In plain words
Everything stays on your device

Frames, projects and exports are written to your phone. There is no account and no server of ours to send them to.

No audio is recorded

Clap-to-shoot measures loudness in memory and throws every sample away. Nothing is written to storage.

No account, no ads

No sign-up and no advertising in the app. Two things do leave your phone — a crash report when the app crashes, and basic usage statistics — and neither one carries your photos or your project names.

Nothing to back up to us

We run no cloud service and the app opts out of Android backup, so your projects exist only on your phone. Export the videos that matter.

Who we are

Stopmo Studio is a stop-motion and time-lapse app developed and operated by Milos Micunovic, an independent developer based in Montenegro. For the purposes of applicable data-protection law, including the GDPR, Milos Micunovic is the data controller for the limited information described in this policy.

You can reach us any time at mmicunovic1@gmail.com. This policy explains what the app does and does not collect, where your content lives, and the choices you have.

Our privacy principles

Stopmo Studio is often used to record deeply personal moments — a child growing month by month, a body changing over time, a model taking shape on a workbench. The app is built so that this content is private by default and stays under your control.

  • On-device only. Photos, frames, projects and exported videos are created and stored on your device. They are never sent to us.
  • No account. There is nothing to sign up for, so there is no profile of you to build.
  • Two reasons to touch the network. The app has no server of ours to talk to. It reaches the network to send a crash report when it crashes or hits an internal error, and to send basic usage statistics. Both are built so they cannot carry your frames, your project names or anything you typed.
  • Data minimisation. We collect nothing we do not need. Today that means crash reports and usage statistics, and nothing else.

Information we collect

The app collects two things: crash reports and basic usage statistics, each described in its own section below. Along with them go a small number of identifiers we do not choose the values of:

  • a random installation identifier, created by Firebase on your device, which distinguishes one installation from another without saying anything about who you are;
  • your device's advertising ID, a resettable, device-level identifier that Android gives you control over;
  • an approximate, city-level location derived from your IP address. We never receive your precise location, and the app never asks for the location permission.

Because of those identifiers the usage and crash data is not fully anonymous, and we say so rather than claim otherwise. Beyond what is listed above, the app does not ask for or transmit:

  • your name, email address, phone number or any account credentials — there is no sign-in;
  • your photos, videos, frames or projects;
  • the names you give your projects, or any other text you type into the app;
  • your precise location;
  • your contacts, calendar, messages or files outside the app;
  • any identifier tied to your Google account or to your hardware.

Two indirect exceptions are worth naming honestly, because they are not run by us:

  • Google Play. As the app's distributor, Google gives us aggregated, anonymous statistics such as install counts and Android versions and — if you have turned on Android's system-level “share usage and diagnostics” setting — aggregated crash reports. That data is collected and anonymised by Google under its own policies; we never receive anything that identifies you.
  • Email you send us. If you write to us for support, we hold your message and address for as long as it takes to answer you and keep a record of the exchange.

Crash reports

The app uses Firebase Crashlytics, a crash-reporting service run by Google. When the app crashes, or runs into an internal error it has been written to report, a report is sent to Crashlytics — usually the next time the app starts.

A report contains:

  • a stack trace, which says where in the app's own code the failure happened;
  • a short log of recent technical steps the app took, such as “camera bind failed” — written by us, in our words, never from your content;
  • the app version and build, the device make and model, the Android version, screen orientation, and how much memory and storage was free at the time;
  • a random installation identifier created by Firebase when the app is installed.

A report never contains your photos, frames, exported videos or audio, the names you give your projects, the names of files you export, or the photos you pick for import. The app's logging is written so that no text you typed and no photo you chose can reach a report, and the release build discards its detailed debug logging before anything can be attached.

About the installation identifier. It is a random value, not tied to your Google account, your advertising ID or your hardware, and it is used only to tell how many installations a given crash affects. It is reset when you uninstall the app or clear its data.

Storage and retention. Reports are stored by Google on our behalf, on servers that may be outside your country. Crashlytics keeps them for 90 days and then deletes them. Google processes this data for us under the Firebase terms; see Google's Firebase privacy page.

One thing crash reporting now also does. Because the app also includes Firebase Analytics (see the next section), a crash additionally records a plain app_exception marker in the usage statistics. It carries no detail about the crash beyond the fact that one happened.

No opt-out switch, said plainly. The current version has no setting to turn crash reporting off.

Usage statistics

The app uses Google Analytics for Firebase to collect basic statistics about how Stopmo Studio is used — how often it is opened, how long a session lasts, which screen is on display, and when the app or the operating system is updated. We read these in aggregate, to see which parts of the app people actually use and where to spend our time.

We send no events of our own. The app contains no code that reports what you do inside a project. Only the standard, automatic measurements the Firebase library makes on its own are collected — things like first open, session start, screen view and app update. The app is deliberately built so that it has no way to attach a name, a project title, a photo or anything you typed to a statistic; the screens are identified by an internal class name that is fixed at build time.

These statistics travel with the identifiers named under Information we collect: the resettable installation identifier, an app-instance identifier generated by the analytics library, your device's advertising ID, and a city-level location derived from your IP address. They are not linked to your name, and we have no way to work back from them to a person — but they are per-installation rather than fully anonymous, which is why we name them.

How you found the app. When you install Stopmo Studio, the analytics library asks Google Play where the install came from — the referral link or ad you tapped, if there was one, and the times of the tap and the install. For an ordinary search-and-install this carries nothing about you. We run no ad campaigns today, so in practice there is nothing to attribute.

Your controls. You can reset your advertising ID, or delete it entirely, under Settings → Privacy → Ads on your device. Uninstalling the app or clearing its data resets the installation identifier. The current version has no in-app switch to turn usage statistics off.

Storage and retention. The statistics are processed by Google on our behalf, on servers that may be outside your country, under the Firebase privacy terms. Google deletes the per-installation records after the retention window configured on our property; the aggregate figures we look at remain.

Where your projects live

Everything the app creates is written to your own device:

  • Frames are saved as full-resolution JPEG files in the app's private storage area, which other apps on your device cannot read.
  • Project data — project names, frame order, playback settings, guides you have drawn, level targets, onion-skin settings — is kept in a small database on the device.
  • Camera details per frame. Alongside each frame the app records when it was taken and may record the settings the camera actually used: focus distance, exposure settings, ISO, white balance, whether a lock was held, and the device's tilt at the moment of capture. This is stored locally to support the app's capture tools. It is not written into your exported video and it never leaves your device.
  • Imported photos are chosen through your system photo picker. The app only ever receives the specific photos you pick; it does not request permission to browse your photo library.
  • Exported videos are rendered on the device and then copied into your device's Movies collection so your gallery app can see them. Nothing is uploaded during export.
  • Sharing an export hands a temporary read permission for that one file to the app you choose. From that point the receiving app's own privacy policy applies.

Backups & new phones

We operate no cloud service. There is no Stopmo Studio server holding your projects, and no way for us to retrieve or view them.

The app also opts out of Android's own backup. Your frames and project data are excluded from Google account backup and from the phone-to-phone transfer that runs when you set up a new device. This is deliberate: the backup quota Android allows is far too small for a library of full-resolution frames, and a backup that silently drops everything would be worse than none. The practical consequence is worth stating plainly:

  • If you lose your phone, uninstall the app, or move to a new phone, your projects do not come with you.
  • Exported videos are the exception. Once saved to your gallery they are ordinary video files and follow whatever backup that gallery uses — Google Photos, another gallery app, or nothing at all. That is your setting, outside the app. Export the videos that matter to you.
  • Some device makers handle phone-to-phone transfer with their own tools. The app asks the system not to copy its data; we cannot promise that every manufacturer tool honours that request.

Camera, microphone & permissions

The app asks only for the permissions a feature actually needs, at the moment you first use that feature. You can revoke any of them later in your system settings.

  • Camera — required, to take the photos in your projects.
  • Internet — declared, because the crash-reporting and analytics libraries need it to send their reports. Android grants this without asking, and nothing else in the app uses it.
  • Advertising ID — declared, because the analytics library can read your device's advertising ID. Android grants this without asking. The app shows no ads today; you control the identifier itself in your system settings.
  • Microphone — requested only if you turn on the clap trigger. The audio stream is analysed in memory for a sudden rise in loudness and discarded immediately. No audio is recorded, saved, buffered to disk or transmitted, and the app shows a “listening” badge whenever the microphone is actually sampling. Decline it, or revoke it later, and the rest of the app works unchanged.
  • Storage — on Android 9 and older only, and only to write your finished export into the public Movies folder. On Android 10 and newer the app needs no storage permission at all.
  • Photo library — not requested. Importing uses the system photo picker, which hands the app only the images you select.
  • Motion sensors — the level guide reads the device's gravity/accelerometer sensor while the guide is on. No permission is required for this, the reading is used live on screen, and the tilt at the moment of a capture may be stored with that frame on your device.
  • Notifications — not requested. The app sends none.

What we don't do

  • We don't sell or rent your personal information, and we don't share it with any other company for that company's own purposes. The crash reports and usage statistics go to no one but Google, which processes them for us so that we can read them.
  • We don't show ads, and there is no advertising SDK in the app. The analytics library reads your device's advertising ID, but nothing in the app serves, targets or measures advertising.
  • We don't track you across other apps or websites, and we don't build advertising audiences from what the app measures.
  • We don't build profiles of you, and we run no profiling or automated decision-making.
  • We don't upload your photos or videos — the app has no server for your content, and its one network use, crash reporting, is built so those files can never be attached.

Children & sensitive content

Stopmo Studio is a general-audience creative tool. It is not directed at children under 13 (or the equivalent age in your country) and is not designed for use by them. The app collects nothing from anyone beyond the crash reports and usage statistics described above, and none of that can be linked to a person, so we hold no children's data.

Many projects contain photos of children, of people's bodies, or of a private home. That content stays on your device and is never processed by us. If you are creating a project that includes another person — especially a child — you are responsible for having the right to photograph them.

Third-party services

The app contacts no server of ours. It uses two third-party services directly, and a small number of platform services sit around them, each with its own privacy policy:

  • Firebase Crashlytics (Google) — crash reporting, exactly as described under Crash reports.
  • Google Analytics for Firebase (Google) — usage statistics, exactly as described under Usage statistics. These two are the only third-party SDKs in the app that send anything.
  • Google Play — distribution and updates on Android. The app is free and sells nothing, so no payment or billing information is involved at all.
  • Google Play services — the app's typefaces, Montserrat and Raleway, are supplied by the downloadable-fonts provider already present on your device. That request is made by Google Play services, not by the app, and it carries a font name only — never any of your content. On Android 10 and older, Google Play services also supplies the system photo picker used for importing.
  • Apps you share to — when you share an exported video you choose the destination, and its policy takes over from there.

This website

This site is a set of static pages hosted on Firebase Hosting (Google). It sets no cookies and runs no analytics. As with any web host, Google may process standard server request data such as your IP address and browser user-agent for delivery and security purposes, under Google's own policies.

The pages load the Montserrat and Raleway typefaces from Google Fonts, so your browser makes a request to Google's servers when you visit. If you would rather avoid that, a content blocker will stop it and the pages stay fully readable.

Retention & your choices

Because your content lives on your device, you stay in control of how long it is kept:

  • Delete a single frame or a whole project from inside the app.
  • Uninstall the app to remove its private storage and its database from the device. Videos you already saved to your gallery are yours and stay there.
  • Revoke the camera or microphone permission at any time in system settings.
  • Reset or delete your advertising ID in system settings, under Settings → Privacy → Ads.

We hold no copy of your content, so there is nothing for us to retain or delete on your behalf. Crash reports are deleted by Crashlytics after 90 days, and per-installation usage records are deleted by Google after the retention window set on our property; because neither carries anything that identifies you, we have no way to find and delete the ones that came from your device sooner. Support emails are kept only as long as needed to handle your request.

Your rights

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or another region with comparable law, you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability over personal data a controller holds about you.

In our case the honest answer is that we hold no data we can link to you. Crash reports and usage statistics are tied to a resettable, per-installation identifier and cannot be matched to a person, so in practice there is nothing for us to disclose, correct or erase — unless you have emailed us, in which case those messages are the only records that exist. Write to mmicunovic1@gmail.com and we will confirm what we have and delete it on request. You also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority.

For data held by Google in connection with Google Play or your gallery, please use Google's own privacy tools and policies — we have no access to it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app evolves. If the app ever starts collecting something, or sending anything off your device, this page will say so before that version ships. When we update it we will revise the date at the top of the page and, for material changes, note them in the app. Continuing to use Stopmo Studio after an update means you accept the revised policy.

Contact

Milos Micunovic
Independent developer · Montenegro