Effective 22 October 2026
Firstful is a shared timeline for two parents to record what their child just did — a photo, a video, or a short note. It is local-first: an entry saves to your device first, then syncs.
Syncing means Firstful does have a server, unlike some of our other apps. Your household's entries, your child's name and birth date, and any photos or videos you attach are stored on infrastructure we operate, entirely within the EU.
We run no analytics, no advertising, and no third-party tracking of any kind. Nothing about your use of the app is measured or sold. If the app or our server hits an error, it sends a technical error report to a system we operate ourselves — see "Error reports" below. The only people who can see a household's entries are the members of that household.
Responsible for data processing within the meaning of Article 4 (7) GDPR is Nicolas Mehlei, whose full details are in the imprint.
Everything below is stored on servers we operate in the European Union — Germany for identity and media, West Europe for the application database — and nowhere else:
When the app crashes or our server hits an unexpected error, a technical report is sent to a GlitchTip error-tracking service that we operate ourselves, within the EU. It lets us find and fix the problem.
A report contains the error message, where in the code it happened, the app version, and the device model and operating-system version. It is built to exclude your name, your e-mail address, your sign-in tokens, the text of your entries, photos, videos and invitation codes, and it is not linked to your account. Reports are kept for 90 days, plus up to 90 days in backups, and are then deleted.
This is not analytics: only errors are reported, never how you use the app, and nothing is reported when nothing goes wrong.
A local copy of your timeline (so the app works with no signal) and your sign-in tokens, held in the operating system's secure credential store (Android Keystore / iOS Keychain). Neither leaves your device except as described above.
Nobody outside your household. We run no analytics SDK and no advertising SDK. The app does include an error-reporting library (Sentry's open-source SDK), but it is configured to send reports only to our own GlitchTip server — never to Sentry or any other company.
The one exception is notifications, and only if you switch them on: Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) delivers the notification to your phone, so it receives your phone's push token and the notification text. The text is always the same generic sentence — "New moment in your timeline" — and never contains a name, an entry, a photo or any detail about your child. Google may process this outside the EU.
Apart from that, the systems the app talks to are the ones we operate ourselves:
Firstful is used by parents to record memories about their child; the child is never a user of the app and never signs in.
The data described above — a first name and birth date — exists to give milestone ages context, never as a score, and is never used for anything but showing it back to the household that entered it. See docs/PROJECT-CONTRACT.md's product commitments for what Firstful deliberately does not build: growth percentiles, comparisons, or any screening claim.
Processing your account, your child's name and birth date, and your timeline entries is necessary to provide the service you asked for, and rests on Article 6 (1) (b) GDPR — performance of a contract and steps taken at your request.
Storing credentials in the operating system's secure store is technically necessary to provide the service and is likewise covered by Article 6 (1) (b) GDPR.
Notifications rest on your consent under Article 6 (1) (a) GDPR, given by switching them on and allowing them in your phone's settings. You can withdraw it at any time by switching them off.
Error reports rest on our legitimate interest in keeping the app stable and secure, Article 6 (1) (f) GDPR. They are built to hold no personal data, are limited to errors, and are not used for anything else. You can object under Article 21 GDPR by contacting the address in the imprint.
You can delete an individual entry from within the app at any time.
You can export everything your household holds, and delete your account, from your profile in the app. Deleting your account takes effect immediately; if you are the last member of the household, its timeline, photos and videos are permanently deleted with it. If you have lost access to your account, see https://firstful.nm-sites.de/data-deletion — we carry that request out by hand and aim to complete it within 30 days.
Error reports are deleted automatically after 90 days.
Under the GDPR you have the right of access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20), and to object to processing (Art. 21). Contact the address in the imprint to exercise any of them.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR), in the member state of your residence, place of work, or the place of the alleged infringement.
Camera and photo library — used only when you choose to attach a photo or video to an entry, or to set a profile photo for your child.
Network access — required to sync your timeline and to sign in.
Notifications — requested only when you switch notifications on under Profile → Notifications, never when the app starts or while you are writing an entry.
This notice was last updated on 22 October 2026. Where the application changes what it stores or whom it contacts, this notice is updated in the same change.