Privacy Policy
Yalla English is an English learning app for Arabic speakers. You can use it signed in with an email and password or with Google, or you can continue as a guest. This policy explains what the app processes, why, where it is stored, and how you can delete it.
If you use the app as a guest, nothing you do is sent to our servers. Guest progress stays on your device.
Information the app processes
Account information
- Signing in with an email and password uses the email address you supply.
- Signing in with Google may provide an email address, display name, profile image, and account identifier to Firebase Authentication. The app itself does not read a name into its own storage — it never asks you for your name and does not store one.
- Firebase Authentication processes sign-in credentials and account status. We never see or store your password.
Guest use requires no account and creates none.
Learning and profile information
When you are signed in, the app stores the following against your account:
- lesson progress and completion;
- total and daily app-use and listening minutes;
- course listening totals, streaks, and your daily goal;
- favourite lessons and saved words;
- daily usage totals and feature activity counts;
- whether you have completed onboarding and the first-run tips;
- feedback you choose to write and submit (see Feedback you send us).
Information kept only on your device
The following is stored on your device and is not sent to our servers:
- your mistake book and the review schedule built from it;
- your English level result from the level check;
- vocabulary quiz batches and history, grammar practice, and weak grammar tags;
- voice recordings you make in Word Shadowing and Sentence Shadowing;
- settings such as theme, interface language, text sizes, and playback preferences;
- downloaded lesson audio and cached lesson text;
- your daily reminder preference.
Microphone and voice recordings
Word Shadowing and Sentence Shadowing let you record yourself and compare your pronunciation with the original audio.
- The app asks for microphone access only when you start a recording.
- Recordings are saved in private app storage on your device.
- Recordings are never uploaded, synchronised, shared, scored, or used for AI feedback. They are not sent to Firebase, to our content delivery service, to analytics, or anywhere else.
- You can delete individual recordings where you made them, and you can clear all of either practice’s recordings from Settings › Voice Recordings. Each practice has its own control and clears only its own recordings.
- Deleting your account also deletes both sets of recordings from that device.
Feedback you send us
After you have used the app for a while, it may ask how you are finding it. If you choose Could be better, you can write a message telling us what to improve.
- We record which answer you gave. If you choose I love it, we store that you did, with no message attached — there is no text box on that answer and nothing else is collected. If you choose Could be better, we store your answer together with whatever you write. Choosing Maybe later, or closing the dialog, records nothing at all.
- A message is sent only when you tap Submit. Nothing is sent if you close the dialog or tap Back.
- When you are signed in, your answer is stored against your account so we can read it and act on it. The dialog says so before you submit.
- In guest mode there is no account to store it under, so your answer stays on your device and is not sent anywhere. The dialog says this too, and offers signing in as the way to send it. If you later sign in, an answer you gave as a guest is sent then.
- We ask what could be improved, not who you are. Please do not include personal details in the message — we do not need them, and the box is not a support channel for account issues.
- Alongside your answer we store which milestone prompted it, the app version, and the time it arrived. We do not store your email address or your name with it, and the tool we read it in does not show us your account identifier.
- Whichever answer you give, you can also rate the app on Google Play if you want to. Telling us something could be better never removes that option.
- Your answer is deleted along with the rest of your account data when you delete your account.
Notifications
If you turn on the daily reminder, the app schedules a notification on your device. No notification is sent from a server, and no push notification identifier is created.
Your level-check result, saving, and sharing
The English level check produces a result that is stored on your device. If you choose to save it as an image or PDF, the file is written into your device’s public Downloads folder, where other apps on your device can read it. If you choose to share it, it goes to whichever app you select — after that, that app’s own privacy practices apply. Neither happens unless you ask for it.
Usage analytics
Yalla English uses Google Analytics for Firebase to measure how the app is used, so it can be improved.
The app’s own analytics events are limited by design. They carry lesson, topic, category and content identifiers, English levels, modes, counts, whole-minute durations, score ranges, and fixed error codes. They do not carry your name, email address, account identifier, saved-word text, tapped-word text, transcript or translation text, quiz or grammar content, file paths, or any audio. Word Shadowing and Sentence Shadowing send practice counts only, never audio.
While analytics is on, Google Analytics for Firebase also collects its own automatic events and uses a pseudonymous app-instance identifier, and may process standard app and device information.
You can turn usage analytics off. Open Settings › Privacy & data › Usage analytics. It is on when you install the app. Turning it off stops both the app’s own events and Google’s automatic collection. The choice is stored on your device, applies whether or not you are signed in, and is never sent to our servers.
The app contains no advertising SDK and no dedicated crash-reporting SDK, and does not request the Android advertising ID.
Content delivery
Lesson audio and text are delivered from Cloudflare. The delivery service may process standard network information such as IP address, request time, the file requested, and device or connection headers.
How information is used
To sign you in and keep your account secure; to save and restore your learning progress across devices; to provide favourites, saved words, review and practice features; to deliver lesson content and offline downloads; to remember your settings; to act on feedback you send; and to find and fix problems in the app.
Yalla English does not sell your personal information, and does not share it with anyone for advertising.
Service providers
Yalla English relies on these services, each of which processes information under its own terms and privacy practices:
- Firebase Authentication (Google) — account access
- Cloud Firestore (Google) — learning data stored against your account
- Google Analytics for Firebase — usage measurement
- Google Sign-In — optional Google authentication
- Cloudflare — delivery of lesson audio and text
How long information is kept
Information stored against your account is kept for as long as your account exists, and is removed when the account is deleted. There is no separate expiry period: it lives as long as the account does.
Information kept on your device stays there until you clear it in the app, delete your account, or uninstall the app.
Usage analytics is held by Google Analytics for Firebase under that service’s own retention controls.
Your choices
- Guest mode — use the app without an account; nothing is sent to our servers.
- Usage analytics — turn it off in Settings › Privacy & data.
- Downloads — see and delete downloaded lesson audio in Settings.
- Recordings — delete individual recordings, or clear all of either practice’s recordings from Settings › Voice Recordings.
- Daily reminder — turn it off at any time in Settings.
- Microphone — you can refuse or withdraw microphone permission in Android settings; only the shadowing practices use it.
- Sign out — ends the session without deleting anything.
- Ask what is stored — email us and we will tell you what is held against your account.
- Delete your account — see below.
Account and data deletion
Signed-in users can open Settings › Account › Delete Account. The flow asks you to confirm your identity and then to confirm the deletion. It deletes:
- your learning data and your feedback stored against your account;
- your sign-in account;
- your account-linked preferences and your learning, review, and practice data on that device;
- the voice recordings you saved in Word Shadowing and Sentence Shadowing on that device, including the audio files themselves;
- downloaded and cached lesson audio and text on that device.
Device-wide settings that are not tied to any account — theme, interface language, text sizes, playback preferences — are kept, because deleting one account is not a reset of the device.
The app can only ever address your own account: it is restricted to the signed-in user by both the app itself and by server-side security rules, and it uses no administrative credentials.
If you no longer have the app installed, you can still ask us to delete your account. See how to delete your account.
Children
Yalla English is not directed to children under 13. It is designed for people aged 13 and older who are learning English.
The app does not ask for a date of birth and does not verify anyone’s age. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, email yallaenglish.app@gmail.com and we will delete the account and the data held against it.
Security
Reasonable technical safeguards are used, including authenticated access, HTTPS for all network traffic, and server-side rules that restrict every stored document to the account that owns it. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
Changes to this policy
This policy may be updated when the app’s behaviour, its service providers, or legal requirements change. The effective date at the top is updated whenever a revised policy is published.
Contact
Privacy questions and account deletion requests: yallaenglish.app@gmail.com