Everything Downshift reads and stores stays on your iPhone and Apple Watch. The app has no accounts, no servers, no analytics, no ads and no third-party code, and it never connects to the internet. I can't see your data.
This page covers the Downshift app on iPhone and Apple Watch. The website has its own page at downshift-potsapp.com/privacy.
What the app reads from Apple Health
Only with your permission, and only to show you your own patterns inside the app. It is never used for advertising and never shared.
On iPhone
- Heart rate, for your charts, overnight readings and the day's load.
- Heart rate variability, including beat-to-beat data, which go into your scores.
- Respiratory rate, for the overnight reading.
- Sleep, for when you fell asleep and woke up, and to time the morning stand-test reminder.
- Workouts, shown on the day they happened, with their heart rate.
On Apple Watch
- Heart rate, for the live heart rate and your stand tests.
- The watch also runs a workout session while it measures, so the heart rate sensor reads often. That session is never saved as a workout.
Downshift writes nothing to Apple Health. While the watch is measuring, it takes readings more often and saves them to Apple Health as its own, the same way it does during any workout.
What you enter
- Your stand tests and morning routine.
- Meal marks.
- Evening check-ins: how you feel, fluids, salt, symptoms, and any note you type.
- Symptom names you add.
- Your settings.
Where it's kept
All of it stays in the app's private storage on your iPhone and Apple Watch.
Your watch and iPhone pass some of it between each other over Apple's own watch connection: stand tests, meal marks and live heart rate go from watch to iPhone, and today's scores and your alert levels go from iPhone to watch.
The watch also keeps a short log of its last few sessions, used to fix problems. It includes when the app opened and closed, battery, and, when a heart rate alert changes, the readings behind it. It stays on the watch.
If you used an early test version of Downshift, your iPhone may also hold data from features since removed, such as motion history or temperature readings. The app no longer uses it, and deleting the app removes it.
What leaves your devices
Over the internet: nothing. No accounts, analytics, advertising, crash-reporting service, location or network connections of any kind.
Notifications are created on your iPhone, with fixed wording and no numbers in them.
The intro links to three research papers. Tapping one opens it in your browser; the app sends nothing about you with it.
Some things are handled by Apple, not by Downshift, and follow Apple's privacy policy and your own Apple settings:
- iPhone and iCloud backups, which can include the app's data.
- Apple Health's own syncing between your devices.
- If you're a TestFlight tester: crash reports and any feedback you choose to send.
- After release: crash reports, only if you've turned on Share With App Developers in your iPhone's settings.
Your choices
- Change or remove Health access at any time: iPhone Settings → Privacy & Security → Health → Downshift.
- Delete everything Downshift stored by deleting the app from your iPhone and Apple Watch. Copies in backups remain until those backups are replaced.
- Data in Apple Health belongs to you and stays there when you delete Downshift. Manage it in the Health app.
Not medical advice
Downshift is a pacing tool for POTS and long COVID. It shows patterns in your own data. It is not a medical device, doesn't diagnose or treat any condition, and isn't a substitute for professional medical care.
Children
Downshift isn't meant for children under 13.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it.
Questions: downshift.potsapp@gmail.com