River — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 1 November 2026 · Contact: hello@heyriver.app

River is a voice-first daily companion, made by Slate and River in Ireland. This page explains, in plain words, what River keeps, what leaves your phone, and why.

What stays on your phone

Your tasks, reminders, routines, alarms, ideas, promises and settings are stored only on your device. River does not keep a copy of them anywhere else, and does not back them up to the cloud. Deleting the app deletes them.

What leaves your phone, and where it goes

River's listening, understanding and natural voice work over the internet, through River's own server (run on Cloudflare). The server holds the keys to the services below, so your phone never has to.

• Your voice. When you talk to River, a short recording of what you said goes securely, through River's server, to ElevenLabs (a speech service) to be turned into text. The recording is passed straight through and is not stored by River. See the ElevenLabs privacy policy.
• Your words. The text of what you said, with your current plan (so River can answer sensibly), goes securely through River's server to Anthropic's Claude (an AI service), which works out what you meant and writes River's reply. River does not store this text. See the Anthropic privacy policy.
• River's voice. The words River speaks are sent through River's server to ElevenLabs, which turns them into Sarah's voice.

These services process the data under their own terms and data policies. River sends nothing else: no advertising identifiers, no analytics trackers, no contact lists, no location.

What River's server keeps

Only what it needs to run a fair, affordable service. It keeps:

• a random identifier for your copy of the app (stored scrambled), created when you connect with an invite code; and
• daily counts of how much you used: seconds listened, characters spoken and the amount of AI processing, so each person stays within a fair daily allowance.

It never stores what you said or what River said. Daily counts are deleted after 90 days. The server's database is held in the European Union.

Microphone

River listens only while its conversation screen is open and listening. It does not record in the background.

Your rights (GDPR)

You can see and delete everything River keeps on your phone, item by item from the dashboard or all at once by uninstalling. To have your app's identifier and usage counts deleted from River's server, or for any other privacy question or request, email hello@heyriver.app. We answer within a month. You can also complain to the Irish Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.ie).

Not a medical product

River is a daily-structure and focus companion. It is not a medical device and does not diagnose, treat, or cure any condition.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will appear at this address with a new date above.