What FerventWord App stores, where it keeps it, and the three occasions on which anything leaves your device.
On Your Device
- The versions — all of them came with the app
- Your reading plans, and the reminder times you set
- Your highlights, the notes you attach to them, and the notebooks you sort them into — the name you give a notebook and what you write about what goes in it are yours in the same way a note is
- The three bookmarks in the reading bar — the passages you are holding on this device, and the version each one is read in
- Recent passages — where you have been reading, so you can go back. Recent keeps the arrangement rather than just the passage: if you were holding two or three places at once, they are kept together so you can reopen all of them
- Your Default Version, any versions you set for individual bookmarks, the version each reading plan is read in, the text size you chose, whether verses are laid out as paragraphs or one to a line, whether red letter is on, and where the reference sits in Scripture you copy
In Your iCloud
Reading plans, highlights, notes, notebooks, recent passages and settings sync through your private iCloud database. They are visible to you, on your devices, and to nobody else. Each category can be turned off separately in Settings → Sync.
A plan syncs as its definition — which books, in what order, starting when, for how long — not as a list of days. Versions are never synced.
Your three bookmarks stay on the device that set them, and so do the versions you set on them. They are where that device is looking right now, so having another device move them while you are comparing two passages would be a nuisance rather than a convenience. What you opened is kept in recent passages, which does sync — including which version you read it in.
Your Default Version, the per-bookmark defaults in Settings, and each plan's version do sync, in the same way every other setting does.
What Is Not Stored
FerventWord App does not record which days you read. There is nowhere in the app that holds it: today's reading is worked out from your plan and today's date, so a day you miss leaves no trace because there is nothing for it to leave a trace in.
Taking It With You
Anything you make in FerventWord App, you can take out of it. Settings → Export & Import saves a reading plan or a notebook of highlights as a file you can open and read in any text editor — no app needed to make sense of it.
A plan's file holds its settings, its reminders and its whole schedule, day by day. A notebook's file holds each highlight's passage, its color and the note you wrote. Neither holds the Bible text itself; the versions came with the app and are not yours to give away.
The same screen saves your meditations as a file too — every one of them, from FerventWord App and from Prayer Mentions, in one place, each with its words. A meditation you made from a passage carries the reference and edition alongside them, so you can find it again in any Bible. Where a meditation is old enough that the app it came from was never recorded, the file says so rather than leaving a blank.
The same screen brings a plan or a notebook back in. An imported plan keeps the start date it was exported with, so day 140 is still day 140, and imported notes arrive as a new notebook rather than being mixed into one you already have. You are shown what a file contains, and what it cannot bring across, before anything is added.
Sharing With Prayer Mentions
Choosing Make Meditation on a passage writes that passage into a small area FerventWord App shares with Prayer Mentions, our prayer reminder app, so it can become the meditation there. Nothing is written unless you choose to send it, and an unread passage is removed after fourteen days. That area is on your device; nothing about it goes over a network.
It works both ways, and it holds exactly two things: a passage you have chosen to send, and — written by Prayer Mentions, not by FerventWord App — whichever meditation is current there.
Your meditations themselves are kept in a second private iCloud database, separate from the one holding your highlights, notes and plans, and it holds meditations and nothing else. Both apps read and write it, which is why a meditation made in either one appears in both. Settings → Sync is where you switch that off. Meditations describes the feature itself.
Nothing else crosses. Your notes, your highlights, your notebooks, your reading plans and your reminder times stay in FerventWord App's own storage, and Prayer Mentions cannot read them. Neither app can reach the other's private storage.
Deleting What You Have Written
All three are in Settings → Data & Backups.
Delete Notebooks deletes the notebooks you choose and every highlight and note inside them, on this device and on your other devices. It cannot be undone, and it is the one control in FerventWord App that destroys work you made rather than a record of where you have been. Export first if you want a copy.
Clear Recent Passages empties the list of where you have been reading. It takes nothing else with it.
Clear Your Meditations removes them from both apps at once, on every device. The database holding them is shared, so deleting a meditation deletes it for Prayer Mentions too.
Reminders
Reminders are scheduled on each device separately and are never synced. The times you choose do sync, and each device works out the same schedule from them.
What Leaves Your Device
Nothing, unless you ask for it. FerventWord App makes three kinds of network request and no others:
- Syncing, which carries your own work to your own iCloud and nowhere else.
- Looking up a recording, when you tap Listen on ESV + Audio. The app sends the passage you asked to hear — and nothing else — to ferventwordministries.org, which asks Crossway's audio service where that recording is and sends back the address. The passage travels in the body of the request rather than in the web address, so it is not written into a server log, and what is counted there is a day and an edition, never a passage. If you never choose that edition, the request never happens.
- Giving, if you use Menu → Give. Apple Pay authorises the payment and the app sends a one-time payment token and the amount to ferventwordministries.org, where the donation is charged through Stripe. Your card number never reaches the app, and nothing about a donation is kept on your device. If you never give, it never happens.
There is no analytics, no tracking, and no usage reporting.
A file you export leaves your device only when you send it somewhere — FerventWord App hands it to whatever you choose to share it with, and keeps no copy of its own.
Copying puts what you copied on the system clipboard, which every app you open next can read, and which your other Apple devices can receive. That is true of a passage, of a note, and of the two together. It is the clipboard behaving normally rather than anything FerventWord App does with it, and it is worth knowing because a note is yours in a way a verse is not.
Crash and performance reports from the system stay on your device and are included only in a diagnostic report you choose to email.
Menu → Help & Support is where that report is made, at the foot of the screen. It describes the app: the version, the device model, whether iCloud sync is on, counts of your notebooks and highlights, and the app's recent activity log. It never carries a note, the words of a highlight, or your recent passages. Your mail app opens with the report attached, so you read it before you send it — and nothing is sent if you close the message instead.
The full policy is at https://www.ferventwordministries.org/ferventword-app/privacy-policy/.