Privacy Policy
This policy explains what information Tide collects, why, and the choices you have. Tide is built to work with as little data collection as possible.
Information We Collect
We may collect information when you use Tide, including:
- Account info (email, display name) if you create an account to publish Backdrops or sync your Library.
- Content you upload — video clips, titles, tags, and any Backdrops you publish to the community.
- Basic device and usage data (app version, crash logs, coarse performance metrics) to keep Tide stable — see Crash Reports & Diagnostics for exactly what these contain and what they don't.
- Purchase and subscription status from Google Play, so Pro features unlock correctly.
- Every install gets a lightweight anonymous session (a device-generated identifier) so the app works immediately without signing in; this anonymous data is tied to that identifier, not to you personally, unless and until you create a real account, at which point it's merged into it.
How We Use It
We use your information to run the app's core features: showing your Library, hosting and moderating community uploads, verifying Pro subscription status, and improving performance and stability. We do not sell your personal data.
Crash Reports & Diagnostics
In plain language: when Tide breaks, we get a report about the break — not about you.
Live wallpapers depend on hardware more than most apps do. The same Backdrop that plays perfectly on one phone can fail on another because of its video decoder or graphics driver, and we can't reproduce that on a device we don't own. So when the wallpaper engine fails — a video won't decode, the renderer won't start, playback freezes — the app sends us a diagnostic report. We use those reports for one thing: fixing the bug so it stops happening to you.
What a report contains:
- What failed and where in our own code, including the technical error and stack trace.
- Your device model, Android version, and chipset — the details that decide whether a given video can play at all.
- The app version, and an anonymous identifier for the installation, so we can tell one phone failing fifty times from fifty phones each failing once.
What a report never contains:
- Your videos, photos, or any other file — not the contents, not the file names, not the folder paths. Android's own error messages sometimes include a file path, so Tide strips paths out before a report is sent.
- Which Backdrops you use, save, or look at.
- Your email, name, location, contacts, messages, or anything you've typed.
We also want to be concrete about the bigger worry behind this, which is whether an app that reports crashes is quietly looking through your phone. Tide isn't, and on a technical level it can't: it requests no storage or photo permissions at all — only network access. When you add your own clip in Create, you pick it through Android's system photo picker, which hands Tide that one file and nothing else. Beyond that single file, the only things Tide ever opens are the Backdrop files it created itself, inside its own private app storage.
Crash reporting is handled by Google Firebase Crashlytics, so Google's privacy terms apply alongside this policy.
You can turn it off. Open Settings in the app and switch off Send diagnostics. That stops collection entirely, and it also deletes any report already saved on your device but not yet sent — so opting out after something has gone wrong doesn't quietly upload that crash anyway. It's on by default, because a Backdrop that fails on one particular chipset is close to impossible for us to find any other way, but it's your call and the app works exactly the same either way.
Community Content & Public Profiles
If you choose to publish Backdrops publicly or participate in the community, your public profile (display name, optional username, badge tier, public uploads, and favorites) may be visible to other Tide users when they view your backdrops. You can hide your profile and username from other users at any time using the Hide profile toggle in app Settings.
All public uploads pass through a review queue before appearing in Browse or Discover.
Subscriptions & Billing
Pro subscriptions and lifetime purchases are processed by Google Play. Tide does not receive or store your payment details — only a Google Play purchase token and the resulting subscription status, which we use solely to verify and maintain your Pro entitlement.
Data Retention
Account and content data is retained while your account is active. You can request deletion of your account and associated uploads at any time from Settings or by contacting us.
Children & Minor Privacy Protections
Tide is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. For accounts registered by users under 18, public profile visiting and username sharing are automatically and non-optionally disabled — backdrops uploaded by minor accounts display as "Community" to protect user privacy.
Changes to This Policy
We'll update this page if our practices change, and note the revision date above.
Contact
Questions about this policy? Reach out via Slumbering Thread Studios.