are needed for the same feature because iOS treats them as 2 separate permissions; recognition happens on your phone either way.
  • A folder on a Mac On a Mac only, and only when you choose a folder of pictures. The Mac’s permission for this lets an app open only a folder you have chosen.
  • Adding to your photos Asked for only when you save a picture of a puzzle from Play, and only to add it. UnCubed saves a picture of your puzzle when you ask it to. It cannot see your photos.

We do not ask to look at your photo library, your location, contacts, notifications, or anything else. Choosing your own pictures uses iOS’s photo picker, which hands over only the photos you pick and does not need a permission. This page previously said the camera was the only permission the app requests; voice control was added on 29 July 2026 and this section was corrected the same day. It said “We do not ask for the photo library” until 2 October 2026, when sharing a picture of a puzzle arrived.

Children

The app is suitable for all ages and does not collect data from anyone, of any age. Nothing here requires a parent to make a decision about data.

This Website

uncubed.app is a handful of static pages, 3 forms, a stylesheet, one font and drawings of the puzzles, all served by the server that hosts it. It does not set any cookies, and it does not load fonts, scripts, images, frames or anything else from any other domain. Opening it does not make a request to anyone but the server hosting it.

The page a shared puzzle’s link opens in a browser, uncubed.app/play/, runs a few lines of script of its own: they copy the link’s address into the button that opens it in the app, and do not do anything else. They do not set a cookie, keep anything or send anything.

2 other pages run a script. The first is the puzzle cube you can turn. It is a single file served from this site, and turning the cube happens entirely in your browser. The only things it asks for are the cube’s pictures, from this same site. It does not set a cookie or count anything, and the one thing it keeps on your device is which colours you chose for the cube, in your browser’s own storage, so the cube looks the same next time.

The second is the price on the support page. It asks this site for one small file of the App Store’s prices, and reads your browser’s language settings to choose your country’s price. That happens in your browser and is not sent anywhere. It does not set a cookie, keep anything on your device or count anything. The other pages here do not run any script.

That server keeps ordinary access logs, as web servers do, in the course of serving the pages. We do not use them for analytics, do not build profiles from them, and do not combine them with anything.

A race challenge is a link. It carries the puzzle and the number that deals its scramble, with a short check that the scramble matches. Once the sender has solved it, it also carries their turn count, how long they took, the date and time they finished, how many times they asked for the next move, and the name they chose to add, if they added one. If the link is opened in a browser rather than in the app, the whole link reaches that server and is written to its access log like any other address. Opened in the app, the link does not go to any server.

A shared puzzle link holds the puzzle, what it is dressed in, and where its pieces are: the number that deals a scramble, or the turns made from solved, in order, with a short check that they land on the same position. What it is dressed in is its colours, or the name of a built-in set of pictures. Photos you have chosen travel in a separate file that the link names. A short check at the end shows the link arrived whole. If the link is opened in a browser rather than in the app, the whole link reaches that server and is written to its access log like any other address. Opened in the app, the link is read on the phone.

If You Send Us Feedback

The forms on this website for reporting a problem, suggesting a feature or proposing a Learn method collect what you type into them: which puzzle, the app and iOS version if you give them, your message or proposed sequence, and, only if you choose to give them, an email address and a name to be credited by. The server also records a scrambled code derived from your internet address, so that we can limit how much is sent from one place and tell how many different people reported the same problem. Your internet address itself is not stored, and the code cannot be turned back into it.

Submissions wait on the server that hosts this website until they are copied to the developer’s own computer, normally within 15 minutes, and are then deleted from the server. On that computer an AI model reads each one and sorts it: whether it is a problem, a question, an idea or a Learn proposal, which puzzle it is about, whether it is serious, and whether other people have reported the same thing. When the model is not running, simple word-matching rules on the same computer do the sorting instead.

Your message stays on that computer to be sorted. The software that does the sorting will only talk to a model on the same machine: it refuses any other address and does not follow a redirection or use a proxy, so your message does not reach an AI company or any other outside service to be sorted. It does not reach a helpdesk, mailing list or analytics service either.

Anything urgent reaches the developer straight away, as an iMessage to his own phone quoting the opening words of the report. A report is urgent when it says the app will not open, crashes, lost your data or progress, or charged you wrongly, or when 3 or more people report the same problem within 48 hours. At most 3 serious reports a day are sent this way, so that a flood of messages cannot fill his phone; any past that wait for the weekly summary. Everything else is gathered into a summary emailed to the developer each Monday, which lists problems, ideas and questions by their opening words and Learn proposals by their sequence.

If you leave an email address, 2 kinds of email are sent automatically: a short note saying your message has arrived, and, for a question that matches one on our support page, that page’s answer. Every other reply is written by the developer.

We use your email address only to reply to what you sent. We credit you by name on this website or in the app only if you gave a name and ticked the box to allow it.

We delete your email address, the scrambled code and any name you did not allow us to publish 12 months after your message is resolved, or 24 months after it arrived if it is not resolved. The content of a report may be kept after that without anything that identifies you, because it is what the app is improved from. To see, correct or delete what you sent sooner, email support@uncubed.app.

Your Rights and Why This Section Is Short

Under UK and EU data protection law you have rights over personal data that an organisation holds about you: to see it, correct it, have it deleted, and so on. Those rights apply to whoever holds the data.

From the app we do not hold anything, because we do not have a server and the app does not send us anything. What you send Apple through its purchase service and Game Center is held by Apple, under Apple’s own privacy policy. If you have sent us feedback through this website, we hold what the section above describes, and you can ask to see, correct or delete it at support@uncubed.app.

We do not sell data, and we do not give it to anyone. Apple handles what is sent to its own services, as above.

Changes to This Policy

If the policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it, and the substance of the change will be described in plain terms. The app is in development, so the version you eventually install may do slightly more than this page describes. It will not do more with your data, because we do not collect any.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or anything on this page you think is wrong or unclear: support@uncubed.app.