Privacy Policy

Effective 29 July 2026. Last updated 29 July 2026.

This policy explains what happens to information when you use the Meridian app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, and when you visit meridiantimezone.com.

Meridian is published by Johnston Software & Services, LLC, a limited liability company formed in Oregon. In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean Johnston Software & Services, LLC. "Meridian" and "the app" mean the Meridian application for iOS, iPadOS and watchOS. "The site" means meridiantimezone.com.

Contact: support@meridiantimezone.com
Postal address: PO Box 230614, Tigard, OR 97281, United States

1. The short version

We do not run a server. Meridian has no accounts, no sign-up and no login. The app contains no analytics, no advertising and no third-party tracking code of any kind.

The lanes you create stay on your device. If you have iCloud turned on, they sync between your own devices through your own iCloud account. We cannot see them. There is no copy of your data on any system we control, because we do not operate one.

The two places we do receive information are narrow and obvious:

1. If you type your email address into the newsletter form on our website.
2. If you send us an email for support.

Everything below is the detail behind those statements.

2. Data we do NOT collect

3. What the app stores, and where it stores it

3.1 Your lanes

A lane is a place, a person or a fixed time offset that you add to Meridian. For each lane the app stores only:

That is the complete list. There is no field for anything else.

This data is written to a local database on your device using Apple's SwiftData framework. A copy of the same list is also written to a small file inside a private app group container on your device, so that the widgets, the Control Center control, the Apple Watch app and the watch complications can draw your lanes without launching the app. That file is local to the device and is never uploaded anywhere. Sync happens separately, from the database, as described next.

3.2 iCloud sync

If you are signed in to iCloud, Meridian syncs your lanes between your own devices using Apple's CloudKit service, in the private database of the iCloud container iCloud.com.johnstonss.meridian.

The private database is exactly what its name says. It belongs to your Apple Account. It is not a shared or public database. Neither we nor anyone else can query it, browse it, or read a record out of it. We have no server-to-server credentials for it, and Meridian contains no code that would use them if we did.

Apple is the provider of this service to you, under Apple's own iCloud terms and Apple's own privacy policy. Your iPhone and your Apple Watch sync only through iCloud; there is no other connection between them.

If you turn iCloud off, or are not signed in, Meridian still works. Your lanes simply stay on the one device.

3.3 App settings

The app stores a small amount of interface state in the standard iOS preferences store on your device. Today that is a single flag recording whether you have already scrubbed the timeline once, so the hint capsule stops appearing. It is a boolean. It is not an identifier and it is not sent anywhere.

3.4 Calendar: write-only, by design

Meridian can add a calendar event for a moment you picked. When you first use that feature the app asks iOS for write-only calendar access, using Apple's requestWriteOnlyAccessToEvents API.

Write-only means the app is technically unable to read your calendar. It cannot list your events, see who you are meeting, or tell whether you are busy. It can only hand a new event to the system. This is not a promise about restraint; it is the scope of the permission the app requests, and iOS enforces it.

If you decline the permission, the rest of the app keeps working.

The event Meridian creates contains a title and, in the notes field, the time of that moment in each of your lanes. It is written to your default calendar on your device and is then handled by whatever calendar account you use. We never see it.

3.5 Contacts: only the one you pick

Meridian does not ask for contacts access when it launches, and it does not ask for blanket contacts access at all.

When you choose to create a person lane from a contact, the app presents Apple's standard contact picker. That picker runs outside the app's own access scope: the app receives only the single contact you tap, and nothing else in your address book.

From that one contact the app reads two things: the display name, and, if the contact has a postal address, the two-letter country code on it. The country code is used once, in memory, to suggest a likely city and time zone so you do not have to search for it. You can change or clear that suggestion.

What is then saved is only the lane fields listed in section 3.1. No phone number, no email address, no street address, no photo, no note and no contact identifier is stored by Meridian.

3.6 Location: never requested

Meridian does not use location services. It links no location framework, declares no location usage description, and has no location permission prompt. Places come from a catalogue of 312 locations that ships inside the app, compiled from the public tz database. Searching for a city is a search of a file already on your device.

Your home lane's time zone comes from your device's own time zone setting, which is not location data and is not sent anywhere.

3.7 Sharing and copying

The app can produce a short block of text listing a moment in each of your lanes, and hand it to the standard iOS share sheet or to the clipboard. Where that text goes next is entirely your choice and is governed by whatever app you send it to. We are not a party to it.

3.8 Siri and Shortcuts

Meridian exposes a few actions to Siri, Spotlight and the Shortcuts app using Apple's App Intents framework. When you use them, the handling happens on your device, and any Siri processing is Apple's, under Apple's privacy policy. The app sends nothing to us.

3.9 Offline operation

Meridian works fully offline, including in airplane mode. All time zone, sunrise, sunset, twilight, working-hours and daylight-saving calculations happen on your device from data bundled in the app.

The app contains no networking code. It makes no HTTP requests. It has no analytics endpoint, no configuration server and no update check. The only network traffic Meridian is responsible for is iCloud sync and the silent push notifications iCloud uses to signal that a change is waiting, both of which are between your device and Apple.

4. Who controls what

This matters for your rights, so it is worth being exact.

For the app itself, we are not a controller of your lane data in any meaningful sense, because we never receive it and cannot obtain it. For the website and the newsletter, we are the controller.

5. The website

meridiantimezone.com is a static site. It has no login, no accounts, no shopping cart and no user-generated content.

5.1 Hosting and request data

The site is served from Cloudflare's network using Cloudflare Workers Static Assets. To deliver a page and to protect the site from attack, Cloudflare necessarily processes technical request data, including your IP address, the browser user agent string, the page requested, the time of the request and approximate region.

Cloudflare acts as our processor for this. It is the ordinary, unavoidable processing involved in a web server answering a request. We use it to serve the site and to defend it against denial-of-service attacks and abuse. We do not use it to identify you, we do not combine it with anything else, and we do not build any profile from it.

We do not have a raw server log we can search by person, and we do not attempt to. Cloudflare's own handling of this data is covered by Cloudflare's privacy policy.

5.2 No analytics and no cookies from us

We run no analytics product on the site. There is no Google Analytics, no Plausible, no Fathom, no pixel and no tag manager. We set no cookies of our own, and we do not use local storage or any device-fingerprinting technique to recognise returning visitors.

Because nothing on the site stores or reads information on your device for any purpose beyond delivering the page you asked for, there is nothing on the site that requires your consent under the EU ePrivacy rules or the UK PECR, and so the site does not present a cookie consent banner.

Cloudflare's security layer may set a strictly necessary cookie of its own, such as __cf_bm, purely to distinguish humans from bots. It carries no analytics, is encrypted so that only Cloudflare can read it, and is short-lived. It is a security cookie, not a tracking cookie.

5.3 The newsletter

The site offers a newsletter, hosted by Substack. We use it to tell you when Meridian is released, and after that to send occasional tips for using the app and notes about meaningful updates. The signup form is served by us, not embedded from Substack. Nothing is requested from Substack, and Substack receives nothing about you, unless and until you submit the form.

If you submit that form:

• The email address you type is transmitted to and stored by Substack.
• Substack acts as our processor for delivering the newsletter, and also processes data as a controller for its own platform purposes under its own privacy policy. Please read it: https://substack.com/privacy
• Submitting the form sends your browser to Substack, so from that point Substack can receive your IP address and browser information, as any site you visit can. Merely viewing our page does not.
• Substack may record standard email delivery events such as whether a message was opened or a link was clicked.

We use your email address for one thing: sending you the newsletter. We do not sell it, rent it, or pass it to anyone other than Substack in its role of delivering the mail. We do not add support correspondents to the newsletter.

Unsubscribing. Every newsletter includes an unsubscribe link, and it works immediately. You can also email support@meridiantimezone.com and we will remove you. Unsubscribing is not conditional on anything and costs you nothing.

The legal basis for the newsletter is your consent. You can withdraw it at any time, and withdrawing it does not affect the lawfulness of anything done before you did.

Signing up for the newsletter is entirely optional and is not required to buy, download or use Meridian.

5.4 Links out

The site links to the Apple App Store. Once you follow that link you are on Apple's property and Apple's privacy policy applies. We receive nothing from Apple about who clicked.

6. Your purchase

Meridian is sold as a one-time purchase through the Apple App Store. Apple is the merchant. Apple takes the payment, calculates the tax, issues the receipt and handles every refund under its own policy.

We never see your payment card details, your billing address or your Apple Account credentials. What we receive from Apple is aggregate and periodic sales and download reporting, which tells us how many units sold in which country. It does not identify buyers.

The app contains no in-app purchase code, no payment code and no subscription code.

7. Legal bases for processing (UK and EU)

If the UK GDPR or the EU GDPR applies to you, these are the bases we rely on. Note how little there is to list.

We do not process special category data. We do not carry out automated decision-making or profiling that produces legal effects for you. We do not use your data for advertising, ever.

Your lane data is not on this list because we do not process it.

8. Your rights, and how to use them

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct it if it is wrong.
• Delete it.
• Port it, receiving it in a machine-readable format.
• Object to processing we base on legitimate interests.
• Restrict processing in certain circumstances.
• Withdraw consent you previously gave.
• Complain to a data protection authority.

To exercise any of them, email support@meridiantimezone.com. Please tell us which right you want to use. We will respond within one month, and will tell you if we need longer, which the law allows in limited cases. We do not charge for this.

An honest note about what this means here. For almost everything you do with Meridian, we hold nothing to give you, correct, delete or export. Your lanes are on your device and in your own iCloud account, and we have no route to them.

That means:

• To delete your lane data, delete lanes in the app, or delete the app and, in iOS Settings, remove Meridian's iCloud data. You do not need our permission or our involvement, and there is nothing for us to do.
• To export your lane data, the practical route today is the app's share text, or Apple's own iCloud data tools. We cannot export it for you, because we cannot read it.
• To delete your newsletter subscription, unsubscribe or ask us. This we can and will do.
• To delete support correspondence, ask us and we will delete the thread.
• For website request data, we cannot reliably identify which log lines were yours, so there is generally nothing we can isolate to give you or delete. We will tell you that plainly rather than pretend otherwise, and we can tell you what categories of data exist.

If you want data that is held in your own iCloud account, Apple is the party who can help, through Apple's Data and Privacy site.

9. For California residents (CCPA and CPRA)

9.1 We do not sell or share your personal information

We do not sell your personal information, and we have not sold it in the preceding twelve months.

We do not share your personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we have not done so in the preceding twelve months. We have no advertising programme of any kind.

Because we do neither, there is no "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" mechanism for us to offer. There is nothing for it to switch off.

9.2 What we collect, in CCPA categories

Sources are: you, directly. Purposes are: sending the newsletter, answering support, serving and defending the website. Retention is in section 11.

9.3 Your California rights

You have the right to know, to access, to delete, to correct, to opt out of sale or sharing, to limit the use of sensitive personal information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of them. We do not offer financial incentives for personal information.

Use support@meridiantimezone.com to make a request. We will verify it by replying to the address the data is associated with, which for a newsletter subscription or a support thread is the whole of the record. You may use an authorised agent; we will ask for proof of authorisation.

We do not discriminate against anyone who exercises these rights. Since the app is a one-time purchase with no accounts and no tiers, there is no service level we could reduce.

Residents of other US states with similar laws, including Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Texas and Oregon, may exercise equivalent rights the same way, and we will honour them without arguing about thresholds.

10. Children

Meridian is a productivity tool for a general adult audience. It is not directed to children, and it has no content, features or design aimed at children.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. The newsletter form is the only place on our site or in our app where a person can hand us personal information at all, and it is intended for people 13 and over. If you are under 13, please do not submit it.

If we learn that we have received personal information from a child under 13, we will delete it promptly. If you are a parent or guardian and believe that has happened, email support@meridiantimezone.com and we will act on it.

Meridian is not submitted to the App Store's Kids Category.

11. Retention

We do not keep personal data longer than we have a reason to.

12. International transfers

Johnston Software & Services, LLC is in the United States. Cloudflare and Substack are US companies operating global infrastructure. If you are in the UK, the EU, or Switzerland, information covered by this policy may be processed in the United States and in other countries where those providers operate.

Where a transfer of personal data out of the UK or EEA takes place, we rely on the transfer mechanisms our providers make available, which may include the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, and, where a provider is certified, the EU-US and UK-US Data Privacy Framework.

Your lane data is a distinct case: it does not transfer to us at all. Where it is stored geographically is a matter between you and Apple under Apple's iCloud terms.

13. Security

Our main security property is that there is almost nothing to secure. We operate no application server, no user database and no API. There is no account to compromise, no password to steal and no central store of user content to breach, because none of those exist.

For what does exist:

• On your device, your lanes are protected by iOS and watchOS: the device passcode, hardware encryption and Apple's Data Protection. Keep your device up to date and locked; that is the meaningful control here.
• In iCloud, your lanes sit in the private database of your iCloud container. Apple encrypts iCloud data in transit and at rest. Whether it is also end-to-end encrypted depends on your Apple Account settings, including Advanced Data Protection. Apple, not we, is the authority on that, and we make no claim beyond it.
• The website is served over HTTPS. It is static, so there is no server-side code path for an attacker to reach.
• The newsletter list is held by Substack under its own security programme.

No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise.

14. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will post the new version at meridiantimezone.com and update the effective date at the top.

If a change is material, for example if we ever begin collecting something we do not collect today, we will say so clearly and prominently on the site rather than quietly editing a line. If you are a newsletter subscriber, we will tell you by email. We have no other way to reach app users, because we deliberately hold no way to reach them.

We will keep the previous version available on request, so you can see what changed.

If a future version of Meridian ever adds a feature that collects data, that feature will be described here before or when it ships, and any collection requiring consent will ask for it.

15. Contact

Johnston Software & Services, LLC
PO Box 230614
Tigard, OR 97281
United States
support@meridiantimezone.com

If you are in the UK or the EEA and are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to your national data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.