No account, no sign-up

RIPEN never asks for an email, a password or a sign-in. Your tree lives on your phone and marking a habit needs no connection. The interesting part is the thing most offline trackers get wrong — what happens when you change phones.

what “no account” usually costs you

Trackers that keep everything on the device are easy to recommend on privacy and awkward to recommend on everything else, because the same property that protects your data also strands it. No account means no way to prove the tree is yours, which usually means: new phone, new tree, three years gone.

So the real question to ask an offline tracker is not “do you upload my data”. It is “what happens to my history when this phone dies”.

how RIPEN answers it

There is still no account. Instead the app gives you a recovery secret: 10 words, under “show recovery secret” in “more”.

The app keeps an online copy of your tree, made by itself, so there is nothing to remember to back up.
That copy is encrypted on your phone before it leaves, with a key derived from your phrase. The server stores the result and cannot read it — not “does not”, cannot.
On a new phone, those ten words bring the tree back. They also open the app if you forget the pin.
Anyone who has those words can do the same, and they can never be changed. Write them down somewhere that is not your phone.

Two things do not travel: the pin, which belongs to the phone, and your purchases, which belong to your App Store or Google Play account — sign in with the same account and use “restore purchases”.

what else can leave the phone, and only if you ask

a public page, while “public link” is on — a read-only page of your tree at an address you can share, and switching it off takes the page down;
a picture or a film of the tree, when you export one;
a problem report, when you send one.

That is the complete list. There is no analytics SDK in the app, no ads, no third-party trackers, and no email list, because there is no email. “Erase the tree” takes the online copy and the public page with it.

what this means in practice

You can use RIPEN in airplane mode for a year and lose nothing. We cannot tell you how many days you have marked, because we cannot see it — and that is also why there is no “your year in review” email. There is no address to send it to.

The full privacy page lists each of these item by item, or get the app.