Terms of Use

What changed - 3 October 2026

We now explain that printing or saving a Timeline or preferences page makes a readable copy without backup-passphrase protection. Our request not to email personal details now covers any person. Changes to what we promise or ask of you will be highlighted here.

Please read these terms before you use Journeyward. They explain who provides it, what it does and does not do, and what you can and cannot expect from us. They are meant to be readable in one sitting by someone who is tired.

1. Who provides Journeyward

Journeyward is provided by Christopher Winfield, trading as "Journeyward", based in England. It is a one-person project, not a company.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK data protection regulator, under reference ZC194487.

You can reach us at help@journeyward.com.

Our postal address is 1 Lonsdale Road, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 1DT, United Kingdom.

2. What Journeyward is, and what it is not

Journeyward is a place for an adult - a parent, a carer, a guardian - to keep their own family's records: notes, dates, contacts and a diary of what happened. It is for adults, not for children to use themselves. You can attach documents too, but not everywhere - clause 3 says where.

Journeyward makes no judgement or diagnosis about a person or condition. It does not assess, score, rate, rank or interpret anyone. It does not tell you what something means, what to do next, or whether anything is wrong. It shows you what you and other trusted sources put into it, and it keeps your own words unchanged.

Journeyward is not a substitute for advice from a doctor, a school, a local authority or a solicitor. If you need advice, please ask someone qualified to give it.

Journeyward is also not a legal record, an official file, or a guaranteed store. It is a private copy that you keep. See clause 5.

You may use Journeyward for your own family's records. We own the app and its code; you own the records you keep in it.

3. Your records, where they live, and backups

Your family records are stored on the device you are using, and Journeyward does not send them to us or to anyone else by itself.

Two details matter, because the two versions of Journeyward are not identical:

• On the Android app, your records are stored in an encrypted database on the phone or tablet, unlocked by your device's own screen lock. (The Android app is not released yet.)
• On the web/browser version, your records are stored in that browser, on that device. Their safety relies on your own device's security - your computer or phone login and its disk encryption. The web version does not encrypt your records at rest.

On the web version, you can print or save a Timeline or a person's preferences page. That makes a readable copy which Journeyward does not encrypt or protect with your backup passphrase. You choose where a saved copy goes and who sees a printed one.

Attaching documents does not work everywhere yet, and we would rather tell you here than let you find out. Adding a file is available in the Android app, and in Chrome or Edge on Windows or Chrome on Android in an ordinary browser tab. If you have added Journeyward to your home screen, adding a file is turned off in that copy for now. On the Android app, photos and scans open in the app; opening other kinds of file on the phone comes later. Everywhere else, the rest of Journeyward works and attaching a file does not.

When you load the web/browser version, your browser downloads the app from our web host, like any website. The host may receive ordinary website request information such as your IP address. That does not include your family records.

You can choose to send information out of Journeyward, and some ordinary things you do will send it out. Making a backup, copying text, tapping a phone number or email address, sharing a file, or emailing us all move information off the device because you asked for it. Journeyward does not do any of that on its own. If you set up an automatic backup destination yourself, Journeyward may then create encrypted backups there until you turn that setup off.

The default backup is encrypted with a passphrase you choose, before the file leaves the app. That encryption happens on your device at the moment the backup file is made, and it works the same on every version of Journeyward, including the web one. You choose where the backup goes. Once it is there, it is a file in a place you picked, under your control, and we are not involved.

Backups you have already saved are separate files under your control - deleting data in the app does not change a backup you made earlier.

Our separate privacy notice explains all of this in more detail. See clause 9.

4. Availability - Journeyward is free, and it is unfinished

Journeyward is free. There is no charge, no subscription, no account with us and no sign-up.

Journeyward is unfinished, and we want to be honest about what that means for you. It is being built by one person. Features arrive, change and sometimes go away again. Things break. A version that works today may behave differently next month.

So, plainly:

• We do not promise Journeyward will be available, or that it will work without faults or interruptions.
• We do not promise any particular feature will keep existing, or keep working the same way.
• We do not promise to answer you, or to answer within any particular time.
• We do not promise to restore anything you lose, and we cannot - see clause 8.
• We may change, suspend, or stop Journeyward, or any part of it. If we decide to permanently close the service, we will aim to give you reasonable notice on the website or in the app so you have time to export or save your notes, unless an urgent security, legal, or technical issue prevents us from doing so. We do not promise a replacement or a migration.

And there is a part that is not ours to promise at all. Journeyward runs on your device, in your browser or on your phone, and saves files where you put them. Nothing here is a promise that a device, a browser, an operating system or a saved file will always be available or free from failure. A browser can clear its own storage. A phone can be lost. A drive can fail.

None of this is us being careless with your records. It is the reason for clause 5.

5. What we ask of you

Keep your own copy of anything that matters. Because Journeyward stores your records on your own device and not on a central server, please keep your own copies of vital original files - official letters, reports, plans - where you would normally store them. Journeyward is designed to help you organise and find your records, not to act as your only archive.

Please also:

• Keep the device you use Journeyward on secure, with a screen lock or login.
• Make backups, and keep them somewhere you can find them.
• Keep the backup passphrase somewhere safe and secret. Journeyward cannot recover it.
• Use Journeyward for your own family's records, and do not use it to break the law or to harm anyone.

You are responsible for what you choose to record and who you choose to show it to. Journeyward makes no decisions about what you keep or why.

6. Support and contact

You can email help@journeyward.com. There is a "Report a problem" link in the app that opens an email for you.

Please do not send a person's personal details, health information, case notes, a backup file, or your backup passphrase. We do not need any of them to help, and we would rather they stayed with you. If you need to describe an example, keep it general.

The passphrase especially: we will never ask you for it, and there is nothing we could do with it except hold something we should not have. If anyone asks you for it, including someone claiming to be us, do not send it.

We cannot see the records you keep in Journeyward, so we cannot look at them to help you. If you choose to email us something, that email travels through the email services in the path - yours and ours - and arrives in our inbox like any other email. We handle it as the privacy notice describes.

These Terms do not promise a response time, an uptime figure, or a support service.

7. Our responsibility to you, and your legal rights

We want to be straightforward here rather than hide behind a wall of capital letters.

Journeyward is free and unfinished, and clause 4 describes what you can and cannot expect from it. Except for the legal responsibilities we cannot exclude (set out below), we are not responsible for any loss or inconvenience that comes from using an unfinished tool or from it changing or stopping.

But nothing in these Terms takes away rights you have by law and that we are not allowed to take away. In particular, we do not exclude or limit our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that the law says cannot be excluded or limited. If any part of these Terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still applies.

You have rights under UK consumer law. These Terms do not affect them.

8. If you lose access - what we can and cannot do

This is the most important thing in these Terms, so it is short and it is blunt.

We cannot recover your backup passphrase. We never store it, and there is no path by which we could get it back for you. This is not a policy we could make an exception to - it is how the encryption works. If you lose the passphrase, the backup cannot be opened, by anyone, including us.

Keep the backup passphrase somewhere safe and secret. Journeyward cannot recover it.

Two related things, so there is no surprise:

• If you lose or wipe your device and you have no backup, the records in Journeyward are gone. We hold no copy to give you.
• You can remove records from the app at any time. Removing an individual record removes it from your current family file, but its text may remain in the app's change history and in backups you have already saved.

If it matters to you that something is fully gone, removing one record is not enough. Deleting the whole family file, from Settings, is what removes that family file's records and its change history from the app on that device. Backups you saved earlier are separate files that keep whatever was in them until you delete each of those files too.

9. The privacy notice

Our privacy notice explains what happens to information: what stays on your device, the little that reaches us, and why. It is a separate document from these Terms, and it is the one to read if your question is about your information rather than about using the app.

You can read it at app.journeyward.com/privacy.

The two documents are meant to be checked against each other so that neither makes a broader promise than the other. If they ever seem to disagree, please tell us - that is a fault on our side, not something for you to resolve by picking one.

10. Changes, law and contact

Changes. We may update these Terms. If we do, we will change the effective date at the top. If a change matters to you - if it changes what we promise or what we ask of you - we will highlight the change clearly at the top of the updated Terms page, rather than quietly changing the text.

Free product only. These Terms cover the current free Journeyward. If a paid feature is ever offered, it will have its own terms, agreed before anything is charged. There is nothing to pay today.

Law. These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you need to bring a legal claim, you can do so in the courts of England and Wales. If you live elsewhere in the UK, you may also bring a claim in your local courts.

Contact. Christopher Winfield, trading as "Journeyward", based in England. Email: help@journeyward.com. ICO registration: ZC194487.