Firsts
Firsts holds photographs of your child. We have tried to write this policy the way we would want it written if we were the ones handing over the photos — plainly, and specific about what actually leaves your phone.
The short version. Your photos, notes, and voice clips stay on your device. Nothing is uploaded to us until you invite someone into your family circle — and then only the moments you choose to share with them. If you turn on iCloud backup, a backup file goes to your own iCloud Drive, not to us. We do not add analytics or advertising tools to the app. We do not sell your data, we do not track you across other apps, and we do not use your family's photos to train anything. You can delete your account and our copy of your data from inside the app.
Firsts is operated by Venshares Corp ("we", "us"), a company organised in the State of Florida, United States.
For any privacy question, correction, or deletion request, email privacy@firsts.family. A person reads that address. We aim to respond within 30 days and usually much sooner.
Firsts is designed for parents and caregivers who are 18 or older. It is not directed to children and is not intended for children to use themselves. A parent or caregiver creates the account, adds the child's details, and decides what is captured and who sees it.
The photographs and information about a child in Firsts are provided by that child's parent or caregiver, on their own initiative. We process that content in order to provide the app to them — storing it, and delivering it to the family members they have chosen.
Firsts is local-first. Your iPhone is where your timeline actually lives. Our servers are a courier, not an archive.
| What | Where it lives | Does it leave your phone? |
|---|---|---|
| Photos and notes for a child you have not shared with anyone | Your device only | No |
| Milestone journals and voice clips | Your device only | No — except inside a backup file you choose to make |
| Your child's name, birth or due date, birth time, weight, and length, and profile photo, once sharing is on | Your device and our relay | Yes — to the family members you invited |
| Whether you paused the Store for a pregnancy or child who was lost | Your device, and our relay if sharing is on | Yes, when sharing is on — so every phone in the circle stops showing products |
| Photo files for moments you share, and their crop and rotation | Your device and our private storage bucket | Yes |
| Custom milestones you create and album page layouts, for a shared child | Your device and our relay | Yes — to the family members you invited |
| Sign in with Apple identity | Apple and our authentication provider | Yes — for sign-in only |
| Your display name as a parent | Your device and our relay | Yes — shown to people in your circles and written into their backups |
| Names, optional email labels, and invite links for people you invite | Your device and our relay | Yes |
| Home-screen widget photos | Your device only | No |
| Backup files | Wherever you save them; automatic backups go to your own iCloud Drive | Only to the place you choose. We never receive them |
| Developmental tips and the milestone catalog | Bundled inside the app | No — this is our content, not your data |
| Upcoming-event cards | Calculated on your device from your child's date | No |
| Which Store products to show | Chosen on your phone from the child's age and a published catalog | No — the birth date stays on the phone |
| A product you suggest, and an optional payout email | Your account on our relay | Yes — not tied to a child |
If you never invite anyone, Firsts works as a private app on your phone and your child's photos are never transmitted to us at all.
Two things put copies on Apple's systems rather than ours. Your device's own iCloud Backup, if you use it, may include Firsts' data, under Apple's terms. And if you turn on Automatically back up to iCloud Drive in Firsts' Settings, a backup file is written once a month to the Firsts folder in your iCloud Drive. We cannot read either.
The home-screen widget shows your children's newest photos. It reads them from your device; if you place it on a screen others can see, they can see those photos. Choose who appears in Settings → Widget favorites.
To find crashes and understand which parts of the app people actually use, we collect a limited amount of technical and usage information. We are describing this in full because an app that holds photographs of children should be specific about it.
| Source | What it tells us |
|---|---|
| Our own service records | How many invitations were sent and how many were accepted, when a device last synced, and similar operational facts. This comes from the account data described above; we are not collecting anything extra to produce it. |
| Apple | Aggregate App Store and TestFlight statistics — installs, sessions, crash counts — and crash diagnostic reports. Apple provides these to us in aggregate or de-identified form, and only when you have allowed sharing in your device's Privacy & Security settings. You can turn that off at any time in iOS Settings. |
| TestFlight feedback | If you are a beta tester and send feedback, we receive your message, a screenshot if you attach one, and basic device and app version information. |
Firsts does not include a third-party analytics, crash-reporting, or advertising SDK. If that ever changes, we will update this page before the version that adds it ships, and we will only choose a tool that does not build advertising profiles or track people across other apps.
What diagnostics never contain. Photographs. Your child's name, birth date, or due date. The notes you write. Email addresses. The names of people in your family circle.
Because we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites, Firsts does not ask for App Tracking Transparency permission.
You decide, twice: once when you invite someone, and again for each moment.
Every person you invite gets a role and a sharing group. The role controls what they can do; the group controls how much they see.
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Owner | You. Manages the circle, invites and removes people, sets audiences. |
| Contributor | Can view what their group allows, and add their own photos. Cannot delete anyone else's. |
| Viewer | Can view what their group allows. Cannot add or delete. |
Sharing groups run from closest to widest — Family, Friends, Associates. When you save a moment you choose how far it travels, and it reaches that group and everyone closer to you. A moment shared with Friends is visible to Friends and to Family; it is not visible to Associates.
Please understand the limits of any sharing control. Once a family member can see a photograph, they can screenshot it, save it, or show it to someone else. Firsts controls who receives a photo; it cannot control what a person does with a photo they have been given. Invite people you trust with pictures of your child.
People in your circle can also make a backup file of the photos already on their device. That file names you as the parent, using your display name and account id, so the photos can be returned to you. If you remove someone, Firsts clears the shared copy on their device at its next sync, but it cannot reach a backup file they already saved.
We use a small number of service providers to run Firsts. They act on our instructions and are not permitted to use your information for their own purposes.
| Provider | What they do for us |
|---|---|
| Apple | Sign in with Apple, app distribution through the App Store and TestFlight, aggregate app statistics and crash reports. iCloud Drive holds automatic backups if you turn them on — in your iCloud account, not ours. |
| Supabase | Authentication, the relay database, and private storage for shared photo files. |
| Cloudflare | Turnstile bot check on the brand submission form on our website. Not used in the app. |
| Vercel | Hosts this website. |
Shared photo files are held in a private storage bucket. They are not publicly addressable, and access is enforced on our servers: a file can only be downloaded by a member of the circle whose group is permitted to see that particular moment.
Our servers are located in the United States. If you use Firsts from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed there.
You can delete your account from inside the app: Home → menu → Delete Account. This removes your sign-in account, the family circles you own, the child profiles, moments, custom milestones, and album layouts in them, the associated photo files in storage, any photo files you added to someone else's circle, your memberships in other people's circles, your pending product suggestions, and your payout email. Product suggestions we already accepted or declined are kept without your account id or note. A finder share that was not yet paid ends with the account.
Honest caveats. Data that exists only on your own device — photos, journals, voice clips — remains there until you delete the app; we cannot reach into your device, and we would not want the ability to. Backup files you saved, including automatic backups in your iCloud Drive, are yours to delete. Copies already synced to other members' devices clear when those devices next sync, which requires them to open the app, and we cannot reach backup files they saved.
You can export a backup of your timeline from Home → menu → Export Backup, and restore it with Import Backup. The file is a standard zip with your photos, notes, journals, and voice clips, readable on a computer.
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access the personal information we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, to receive a copy in a portable form, and to be free from discrimination for exercising these rights. Residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, and other states with comprehensive privacy laws have these rights by statute; we extend them to everyone. Email privacy@firsts.family and we will verify your request and act on it.
We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there is nothing for you to opt out of on that front.
Firsts is a service for parents. Accounts are held by adults, and the app is not directed to children under 13 within the meaning of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
We do not knowingly collect information directly from children. Information about a child in Firsts is entered by that child's own parent or caregiver, who decides what to record and who may see it. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will remove it.
Data in transit is encrypted. Shared photo files sit in a private bucket with server-enforced access rules, so membership of a circle — not possession of a link — is what grants access. The local-first design means that most photographs in Firsts are never transmitted anywhere at all, which is the strongest privacy protection available.
No system is perfectly secure, and we will not claim otherwise. If a breach affects your information, we will notify affected users and the relevant authorities as required by law.
Firsts includes general information about typical developmental milestones and age ranges. Children vary enormously, and typical ranges are not standards to be met.
This is general information — not medical advice. Discuss any concern about your child's development with your OB-GYN or pediatrician, who can give recommendations suited to your child's health, genetics, and your family's needs.
If we change what we collect or who we share it with, we will update this page and change the date at the top before shipping the change. For anything significant we will also tell you in the app.
Venshares Corp
4514 Bunker Drive, Sebring, FL 33872
privacy@firsts.family