Privacy Policy

Last updated: 20 July 2026

Categorush is a word game for families. It has no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no third-party SDKs. We do not collect personal data, and nothing you do in the app is sent anywhere except the words and nickname you deliberately put into a multiplayer room.

The short version

Categorush does not ask you to create an account or give an email address.
Categorush contains no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising and no third-party SDKs of any kind.
Your progress, settings and word book are stored only on your device.
In multiplayer, the only things that leave your device are your chosen nickname, your avatar emoji, the room code, and the words you submit. They are held in memory for the length of the game and then discarded.
Microphone and speech recognition are optional, used only to let you say an answer instead of typing it. Categorush never records, saves or transmits audio.
Game Center — achievements and leaderboards — is optional and runs entirely through Apple. If you never sign in, the game plays exactly the same and nothing is sent to Game Center at all.
We do not sell, rent, share or profile anyone's data. There is nothing to sell.

In Apple's App Privacy terms, Categorush is a “Data Not Collected” app: we do not link any data to your identity and we do not track you across apps or websites. The one nuance is Game Center, which is Apple's own service — when you choose to use it, Apple processes your scores and achievements under Apple's privacy policy, not ours. We never see that data.

Who we are

Categorush is the data controller for the limited processing described below. You can reach us at support@categorush.app for any privacy question, including requests under the GDPR or the CCPA.

What the app stores on your device

All of this stays in the app's private storage on your iPhone or iPad. It is never uploaded to us, and it is included in your iCloud device backup only if you have device backups switched on.

Data stored locally by Categorush
What	Why
XP and level	To show your progress between games.
Daily challenge streak and last-played date	To work out whether your streak continues today.
Word book	The words you have collected, so you can look them back up.
Settings	Language, difficulty, kid mode, read-aloud, sound and timer length.
Chosen avatar and nickname	So you don't have to pick them again every time.

You can erase all of it at any time: use Reset progress in the app's settings, or delete the app from your device. Deleting the app removes this data permanently — we hold no copy, so there is nothing for us to delete on your behalf.

Microphone and speech recognition

Categorush can let you say your answer instead of typing it. This is optional. The feature is off until you turn it on, and iOS will ask for your permission separately for the microphone and for speech recognition. If you decline either prompt, the rest of the game works exactly as before — you simply type your answers.

What happens when you use it

Audio is captured only while a round is running and you are actively holding or toggling the speak control. It stops the moment the round ends.
The audio is passed to Apple's Speech framework (SFSpeechRecognizer) to be turned into text. Categorush receives only the transcribed text and compares it to the round's letter and category.
Categorush never writes audio to disk, never keeps a recording, and never sends audio to our servers or to any third party. The transcribed text is treated exactly like a typed answer.

Important, and worth being precise about: speech recognition is performed by Apple, not by us. Categorush requests on-device recognition wherever the device and the chosen language support it, in which case the audio never leaves your iPhone or iPad. On older devices, or for languages without on-device support, iOS may send a short audio snippet to Apple's servers to transcribe it. That processing is governed by Apple's Privacy Policy, not this one. We have no access to that audio and receive nothing from Apple beyond the text.

Read-aloud

The read-aloud option speaks category names using Apple's built-in speech synthesiser. It is output only — no microphone is involved and no data is collected.

Multiplayer rooms

Pass & Play — the mode where everyone shares one device — is entirely offline. Nothing is transmitted at all.

Create Game and Join Game connect to a Categorush game server so that players on different devices can play the same round. While you are in a room, these things are sent to the server and relayed to the other players in that room:

the room code;
the nickname you typed and the avatar emoji you picked;
the words you submit, and how long you took to submit them;
the resulting scores and the game's settings (language, difficulty, number of rounds).

That is the complete list. No contact details, no device identifiers, no location, no advertising identifier, no photos, no contacts.

Room state lives in the server's memory only for as long as the game does. When the room ends or empties, it is discarded. Our servers keep no game history and no player database, and operate no leaderboards of their own — the only leaderboards in Categorush are the optional Game Center ones described in the next section, which Apple runs, not us. As with any internet service, our server briefly sees your IP address in order to send replies back to you; it is used for that purpose and for ordinary abuse protection, and is not stored in a profile or combined with anything else.

Because nicknames and submitted words are shown to everyone else in the room, please pick a nickname that doesn't reveal anything you would not want the other players to know. Tell children to use a first name or a made-up name rather than a full name.

Game Center (optional)

Categorush can report your achievements and high scores to Game Center, Apple's built-in game service, so you can see them alongside your other games and compare scores on leaderboards.

Game Center is entirely optional. If you are not signed in to Game Center on your device, or decline its sign-in, Categorush simply hides its achievements screen and everything else works exactly the same. Your progress is still tracked on your device.
When you do use it, your scores, achievement progress and your Game Center display name are handled by Apple as part of the Game Center service, under Apple's privacy policy. Leaderboards show your Game Center display name to other players, as they do in any Game Center game.
None of this passes through Categorush's servers, and we cannot see it. The app hands numbers to Apple's framework on your device; that is the entire integration.
Parents can turn Game Center off for a child's device in Settings → Screen Time, and Categorush will behave as if it does not exist.

Children

Categorush is designed to be played by families, and it is suitable for children. It is rated for ages 6 and up, and it includes a kid mode with extra time and picture hints.

The app collects no personal data from anyone, including children. There is no sign-up, no email capture, no analytics, no advertising, no behavioural profiling and no third-party content. There is no open chat: players can only submit single words as answers, which are shown after the round is revealed.

Game Center is the one optional feature with a social surface (display names on leaderboards). It is off unless the device is signed in to it, the game never requires it, and parents can disable it system-wide in Screen Time as described above.

Because we collect no personal information at all, Categorush does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (or under 16 in the EEA and UK), and there is no verifiable-parental-consent process to complete — there is nothing to consent to. This is intended to satisfy the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the GDPR, and Apple's Kids-appropriate app guidelines.

What we deliberately do not do

No accounts, logins, email addresses or phone numbers.
No analytics or telemetry SDKs — no Firebase, no Google Analytics, no Facebook SDK, no attribution or install-tracking SDK.
No third-party crash reporting. If you send us an Apple-provided crash report through iOS's own Share With App Developers setting, we receive only what Apple includes, which contains no personal data.
No advertising, no ad networks, no advertising identifier (IDFA), no App Tracking Transparency prompt — because we have nothing to track.
No location data of any kind.
No access to your contacts, photos, calendar, health data or files.
No cookies or tracking on this website. categorush.app is static HTML and CSS with self-hosted fonts; it makes no third-party requests and sets no cookies.

Legal basis and your rights

The only processing we carry out is relaying multiplayer messages between players in a room. Under the GDPR the legal basis is legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)) in providing the multiplayer feature you asked for, and it is limited to what that feature requires.

You have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to processing of your personal data, and to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. In practice we hold no personal data about you once your game has ended, so an access or deletion request will normally be answered with confirmation that there is nothing on file. Your locally stored progress is fully in your control via Reset progress or by deleting the app.

We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by the CCPA/CPRA, and we do not offer financial incentives in exchange for data.

Changes to this policy

If we change how Categorush handles data, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes — for example, if the app ever began collecting something it does not collect today — will also be described in the App Store release notes for the version that introduces them.

Contact

Questions, requests or corrections: support@categorush.app. We aim to reply within a few working days. See also the support page.