Disclosure: Reset is ours. This post is from the people who make it.
In short
"We take your privacy seriously" is what every app says. Here's the version with specifics: what Reset stores, where, what Apple lets it see, and what it can't see even if it wanted to.
There is no server
Reset makes no network requests. There's no account, no sign-in, no sync, no analytics library, no crash reporter. If you're technical: the app bundle contains no third-party SDKs, and the only URLs it opens are the links in Settings to this website, in your browser. Everything you log lives in an on-device database in the app's own container, and in your iPhone's Keychain for the friend-key secret.
Apple designed Screen Time so apps can't spy
This is the part people don't expect. When you choose apps to block in Apple's picker, Reset doesn't get their names. It gets opaque tokens: cryptographic handles that mean "this app" to iOS and nothing to anyone else. Reset hands the tokens back to iOS with the instruction "keep these closed until 9 p.m.", and iOS does the rest.
The usage numbers in Insights follow the same rule. Apple provides the data only to a separate, sandboxed extension that draws the chart. The extension can render "2 h 10 m in Instagram this week" on screen, and it cannot pass that number back to the main app. Reset literally does not know how much you scrolled. It only knows what you tell it in SOS and when you log a slip.
Apps you block "by name" are the one exception: you typed the name, so Reset knows it. Those get blocked, but Screen Time doesn't report on them.
The friend key never touches a server either
When you invite a friend, Reset generates a random secret on your phone and puts it in a link that you send, using Messages or whatever you like. Your friend's copy of Reset stores it in their Keychain and generates codes from it, the same standard your bank's authenticator uses. Your phone checks the code locally. Nobody in the middle, because there's nobody there.
Widgets and the Lock Screen
Widgets and the Live Activity need to know "block ends at 9:30". Reset writes a small summary file to an App Group container that only Reset's own extensions can read, on the same device. That's the whole extent of "sharing".
Your data is yours to take or destroy
Settings → Data → Export gives you a JSON file of everything. Delete everything wipes it. Delete the app and it's gone too; there's no copy anywhere else, which also means no recovery. Back up your phone if that matters to you.
Why build it this way
Partly principle: a tool for getting your attention back shouldn't be another thing harvesting it. Partly practicality: there's nothing to breach, nothing to subpoena, nothing to sell, and no monthly bill to justify. Reset is free because the marginal cost of one more user is zero, and we'd like to keep it that way.
Sources
- Apple Developer Documentation: FamilyControls (opaque application and category tokens), DeviceActivity report extensions.
- Apple Developer Documentation: App Groups; Keychain Services.