Our Data Pledge

The promise we build Hearth around.

We built Hearth because too many journaling apps treat your most private words as their asset — locking them in, putting them behind a subscription, or losing them when the company moves on. A gratitude practice is a record of your inner life. It should belong to you, completely.

So here's our pledge:

🪵 Your words live on your device first

Hearth is local-first. Everything you write is stored on your own device and works with no account and no internet. The cloud is something you switch on, never something you're forced into.

📤 You can always take everything with you

Export your entire practice to open, future-proof files (Markdown, JSON, CSV, PDF) any time, for free. If you ever want to leave, you walk away with everything you wrote — no part of it is held hostage.

🔒 We never read, scan, or sell your entries

No ads. No third-party trackers. No analytics on your content. No AI scanning your reflections. Even our own admin tools only ever show aggregate counts — never the contents of anyone's entries.

💳 Free when you control your own data

Hearth is free forever for anyone controlling their own data. You'll never lose access to reading, writing, or exporting your own words because a payment lapsed. The only thing that will ever cost money is optional cloud sync and storage on Hearth's servers — never the practice itself.

🏠 You choose where it's backed up

Keep it purely on-device, or turn on optional sync to keep your phone, tablet, and the web in step — your choice, reversible any time, with your local copy always intact.