Privacy policy

The apps: iPhone, iPad, Mac and desktop

The apps collect no data at all. They do not contact any server of ours. The play counter described below is not switched off in them; it is left out of them when they are built, so there is no code in them that could send it. On the App Store this is labelled Data Not Collected.

Your settings, favourite boards, best times and the record of your wins are saved on your device, in the app's own storage. In the App Store apps your favourites, best times and wins are also kept in your iCloud account, as described below; your settings stay on the device. In the desktop app nothing leaves the device.

When you share a board, the app makes a link that holds the board and, after a win, your time. It hands that link to your device's share sheet or clipboard. Where it goes from there is up to you; nothing is sent to us.

Game Center

In the App Store apps, achievements are shown in Apple's Game Center. If you are signed in to Game Center on your device, the app tells it which achievements you have earned and how far along you are with the others. That is all it sends. Game Center is Apple's service, and Apple handles that information under its own privacy policy. None of it reaches us, and the app reads nothing back from Game Center except whether you are signed in.

If you are not signed in to Game Center, nothing is sent. You can sign out of Game Center in your device's settings. The desktop app does not use Game Center: its achievements stay on your device.

iCloud

The App Store apps keep your best times, the record of your wins and the boards you have starred as favourites in iCloud, so your iPhone, iPad and Mac share them, and deleting and reinstalling the app loses nothing. They are stored in your own iCloud account, labelled with a random code made by each installation of the app, not with anything about you or your device. iCloud is Apple's service, and Apple handles it under its own privacy policy. We cannot read it, and nothing from it reaches us.

If you are not signed in to iCloud on your device, nothing is sent and the record stays on the device. Clearing your best times or achievements in the game's settings clears them on every device that shares the record. The App Clip and the desktop app do not use iCloud.

The website

This covers the game at hypersweeper.pages.dev, in a browser tab or added to a home screen.

Anonymous play counts

When a board opens, and again when the game on it ends, the game sends one small event to this website's own server. The events tell us which boards people play and which ones are too hard.

An event holds only:

• the board: its name, its tiling and surface, and its difficulty (easy, medium or hard);
• whether the game is starting or has ended, and whether it was won or lost;
• how it went: seconds on the clock, how many cells and mines the board has, how many safe cells were opened, how many flags were right and wrong, how many reveal, chord and flag moves were made, how long the first move took, and whether the view was rotated or zoomed;
• how the board was started (from the menu, at random, by playing again, or from a shared link) and whether the previous board was still being played, won or lost;
• whether the device is a phone, tablet or desktop;
• whether the game runs in a browser tab or as an installed app;
• the game's version number.

Nothing else is stored with it: no IP address, no country, no browser or device model, no referring page, no cookie, and no identifier of any kind. The board's layout and your settings are not sent. No two events can be linked to each other or to you.

To switch it off: Settings › Privacy › Analytics. It takes effect at once, including for a game in progress, and the choice is saved in your browser.

The events are stored by Cloudflare in Workers Analytics Engine, which deletes them automatically after a short retention period of at most three months. We use them only as counts and averages.

Website visits

Cloudflare Web Analytics is turned on for this website. Cloudflare adds its script to the site's pages, and it reports visits and page views, the referring site, the browser and operating system, and the country. We see only totals. This is separate from the play counts: the Settings switch above does not affect it, and a content blocker may stop it.

Hosting

Cloudflare hosts the website. Like any web host, it receives your IP address and browser details with each request, in order to deliver the pages and protect the site. It handles them under its own privacy policy. Our play counts do not include them.

On your device

Your settings, best times and achievements are kept in your browser's local storage, and the game's files are cached so it works offline. None of that is sent anywhere. Clearing the site's data in your browser deletes it. Settings › Check for updates asks the website for its current version number and sends nothing about you.

Children

The game is for everyone. It asks for no personal information and collects none, from children or anyone else: the apps collect nothing, and the website's play counts identify no one.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new effective date. Hypersweeper is open source, so every change to this page and to the code it describes is public.

Questions or requests: github.com/sirk0/hypersweeper/issues.