✦ Lanterns — Privacy Policy

Effective date: July 7, 2026, updated September 12, 2026 — applies to Lanterns on iOS and Android

Lanterns is a daily logic-puzzle game. Each day you solve one puzzle: place a lantern in every row, column, and colored region without letting any two touch. This policy explains what the app does — and does not do — with your information, on both the iOS and Android versions.

The short version

Lanterns is built to need essentially none of your data. There are no accounts, no analytics, no advertising, no tracking, and no third-party data collection. The app has no servers of its own — your puzzles are generated on your device, and your streak, solve history, and settings live entirely on your device. Its one always-on network request is a once-a-day read of a small, public announcements file (see below), which carries nothing about you. Nothing about your play is sent to the developer or anyone else — with one optional exception on Android: if you are signed in to Google Play Games on your device (automatically, when your Play Games settings allow it, or by tapping Leaderboards in Settings), your best streaks and daily solve times are sent to Google under your Play Games profile (see "Leaderboards" below). Lanterns is fully playable without ever signing in.

Information Lanterns uses

On-device data. Your streak, solve history, daily completion, and app preferences are stored locally on your device, using each platform's standard local storage (UserDefaults on iOS, SharedPreferences on Android). This information never leaves your device and is not transmitted to the developer or anyone else.

Notifications (optional, off until you allow them; iOS and Android). If you turn on the daily reminder — or, on Android, the streak warning — Lanterns schedules a local notification on your device to nudge you about the day's puzzle. These reminders are generated on your phone, are not sent through any server, and involve no personal data leaving your device. You can turn them off at any time.

Sharing your result. When you tap Share, Lanterns hands a spoiler-free emoji grid and your solve time to your device's native share sheet so that you can post it wherever you choose. This happens only when you ask for it, and the result you share contains no personal information — and nothing is sent to the developer.

What Lanterns does not do

Third-party services

Lanterns integrates no third-party services. The only exception is during beta testing:

Data retention and deletion

Because your data is stored only on your device, deleting the Lanterns app removes your streak, solve history, and preferences from your device. There is no server-side copy, because there is no server.

Permissions and your choices

You're always in control. On iOS, the only permission Lanterns may ask for is Notifications, for the optional daily reminder — you can grant or revoke it at any time in the iOS Settings app, and turning it off disables the reminder without affecting anything else. On Android, Lanterns asks for Notifications only when you switch on the daily reminder or the streak warning — never at launch — and it declares one further permission so those reminders can be re-scheduled after your phone restarts, and the standard network permission for the announcements read described below. Nothing else.

Announcements (iOS and Android)

Once a day at most, when you open the app, Lanterns reads a small public file that lists in-app announcements — a new game, a seasonal challenge, a note about a fix. It is a plain download of a static file hosted on GitHub Pages (scotch333.github.io/announcements). The request contains nothing about you: no account, no identifier, no information about your play, no cookies. As with visiting any web page, the host can see your device's IP address and a generic description of the app and operating system version, and nothing else. Lanterns keeps its last copy of the file on your device so it works offline, remembers only which announcements it has already shown you, and sends nothing back.

Leaderboards (Android, optional)

Lanterns for Android can show leaderboards through Google Play Games Services, and submits scores only while you are signed in to your Google Play Games profile. That sign-in happens in one of two ways: automatically at launch, if your device's Play Games settings allow apps to sign you in (Google's own setting, which you can turn off in the Play Games app), or when you tap Leaderboards in Settings. While you are not signed in, no scores and no player identifier are sent — the app only checks, as any Play Games-enabled app does, whether Play services are available. Once signed in, Lanterns submits your best streaks (Lanterns, Mini Sudoku, Fireflies, Fuse and Daily Hard) and your daily solve times to Google, associated with your Play Games player ID, so they can appear on the leaderboards. That data is held by Google under the Google Privacy Policy and shown to other players as leaderboard entries under your Play Games name. The developer does not receive it. Signing out of Play Games stops any further submissions; removing the app from your Play Games profile, in the Play Games app, removes its data there. Everything else in Lanterns keeps working exactly the same whether or not you sign in.

Children's privacy

Lanterns does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children. The app collects no personal data on the developer's behalf.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new effective date.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your privacy in Lanterns? Contact David Price at david@ddprice.com.