Age Suitability

Howdy Mate! is a personal reminder tool for staying in touch with friends and family. You add the people you care about, choose how often you would like to reach out to each of them, and the app nudges you when it has been a while. When you do reach out, you log it with a tap. That is the whole app.

It is designed for adults and older teenagers who manage their own friendships, but it contains nothing that would be unsuitable for a younger person to see.

Apple's 4+ rating is its lowest band and means the app contains no objectionable material. Howdy Mate! earns it because of what it leaves out:

• No accounts. There is nothing to sign up for and no profile. The app does not know who you are.
• No messaging or chat. Nobody can contact you through the app, and you cannot contact anyone through it. It has no inbox, no friend requests and no way for two users to find each other.
• No social feed or shared content. Nothing you write is published or visible to other people. There is no user-generated content from anyone else to encounter.
• No advertising. The app shows no ads and includes no advertising or tracking SDKs.
• No purchases. The app is completely free, with no subscriptions, no in-app purchases, no loot boxes and no gambling or simulated gambling.
• No web browser. The app has no built-in browser and does not let you navigate to arbitrary web pages. The handful of links it does contain, such as this website and the privacy policy, open in Safari.
• No mature content. No violence, profanity, horror, sexual content, alcohol, tobacco or drug references, and no medical or health advice.
• No location tracking. The app never asks for or uses your location.

When you decide to contact someone you have added, Howdy Mate! can open Apple's own Phone, Messages or FaceTime app with that person's number filled in. The conversation itself happens in those apps, not in Howdy Mate!, and it works only with numbers you entered or imported yourself. Any Screen Time or communication limits set on the device for Phone, Messages and FaceTime continue to apply.

If you choose to, the app can read your device Contacts to help you add people quickly. Contacts access is optional, is requested only when you tap to use it, and the details it reads never leave the device.

Users type the names of their friends, optional notes about them and a short note when they log a check-in. Because none of this is shared or moderated, a young user could write anything in those fields, but it is visible only on that device and only to whoever holds it. It is never sent to us or to anyone else.

Everything you enter, including names, birthdays, notes, photos and check-in history, is stored only on the device and is never uploaded. We operate no servers and hold no personal information about any user, child or adult. The app does send anonymous crash reports and anonymous usage counts so we can keep it working; these carry no personal content and are not linked to any person. The details are in our privacy policy.

Howdy Mate! has no content that needs restricting, so it includes no parental controls of its own and does not ask users to prove their age. Apple's Screen Time settings work as expected: with the Apps rating restriction set to 4+ or above, the app remains available.

If you have a question about the app's suitability for someone in your care, email [email protected]. You can also read our support page and terms of service.