Your data stays on your phone

About Sensa

Sensa is a sound-alert application designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. It listens for specific sounds in the user's environment (such as smoke alarms, doorbells, baby crying, and more) and communicates detections through phone vibration, providing an accessible alternative to auditory alerts.

Sensa is developed by Olushola Oluyomi. If you have any questions about this policy, please contact us at the address provided at the bottom of this page.

Information We Collect

Sensa collects no personal information. We do not collect, transmit, or store any data on external servers. Specifically:

• Microphone / Audio: Sensa accesses your device microphone solely to perform real-time amplitude analysis. Raw audio is never stored, recorded to a file, or transmitted over any network. Only a single numeric amplitude value (a number between 0 and 1) is processed per 50-millisecond tick — not actual audio content.
• Alert history: A log of detected sounds (e.g., "Smoke Alarm detected at 2:34 PM") is stored locally on your device. This data never leaves your phone and can be deleted at any time from within the app.
• App settings: Your preferences (enabled sounds, sensitivity, vibration settings) are stored locally on your device using AsyncStorage. This data is never transmitted anywhere.
• No analytics or crash reporting: Sensa contains no analytics SDK, no crash reporting service, and no advertising framework.

Permissions Used

• RECORD_AUDIO: Required to access the microphone for sound detection. Audio is processed in real time and never stored or transmitted.
• VIBRATE: Required to trigger vibration alerts when a sound is detected.
• FOREGROUND_SERVICE / FOREGROUND_SERVICE_MICROPHONE: Allows Sensa to continue monitoring sounds when the app is backgrounded or the screen is off. A persistent notification is shown while the service is active, as required by Android.
• POST_NOTIFICATIONS (Android 13+): Required to display the foreground service notification that keeps the background monitoring service alive. No marketing or promotional notifications are sent.

How We Use Your Information

The only "processing" that occurs is local, on-device amplitude analysis of the microphone signal. This is used exclusively to detect whether a known sound pattern is occurring near your phone. No results of this analysis are transmitted off your device.

Data Sharing & Third Parties

Sensa does not share any data with third parties. There are no third-party SDKs, analytics services, advertising networks, or cloud services integrated into Sensa. The application operates entirely offline.

Data Retention & Deletion

All data (alert log, settings) is stored locally on your device. You can delete the alert log at any time within the app via Settings → Alert History → Clear. Uninstalling Sensa removes all associated local data from your device.

Children's Privacy

Sensa is suitable for all ages. The application does not collect any personal data from any user, including children. It does not target children specifically, but because no data is collected, there are no special concerns with respect to children's privacy laws including COPPA (US) or GDPR-K (EU).

Security

Because Sensa does not transmit any data, traditional data-in-transit security concerns do not apply. Your alert log and settings are stored using the standard local storage mechanisms provided by the Android operating system.

Changes to This Policy

If this privacy policy changes, the updated version will be published at this URL (olusholaoluyomi.com/sensa/privacy) and the "Last updated" date at the top will be revised. Significant changes will also be noted in the app's Play Store listing.