Paperclip is a minimal, friends-only emoji presence app. This page says what we collect, what stays on your phone, who else touches it, and how to delete it. If something here stops being true, that's a bug. Tell us.
The Short Version
Your emoji is public by default for accounts made in Paperclip 1.8 or later (the username screen tells you and has an off switch): anyone can see it at getpaperclipped.com/@username. You can turn that off when you pick your username, or anytime in Settings. Then only your friends, and people on Paperclip who could add you (see Data Sharing), see it.
We ask for your phone number so people who have it can find you and see your current emoji. You can skip it.
A lot of Paperclip runs on your phone only: reading a screenshot, reading Health, motion, calendar and music for auto status, and remembering your places. That data never reaches us.
We don't sell anything, show ads, or track you across other apps.
Settings → Delete account removes your account right away.
Information We Collect
Account Information
Apple ID: When you sign in with Apple, we get a unique user ID. If you choose to share your email with Apple's sheet, our authentication provider (Supabase) stores it, or Apple's private relay address if you picked "Hide My Email." We don't email you and don't use it for anything else. We don't store the name Apple offers.
Display name and username: The name and @handle you choose.
Emoji status: The emoji you set, and a history of the emoji you've set.
Phone Number (optional)
During setup we ask for your mobile number so people who already have it can find you here. You can tap Skip for now. If you skip twice, we stop asking.
We check it's yours with a one-time code sent by text message. Twilio (through Supabase Auth, our sign-in provider) sends that text, so Twilio processes your number to deliver it.
Your number is stored with your account in Supabase Auth. We also keep a keyed, one-way code made from it (an HMAC) in a locked table that no app or user can read. We use that code only for matching.
Your number is never shown on your profile or to other people. Someone who already has your number can find your Paperclip account with it and see your current emoji.
You can turn off “Let people find me by my number” or remove your number entirely in Settings → Privacy. You can also email us and we'll remove it. Deleting your account removes it too.
Your Contacts (optional)
If you choose to check your contacts, Paperclip sends the phone numbers in them to our server. The server scrambles each one the same keyed way, compares it with Paperclip accounts, and throws it away within that same request. We don't save your contacts or make a list of people who aren't on Paperclip. We keep a count of how many numbers you checked, for rate limiting.
Names, emails, photos and everything else in your contacts stay on your phone.
You can pick a single person from your contacts to invite. Paperclip only gets the person you tapped, and keeps their name and the number you chose on your phone.
You can skip this or turn off Contacts access in iOS Settings at any time.
Saving a Seat for Someone You Invite
When you text someone a Paperclip invite from the app, their number goes to our server once. We store only the keyed, scrambled code of it, with your account and the date, and never the number itself.
If they join within 30 days and verify that same number, we show them that you saved them a seat, so they can add you back in one tap.
It's deleted after 30 days, or as soon as it's been used. Nobody can look it up. It only answers "did anyone invite the number I just verified?"
Friend Connections
Invite codes and links: Your 6-character code, your invite link, and the QR code for it. Your display name appears on your invite page so people know who invited them.
Friends and friend requests: Who you're friends with and requests you've sent or received. A declined request is kept for 30 days so it can't be re-sent right away.
Private friend settings: Nicknames, pinned emoji and per-friend notification choices. Only you see these.
Reactions: Emoji reactions you send to friends.
Live Presence ("here now")
While Paperclip is open, it checks in about every 15 seconds so your friends can see you're around. We store the time of your last check-in in Upstash (a Redis database), and entries older than an hour are dropped. Upstash also keeps the time you last checked in at all for up to 14 days, only so your friends' apps know whether to show you as here or fall back to how fresh your emoji is.
Only your friends see it. Turn off “Share when I'm around” in Settings → Privacy and nobody sees when you're here, and you won't see when your friends are here either. You can also hide it from one friend on their page; then neither of you sees the other's. Both settings belong to your account, so they follow you to every phone you sign in on.
We also keep the last time you opened the app, so the daily digest can tell you what changed since you last looked.
Auto Status (optional, off until you turn it on)
If you turn it on, Paperclip picks a status emoji for you from signals you allow. It reads them on your iPhone. The raw data never leaves your phone:
Apple Health (read-only): sleep, workouts, steps, flights climbed, time in daylight, mindful minutes, activity rings, noise levels and wheelchair use.
Motion: walking, running, cycling, driving and climbing.
Calendar: whether you're busy right now. If you also turn on Use meeting names, the name of the event you're in is turned into one emoji by Apple Intelligence on your iPhone, then dropped. We never receive, store or log event names, and we don't read notes, locations or attendees.
Apple Music: whether something's playing and roughly what kind of music.
Location (precise, only if you allow it): which kind of place you're at, like a park or café, and places you're often at, like home. Paperclip remembers those as rough map squares, on your phone only.
Your phone: headphones or CarPlay connected, battery low or charging, face-down, time of day, daylight, your Focus.
It learns your emoji, on your phone. While auto status is on, each emoji you pick is saved on your iPhone with the kind of moment it was (like "morning," "raining" or "at a café"), so auto status can pick the emoji you would. It also remembers which of its picks you shared, turned down, replaced or reported. This never includes anything about your sleep, is excluded from iCloud backup, never leaves your phone, and is deleted when you sign out.
Apple Intelligence can help choose among the candidates, including emoji you often use. It runs on your phone too.
What we get, and what friends see: the chosen emoji, and a one-word source like "motion," "sleep" or "workout." Your friends see the emoji marked "auto," and can tap it to see a line like "from your workout." So they can tell roughly why it was picked. Nothing else goes anywhere (except a Bad pick report in test versions, below).
Auto status always asks first, so nothing is shared until you approve it. You can clear an auto status or turn it off in Settings → Auto status.
Your week of auto status history stays on your phone.
Bad pick: tapping it takes that auto status down and teaches your phone not to pick it again. In test versions of Paperclip (TestFlight) only, it also sends us that emoji, its one-word source, the name of the rule that chose it and the app version, so we can fix bad picks. Never the signals behind it.
We never use Health data for ads, marketing or data mining, never sell it, and never store it in iCloud.
On-Device Only (never sent to us)
Screenshots: If you give Paperclip a screenshot of your Messages list (in the app, through Share, or through visual intelligence), Apple's on-device text recognition reads the names. The image is never saved or uploaded. The names you keep are saved only on your phone and excluded from iCloud backup. For the Share button, the names sit in Paperclip's own storage on your phone for up to 10 minutes until you open the app.
Invites you text go from your own Messages app. We don't see the message.
We never create profiles or records for people who aren't on Paperclip, apart from the 30-day invite code described above.
Device Information
Push notification tokens: For your phone and your widgets. We use them to deliver notifications.
Time zone: So quiet hours and the digest happen at the right time for you.
How the App Is Used
We log a few moments to learn which ways of inviting people work and where the app is confusing: an invite link opened, the App Clip opened, an invite sent, an invite accepted, a friend added, opening the app (at most once a day), which main screens you visit, and which setup steps you finish or skip. Each log has the event, a short tag, sometimes your invite code, and your account ID. No IP address, no device details, no free text.
If you delete your account, we remove your ID from these logs. What's left is a count that doesn't point at anyone.
We sometimes try two versions of something, like the order of setup screens. Your phone picks your version from your account ID, so we don't store which one you got.
We count visits to getpaperclipped.com, and keep a copy of the moments above plus plain counts of sign-ups, emoji changes and reactions, in Umami, an analytics tool we run on our own server. That copy has only the event and its short tag: no account ID, no invite code, and never which emoji. Umami doesn't use cookies, and invite and profile pages are counted without the code or username in the link.
We don't use any third-party analytics or crash-reporting SDKs.
Moderation Data
If you report or block someone, we store the report (reason, optional note, time) and the block. Reports send us an alert through ntfy with the reason, your note and both usernames. We review reports within 24 hours.
How We Use Your Information
We use it to:
Run Paperclip: sign-in, friends, emoji, reactions, presence and widgets
Send push notifications you've allowed
Help people who know you find you (phone number and contacts matching)
Keep people safe: blocks, reports and rate limits
Understand which invite paths work (the usage logs above)
Bots and Apple Services
@paperclip world mood shows what most people on Paperclip are up to. It looks at the emoji people set in the last 6 hours, 24 hours or 7 days. When at least 2 people are active and at least 2 wear the same emoji, it shows that emoji. Otherwise it groups emoji by kind (working, eating, resting…) and, once at least 2 different people are in a group, shows the emoji worn most in it. Because Paperclip is small, that emoji may be one that only a couple of people set. It never shows who is in the mood.
@weather: If you add it and allow location, your approximate location goes to Apple's WeatherKit to get the weather. Paperclip's servers never receive it.
Kind of place (auto status): Paperclip asks Apple Maps what's nearby, which sends your precise location to Apple. Paperclip's servers never receive it.
@moon and @sun are computed on your phone from the time and your time zone (or @weather's location, if you allowed it).
Data Storage
Your data is stored with Supabase, in the United States:
Everything is encrypted in transit (HTTPS)
Row-level security limits what each account can read
Phone codes and invite codes live in tables no app can read directly
Data Sharing
We do not:
Sell your personal information
Share your data with advertisers
Track you across other apps or websites
Use your data for marketing
Your emoji, display name and username are visible to:
Friends you've added, however you added them (code, link, request, contacts or a saved seat)
People who open your invite link on the web. They see your display name, but not your emoji. Someone signed in to Paperclip who opens it in the app also sees your current emoji.
People on Paperclip who could add you: someone who has your number (while “Let people find me by my number” is on), someone you saved a seat for, friends of your friends, and anyone who types your exact @username. They see your display name, username and current emoji, but not your emoji history. People you've blocked never do.
Anyone, while Public profile is on. That shows your username, current emoji and recent emoji history at getpaperclipped.com/@username and through our public API. It's on by default for accounts made in Paperclip 1.8 or later, and you can turn it off when you pick your username or anytime in Settings.
Things You Can Connect
If you create an API key, add a webhook, or add Paperclip to a Discord server, your emoji goes where you point it. That's your choice, and you can remove it any time.
If you use Paperclip for Mac with Show on Discord on, it passes your current emoji (and the word for where an auto emoji came from, like "motion") to the Discord app on your Mac, which shows it on your Discord profile. Turn it off anytime.
Third-Party Services
Apple: Sign in with Apple, push notifications (APNs), WeatherKit and Apple Maps. See Apple's Privacy Policy.
Supabase: Our database, sign-in and server functions.
Twilio: Sends phone verification codes, through Supabase Auth.
Upstash: Holds live presence for up to an hour, and your last check-in time for up to 14 days (see Live Presence).
Cloudflare: Serves getpaperclipped.com, invite links and some API requests. Like any web host, it handles your IP address to deliver pages.
ntfy: Delivers report alerts to us.
Google Firebase Cloud Messaging: Push notifications for Paperclip on Android only.
Local Network Usage
Paperclip can use your local network (Multipeer Connectivity) to find a nearby friend and trade invite codes. You choose to use it, and it only works on the same network. Nothing leaves your network.
Data Retention
Your account data stays as long as your account does.
You can delete your account any time from Settings → Delete account, with no need to contact us.
Deleting your account immediately removes your profile, phone number and its code, emoji history, friends and requests, reactions, invite codes you saved for others, push tokens and reports you've filed. Live presence entries drop off within an hour, and your last check-in time within 14 days. Usage logs lose your account ID and become anonymous counts.
Copies can remain in encrypted database backups for up to 30 days before they roll off. Twilio keeps delivery records for its own retention period.
Things that only live on your phone (screenshot names, auto status history and what it has learned, remembered places) are deleted when you sign out or delete the app.
Your Rights
You have the right to:
Access your personal data
Correct inaccurate data
Delete your account and all associated data
Turn off notifications, contacts, Health, motion, calendar, music or location access at any time in iOS Settings
Health Data
Paperclip reads Apple Health only for auto status, only if you allow it, and only on your phone. It never writes to Health. You can turn access off in Settings → Health → Data Access & Devices → Paperclip. See "Auto Status" above for exactly what's read and what friends see.
Children's Privacy
Paperclip is for people 13 and up. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you think a child under 13 has an account, email us and we'll delete it.
Website
If you join the waitlist on getpaperclipped.com, we keep your email only to tell you about Paperclip. Ask us and we'll remove it.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this privacy policy from time to time. When we do, we'll change the "Last Updated" date at the top.
Contact Us
If you have questions about this privacy policy or your data, please contact us at: