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What My Phone Knows support

Most questions are about getting Apple’s report into the app, so that is first, step by step. For anything else, email and a person answers.

Getting your App Privacy Report in

Open Settings, then Privacy & Security, then App Privacy Report, and turn it on. It records from that moment, so there is nothing to see yet.

Use your phone normally for a few days. A week gives a much fuller picture, and “I’ve turned it on” in the app will remind you when the week is up if you want it to.

Come back to the same screen in Settings and tap Save App Activity. In the share sheet, pick the app. If it is not in the row of apps, choose Save to Files, then open the app and tap “Open a saved App Activity file”.

I opened the file and nothing matched

Usually that means the recording is new. A day or two of ordinary use is often too little to show much.

If the app says in orange that it could not read part of the file, Apple has probably changed the format. Email us the numbers it shows. Please do not send the file itself: it is a list of where your apps went, and it should stay on your phone.

An app I use a lot shows nothing

The catalogue is a list of known tracking domains, not every domain there is. An app that talks mostly to its own servers shows nothing, and that is a real answer about that app.

Some domains the catalogue cannot name are still marked “Flagged by Apple”. That is Apple’s own judgement from the report, shown as Apple gave it.

Can it block what it finds?

No. It shows you what is there and leaves the choice with you. Blocking another app’s connections on an iPhone takes a VPN or a content blocker, and this app is neither.

The report card’s “Your move” section lists what you can change in Settings, which is usually the quickest fix anyway.

Is the sample report my phone?

No. The sample uses made up apps talking to real tracking domains, so you can see what a report looks like before recording one. A banner says so on every screen of it.

Privacy

This version never goes online and collects nothing. The full policy is one tap away.

The privacy policy for iPhone

Still stuck?

Email pettigrewlabllc@gmail.com.

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