Selah Verse — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-09-19

Effective 2026-09-19.

Selah Verse ("Selah") is a Bible companion for iPhone. This policy explains what the app collects, what leaves your phone, who else touches it, and how to get rid of all of it. It is written to be read, not to be survived.

The current version of this policy is published at https://selahverseapp.com/privacy.

The short version

• Selah does not ask for your name, your email, or your phone number. Your account is anonymous by default.
• Selah has no advertising or ad networks. We do not sell your data or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
• If crash reporting is configured for a release, Selah sends privacy-minimized crash diagnostics to Sentry. Those reports are not assigned your Selah account ID.
• Photos you take or deliberately choose in Selah are sent to Google's Gemini AI so it can describe the scene and match a verse to it. Google processes the photo and returns a text description. Selah keeps the description. Selah does not keep the photo.
• Search text you type is sent to Google's Gemini AI to be turned into a numeric representation used for meaning-based search.
• Selah does not send a chosen photo, search text, onboarding or check-in text, or a Bible passage requested for a Deep Dive to Google Gemini until you have read the disclosure that names Google and tapped Allow and continue.
• That one account-level permission covers every AI feature listed in this policy. Selah does not ask again for each feature unless you withdraw permission or the disclosure changes.
• You can withdraw that permission inside Settings → How Selah uses AI → Turn off AI processing. Selah then removes your user-linked AI artifacts. Your saved verses and Margins remain, and the next AI feature asks again before sending anything.
• You can delete your account and backend data inside Settings → Account. You can also ask for help at support@soulsurferz.co.

The rest of this page is the detail behind those points.

1. Who we are

Selah Verse is published by the developer of record listed on the app's App Store page, where it is listed as Selah Verse: Bible Keyboard. For anything in this policy, including privacy requests, write to support@soulsurferz.co.

This policy covers the Selah Verse iPhone app (com.attilax0.selah) and everything that ships inside it: the main app, the Selah keyboard (com.attilax0.selah.keyboard), the Selah iMessage app (com.attilax0.selah.messages), and the home screen and lock screen widgets (com.attilax0.selah.widgets).

2. Your account

When you first open Selah, the app creates an anonymous account on our backend (Supabase). No sign-up screen, password, or email address is required. The account is identified by a randomly generated ID that means nothing outside Selah and is not linked to your Apple ID, Google account, phone number, contacts, or any advertising identifier unless you later choose Continue with Apple or Continue with Google.

That anonymous ID is what lets your saved verses and your settings survive an app restart, and it is what the keyboard and iMessage extension use to stay in sync with the main app.

An unlinked anonymous account cannot be recovered if you delete the app or switch phones. If you choose to link Apple or Google, the provider gives Selah a stable account identifier and may provide your email address and name. Selah uses that information only to attach and restore your account. You can then recover your library by signing in with the same provider.

3. What Selah collects

3.1 Your settings and profile

Your chosen translation, your card density, the "core need" and other choices you make during onboarding, free-form text you choose to enter during a check-in, your notification hour, whether you have completed onboarding, and whether you have an active subscription. Free-form check-in text is used transiently for the optional AI processing described in section 4.3; Selah stores the resulting personalization signal, not that text, on its server.

3.2 What you save and read

Verses you save, any Margin you attach in your own words, which surface you saved them from, and your progress through the chapters you read. Margins are stored with your Selah account so they survive reinstall and a second phone. They are never sent to Google Gemini.

3.3 What you do in the app

Selah records product events so we can tell which parts of the app actually help people and which parts waste their time. Each event is a short name, a timestamp, a session ID, and a small set of properties. In plain terms, the events cover:

• Verses — a verse shown, how long it stayed on screen, dismissed, saved, unsaved, sent, copied, opened from a widget or a notification.
• Search and browse — that a search happened and which result you tapped, which category or trending item you opened, which book you opened in Read.
• Camera — that a capture happened, which of the three suggested verses you kept, whether you asked for more, whether you saved the image and whether it carried a watermark.
• Extensions — that the keyboard or iMessage app was opened, that a verse was inserted or sent, and whether the keyboard was running offline.
• Onboarding, settings and reminders — which onboarding question was answered, when onboarding finished, translation and density changes, check-in answers.
• Subscription — that a paywall was shown and, if it happened, which product was purchased.
• Sensitive-topic safeguards — that a crisis-support response was shown, and on which surface. This records that the safeguard fired. It does not record what you typed.

Events are tied to your Selah account ID. The ID is anonymous by default; if you later link Apple or Google sign-in, it remains the same account and can then be restored by that identity.

3.4 Search text

What you type into Selah's search box, the keyboard's search field, or the iMessage app's search field is sent to our server so it can find verses that match your meaning rather than your spelling. See section 4 for what happens to it there.

3.5 Camera photos and scene descriptions

Covered in full in section 4.1, because this is the part that matters most.

3.6 Crash diagnostics

If crash reporting is configured for a production release, Selah sends Sentry the crash or error type and technical app, operating-system, and device context needed to diagnose it. Selah removes request data, network and console breadcrumbs, free-form extras, email addresses, and account IDs before an event is sent. Crash reports are not assigned your Selah account ID and do not include photos, search text, notes, saved verses, onboarding answers, or AI request bodies.

3.7 Calendar-derived daily themes

If you explicitly enable Your calendar, Selah reads calendar event names on your phone and compares them there against a fixed theme vocabulary. Event names never leave your phone and are never saved by Selah. At most one derived theme category for a day (for example, work or family) is sent to Selah's server so it can choose that day's verse. The category is stored with the daily-verse record for the life of your account. It is not sent to Google Gemini.

3.8 What Selah does not collect

No contacts. No location. No health records. No browsing history. No advertising identifier (IDFA). No microphone. No photo library scanning: Selah only ever receives the single image you deliberately pick or shoot. Calendar event names stay on the phone as described above.

4. AI processing: what leaves your phone

Selah uses Google Gemini, a third-party AI service operated by Google, for camera matching, semantic search, optional personalization, and Deep Dive analysis. Before any of the data below is sent, Selah presents a separate in-app request that names Google Gemini, lists the data and purposes, and offers Allow and continue or Not now. This request is separate from Apple's Camera permission. An operating-system permission does not count as permission to share data with Google. That single permission covers every data type and AI feature listed in this section. It is saved against your Selah account, so the app does not ask again for each feature. Selah asks again only after you withdraw permission or a changed disclosure becomes effective.

4.1 Camera photos

When you use Selah's camera or choose one photo from your library to find a verse for a moment:

1. The photo is resized on your phone to roughly 768 pixels on its longest edge.
2. That resized image is sent over an encrypted connection to our server, and from there to Google Gemini.
3. Gemini looks at the image and returns text: a description of the scene, its emotional tone, and a general category. It does not generate an image and it does not identify people.
4. Selah uses that text to pick three verses to show you.

What is kept, and by whom:

• Selah does not store your photo. The image exists in memory for the length of the request and is never written to our database or to any file storage we control. If you save the finished image to your camera roll, that copy lives on your phone, under your control, not ours.
• Selah does store the text description Gemini produced, along with the three verses suggested, which one you kept, whether you saved it, and technical details of the request (the model name, token counts, how long it took, and which version of this disclosure you agreed to). The description is what lets Selah get better at matching verses to real moments.
• Google's handling of the image is governed by Google's Gemini API terms and Data Processing Addendum. Selah uses a Cloud project with active billing, so Google treats the requests as a paid service and states that prompts, files, and responses are not used to improve Google products. Google may still keep limited prompts and responses temporarily to detect abuse, maintain security, and meet legal obligations. Selah does not claim zero data retention and does not use Gemini features that deliberately retain files or cached conversations.

Consent is required and it is specific. Before the camera or photo picker opens, Selah shows the separate consent request described above. The server also refuses camera requests from any account that has not granted the currently effective version. If you choose Not now, no photo is selected or sent and the non-AI parts of Selah remain available. After you agree, Selah makes no new AI request unless you deliberately use an AI feature.

4.2 Search text

When you search, the text you typed is sent to Google Gemini's embedding model, which converts it into a list of numbers representing its meaning. Selah compares those numbers against the same representation of every verse in the Bible and returns the closest matches.

Selah caches the numeric representation of a query under a one-way query digest so that a common search does not have to be sent to Google twice. The cache stores neither the query text nor an account identifier.

4.3 Your onboarding and check-in answers

If you consent to AI processing, the onboarding questions, your "core need," later check-in choices, and free-form check-in text you deliberately enter can be turned into the same kind of numeric representation by Google Gemini and stored against your account so the For You feed can lean toward verses that fit. Selah stores that numeric personalization signal; it does not store the free-form check-in text on its server. If you do not consent, onboarding and check-ins still work and those answers are not sent to Google.

4.4 Deep Dive passages

When you open a Deep Dive, Selah sends the selected King James Bible wording and its reference to Google Gemini so it can write an analysis. It does not send your name, saved- verse list, notes, search text, camera history, or personalization profile with that request. The resulting analysis is stored against the passage and is shared by everyone who opens that passage; it is not written as personal guidance about you.

4.5 Nothing else goes to an AI service

Selah never sends your saved-verse list, Margins, calendar event names, reading history, or event stream to Google or any other AI provider. A passage is sent only when you explicitly request its Deep Dive.

5. Who else receives data

Google also processes optional Google sign-in as described in section 2. That is the complete list. There is no advertising SDK, analytics broker, attribution network, or data enrichment vendor in Selah.

We use these companies as service providers under their published terms and, where they act as processors, their data-processing agreements. Those commitments require processing for the contracted service, confidentiality, security safeguards, deletion or return provisions, and equivalent obligations for subprocessors. We require every third party that receives Selah user data to provide the same or greater protection stated in this policy and required by App Store Review Guideline 5.1.1. If a provider can no longer do so, we stop sending it user data.

6. Extensions and widgets

The Selah keyboard. The keyboard ships with roughly six hundred verses built into it, so the most common searches never leave your phone. If you grant Full Access, the keyboard can reach our server for full-library search, which sends the text you typed into the Selah search field exactly as described in section 4.2. The keyboard never reads, stores, or transmits what you type into other apps. Without Full Access, it runs entirely offline against the built-in verses.

The Selah iMessage app. It sends the text you type into its own search field, the same way. It does not read your conversations.

Widgets. The home screen and lock screen widgets read the day's verse from a shared container on your own device. They send nothing.

7. Subscriptions and payments

Selah Premium is sold through Apple. Apple handles the payment and tells us only whether an entitlement is active. We never see your card number, your billing address, or your Apple ID. Superwall, which presents and measures our subscription screens, receives a stable pseudonymous Selah account identifier, paywall interactions, and purchase/entitlement metadata such as product, store, environment, billing period, trial or refund status, transaction identifiers, and proceeds. Selah uses that information to reconcile Premium access; Superwall does not receive your Selah display name, notes, saved verses, camera photos, search text, or personalization answers.

8. Notifications

Selah's reminders are scheduled locally on your phone. There is no push server and no push token. If you turn notifications off in iOS Settings, nothing is sent anywhere; the schedule simply stops.

9. Sensitive topics

Selah checks search text for language that suggests a crisis before it does anything else with it. When that check fires, Selah shows a compassionate response with crisis resources including the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and the Crisis Text Line, along with hand-picked verses rather than algorithmic results.

We record that this happened, and on which surface, so we can tell the safeguard is working. We do not record what you typed, and we do not flag, profile, or contact anyone.

Selah is not a counselling service and cannot summon help. If you are in danger, call your local emergency number.

10. How long we keep things

• Your profile, saved verses, Margins, reading progress, and daily-verse theme categories stay until you ask us to delete them.
• Camera scene descriptions and AI personalization signatures stay until you delete your account.
• Product events stay until you delete your account. We may remove older events sooner.
• Sentry crash diagnostics follow the retention schedule configured in our Sentry project. They are not assigned your Selah account ID and cannot be used to reconstruct your backend account.
• The shared query cache holds numeric representations under one-way digests, not query text or people, and is kept indefinitely.
• Photos are not retained at all.
• Google Gemini requests follow Google's paid-service terms: content is not used to improve Google products, but limited content logging may occur temporarily for abuse prevention, security, and legal obligations. Selah has not enabled or claimed guaranteed Zero Data Retention.

11. Withdrawing AI consent and deleting your data

11.1 Turn off AI processing

Open Settings → How Selah uses AI → Turn off AI processing. After you confirm, Selah withdraws the current AI-processing grant and transactionally removes your user-linked camera scene descriptions and AI-derived personalization signatures. The keyboard and iMessage network search fail closed. Your saved verses, Margins, reading progress, account, and shared passage analyses remain. The next Camera, semantic Search, personalization, or uncached Deep Dive action shows the consent request again before sending anything.

Withdrawing permission cannot recall transient content that Google already processed under its paid-service terms or remove a shared Deep Dive analysis that is about a Bible passage, not about you. It prevents future processing and removes the user-linked AI artifacts Selah controls.

11.2 Delete your account

Open Settings → Account → Delete account to erase your profile, saved verses, notes, reading progress, scene descriptions, personalization data, product events, and the Selah account itself. The app confirms whether the deletion completed; if it reports a failure, your account remains blocked from normal use while a retry finishes the deletion safely.

Crash diagnostics already sent to Sentry are not assigned your Selah account ID, so the in-app account deletion cannot locate an otherwise unlinkable diagnostic event. Sentry removes those events under the project retention schedule.

You can also write to support@soulsurferz.co for help with a privacy request. If you can still access Selah, use Settings → Contact us; the prepared message includes your anonymous account ID automatically so we can locate the right account.

Deleting the app from your phone removes the local copy of your data but does not by itself erase the backend record. Use the in-app deletion control before uninstalling, or contact us for help.

12. Children

Selah is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has used Selah and left data behind, write to support@soulsurferz.co and we will delete it. Where local law sets a higher age of digital consent (16 in parts of the EU and UK), that higher age applies.

13. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export, or delete the data we hold about you, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to complain to a data protection authority.

We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, as those terms are defined under California law. There is nothing to opt out of, because we never opted you in.

Exercise any of these rights by writing to support@soulsurferz.co. We will not charge you and we will not treat you differently for asking.

Our legal bases under GDPR, where it applies, are: consent for AI processing and notifications; contract for running your account, your library, and your subscription; and legitimate interests for product analytics, security, and abuse prevention.

Data is processed on servers in the United States. Where required, transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses maintained by our processors.

14. Security

Everything travels over encrypted connections. Database access is governed by row-level security so that one account cannot read another's rows. Our AI keys live only on the server and never inside the app. No system is perfect, and we will tell affected users promptly if we ever discover a breach that puts their data at risk.

15. Scripture, attribution and licences

Selah's scripture texts and study data are public domain, CC0, CC BY, or CC BY-SA. The full attribution, reproduced in the app under Settings → About / Credits, is:

Scripture
King James Version (1769), public domain.
Berean Standard Bible, public domain (CC0), Bible Hub, 2023.
Free Bible Version, copyright © 2018 Dr. Jonathan Gallagher. Used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). Text reproduced without modification.
World English Bible, public domain. "World English Bible" is a trademark of eBible.org.
American Standard Version (1901), public domain.
The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation from the Original Languages, J. N. Darby (1890). Public domain.
Young's Literal Translation (1862/1898), public domain.
Texts sourced from eBible.org.

Topical & related-verse data
Topical and cross-reference data © OpenBible.info, CC BY.

The OpenBible.info line is a licence obligation under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Free Bible Version line is a licence obligation under CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/); Selah reproduces that text without modification. "World English Bible" is a trademark of eBible.org, used here only to name the translation.

16. Changes to this policy

If we change how Selah handles your data, we will update this page and move the date at the top. For a change that materially expands what we collect or where it goes, we will ask you again inside the app rather than relying on you to re-read this page.

17. Contact

support@soulsurferz.co

Selah Verse on the web: https://selahverseapp.com

Terms of Use: https://selahverseapp.com/terms