Privacy Policy

Effective date: September 11, 2026

Elsie is built for families, and we treat your family's information the way we'd want ours treated: collect as little as possible, keep it on the phone whenever we can, and never sell it to anyone. This policy covers the Elsie Home app, the Elsie Family app, and this website. Elsie is made by FangJet LLC.

The short version

Almost everything the launcher knows (contacts, medications, photos, settings) stays on the phone.
We don't run ads, and we never sell or rent personal information.
The app sends anonymous usage statistics (which Elsie buttons and settings get used, never which apps you open or who you contact), and you can switch that off in Settings.
Voice commands use your phone's own speech recognition, only while the listening screen is showing. Elsie never records, stores, or sends audio.
Beyond that, information leaves the phone only for two reasons: showing the weather, and (if you choose to pair with a caregiver) syncing with Elsie Family.
You can disconnect, delete, or ask us to erase anything at any time. See Delete your account or data.

Elsie Home

Stored only on the phone

The launcher keeps its data in local storage on the device. It is not uploaded to us or anyone else:

Speed-dial people: names, phone numbers, and photos you add.
Contacts: read (with permission) only to help you pick people for speed dial; the contact list itself is never transmitted.
Medication reminders: medication names, doses, and schedules.
App usage on the launcher: which apps are opened from the My Apps row, counted locally to sort the row. This never leaves the device.
Notification dots: if you grant notification access, the launcher notes which apps currently have notifications so it can show a dot. It does not read, store, or transmit notification contents.
Settings: button layout, contrast, and other preferences.

Medical disclaimer: the medication reminder is a scheduling aid only. Elsie is not a medical device and does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

Google Drive backup

If you turn on backup, your layout and speed-dial people are saved to your own Google Drive, in a private app folder we cannot see. Turn it off, or delete the folder from Drive, and the copy is gone.

Weather

To show the weather, the launcher sends the phone's approximate (city-level) coordinates to Open-Meteo, a weather service. The request contains coordinates and nothing else: no name, no account, no advertising identifier. The town name shown on screen is looked up on the device itself.

Firebase

The launcher uses Google Firebase for a small set of infrastructure services:

Anonymous sign-in: the phone gets a random identifier so pairing and sync can work. It is not tied to a name, email, or Google account.
Remote configuration: the app fetches default settings (for example, how many apps the My Apps row shows). Nothing personal is sent.
Sync with Elsie Family: only after you pair (see below).
Crash reporting: if the app crashes, an anonymous report (what went wrong, the device model, and the Android version) is sent through Firebase Crashlytics so we can fix it. Reports contain no personal content.
Usage statistics: see the next section.

Voice commands

The optional Say a Command button lets you speak short commands such as "Call John", "Open camera", or "Flashlight on". The microphone is used only after you tap that button and only while the "Listening" screen is on the display; it switches off as soon as the command is heard, you tap Cancel, or a few seconds pass in silence. Elsie asks for microphone permission the first time you use the button, and the feature simply stays off if you decline. You can also hide the button entirely in Settings → Home Screen Buttons.

Turning your speech into text is done by your phone's built-in speech recognition service (on most phones this is Google's, and it may send the audio to Google to process it, under Google's privacy policy). Elsie itself never records, stores, or transmits audio. It receives only the recognised words, matches them against its short list of commands and, for "Call" and "Text" commands, against the contacts already on the phone, and then discards the text. Nothing you say is kept, sent to us, or included in usage statistics; the statistics record only that the button was tapped.

Usage statistics

To learn which parts of Elsie actually help, the app records anonymous usage events through Google's Firebase Analytics. Each event is a count of an action inside Elsie, for example "the Phone button was tapped", "the Apps Row's third icon was tapped", "Simple Mode was turned on", or "the Location step of setup was skipped", together with standard device details (phone model, Android version, app version, country, and a random installation identifier).

It never records which apps you open from the All Apps list or the Apps Row, who you call or message, anything you type, your contacts, medications, photos, or your location. We use it only to improve Elsie; it is not used for advertising, and it is never sold or shared with anyone except Google as the service provider. Google keeps these events for no more than 14 months.

You can turn it off at any time: Settings → About → Share usage statistics. Switching it off stops all collection, including Google's automatic session and screen events.

Optional safety features

Some versions of the launcher include safety features, an SOS button and fall detection. Where present and enabled: SOS sends a text message with the phone's precise location to the emergency contacts you chose (carried by your SMS provider like any text message), and fall detection processes motion-sensor data entirely on the device. These features are off, or absent, unless your version includes them and you turn them on.

Pairing with Elsie Family

Pairing is opt-in and starts on the elder's phone, which displays a one-time code. When a family member enters that code in Elsie Family, the two phones are linked and sync a small set of data through Cloud Firestore (Google Firebase):

Configuration written by the caregiver: emergency contacts, the medication schedule (names, doses, notes and reminder times) and which home-screen buttons are shown, set up remotely.
Status and events from the elder's phone: when it was last seen, battery level, the medication schedule and today's doses taken, which buttons the home screen shows, and alerts such as an SOS press or a missed dose, so the caregiver's app can show how things are going.

Access rules are enforced server-side: only the paired caregiver(s) and the elder's phone can read this data. Unpairing stops the sync; email us to have historical data deleted.

Elsie Family

Account: caregivers sign in with an email address, used only to operate the account.
Linked data: the synced configuration, status, and events described above.
Notifications: alerts are delivered through Google's push-notification service.

This website

If you join the waitlist, we store the email address you enter (in Cloud Firestore) and use it for one thing: telling you when Elsie ships. If you use the contact form, we store the name, email address, and message you send, and use them only to reply. Both are write-only from the web (nothing can be read back by a browser), and a summary is emailed to us privately.

The site sets no analytics or advertising cookies. Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which sees a standard request for the font files. Our hosting provider (Google Firebase Hosting) keeps standard technical logs, like any web server.

To keep automated spam out, the waitlist and contact forms use Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise, through Firebase App Check. It only starts when you submit a form, not when you open the page. When it runs, reCAPTCHA collects information about your browser and how you interacted with the page (for example your device and settings, and mouse or touch movements) and sends it to Google, which uses it to judge whether the submission came from a person. Google's use of that information is covered by the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. We receive only a pass or fail result, never the underlying data.

What we never do

Sell, rent, or trade personal information.
Show ads, use advertising SDKs, or share data with advertisers or data brokers.
Track you across other apps or websites.
Record which apps you open, who you call or message, or the contents of messages, browsing, or other apps' notifications.
Record, store, or upload audio. The microphone is live only while the voice-command listening screen is showing.

Security

Data synced between apps travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS) and is stored in Google Cloud data centers, protected by per-user access rules. No system is perfectly secure, but we deliberately keep the amount of data that ever leaves the phone small.

Data retention & deletion

On-device data is deleted when you clear the app's data or uninstall it. Synced pairing data persists so a caregiver's view keeps working; unpair to stop new data. To have stored data, a waitlist email, or a contact message permanently deleted, follow the steps at Delete your account or data. We honor deletion requests within 30 days.

Children

Elsie is designed for older adults and their adult family members. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update this page and the effective date above. Material changes will be called out in the apps or by email where we have one.

Contact

FangJet LLC · easylinkcare@fangjet.com · contact form

Plain-English summary: your data lives on the phone. Weather needs rough coordinates, pairing needs a small sync, the waitlist needs an email, and anonymous "which button got tapped" counts help us improve Elsie, with a switch to turn them off. That's the whole list.