Privacy

Last changed 12 October 2026

Ribbon is a timer and billing app made by one person in the UK. This page says what it keeps about you, in plain words. The short version: it keeps what it needs to time your work and show you what it added up to, it doesn't sell or share that with anyone, and you can delete the lot yourself.

What Ribbon keeps

• Your account. Your name, email address and a hashed password, plus the devices you've signed in from so you can sign one out remotely.
• Your time. Each block you run: which task, when it started and stopped, pauses and what you called them, and any note you wrote. That's the whole point of the app.
• Your boards. When you connect a tool like ClickUp, Trello, GitHub or Missive, Ribbon stores the key that tool gave it (encrypted) and the names of the boards and tasks you pick from. It reads those tools; it only writes to them when you ask it to, such as marking a task done.
• Your billing. Rates, quotes, job steps and the invoices or ledgers you build from your time. If you connect an invoicing tool, Ribbon sends it the lines you choose to send and nothing else.
• Your files. Photos and files you add to cards on Ribbon's own boards are kept for you in private storage (Cloudflare R2), each up to 20 MB. Photos are shrunk and their location and camera details taken out before they're kept. Only people who can see the card can open its files, through links that stop working within two hours. Deleting a file, its card or its board deletes the file. Files on another tool's tasks, such as ClickUp, go straight to that tool and Ribbon keeps no copy.
• Your spaces. If you work in a shared space, the people in it can see what you're timing while you're timing it, your name and colour, and the shared queues you take from. That's what a space is for. You can turn it down whenever you like: start a block as Private and teammates see only that you're busy, not what on; and leave the space and all of it stops.

What stays on your device

The Mac app can read your Calendar and Reminders if you let it, so a meeting can pause the timer and a reminder can become a task. It asks first and you can turn it off in macOS settings. Calendar events are read on your Mac and never sent anywhere. Reminders you choose to time are sent to Ribbon as tasks, titles only.

The iPhone app shows the running timer on the Lock Screen. That runs on the phone; nothing extra is collected for it.

What Ribbon doesn't do

• No analytics, tracking pixels or advertising, in the apps or on this site.
• No selling, renting or sharing of your data with anyone.
• No reading of your messages, calendar or contacts beyond what's listed above.
• No crash reports leave your device unless you send one.

Who else touches it

Ribbon runs on a server we rent and manage. Email (sign-in codes, password resets) is sent through Resend. Files on cards are stored with Cloudflare R2. iPhone builds are made and delivered by Expo and Apple. Each of those sees only what it needs for its job: an email address to send to, an app to deliver. If you connect a third-party tool, that tool's own privacy policy covers what it does with the requests Ribbon makes.

Taking it away again

You can delete your account from Account settings in either app. That removes your account, your sessions, your connections and the keys they held, and the files on your own boards, straight away. Space work you did stays visible to the space as time against its jobs, with your name removed. Disconnecting a tool deletes the key for that tool at once.

If you'd rather we did it, or you want a copy of your data first, email [email protected] from the address on your account.

Children

Ribbon is for people who work and bill for their time. It isn't aimed at anyone under 16 and we don't knowingly keep anything about them.

Changes

If this page changes in a way that matters, the date at the top moves and we'll say so in the app's What's new.

Who to ask

Ribbon is run by James McConnon in the UK. Questions about any of this: [email protected].