Three apps on your shortlist, and the only honest way to compare what each one takes from you appears to be installing all three and reading three privacy policies. It is not. Both app stores already publish a structured summary of AI girlfriend app data collection on every listing, written by the developer to a fixed template, readable from a signed-out browser, and comparable across candidates in a way prose never is. It is also self-reported, which is the catch. Here is what the two panels disclose, what they leave out by design, and the five cells to copy into your table before you install anything.
The two store panels ask different questions
On an App Store listing the block is sorted by identity. Apple's privacy information splits what an app takes into three buckets: data used to track you, which Apple defines as data from the app that is linked with your data collected from other companies' apps, websites, or offline properties; data linked to you, meaning tied to your account, device or details; and data not linked to you. The organising question is whether a thing can be joined back to the person typing.
On Google Play the block is sorted by destination. The Data safety section asks what is collected, what is shared with third parties, whether each type is required or optional, whether the app encrypts data in transit, and what routes it offers you to delete your data. The organising question is where a thing goes once it leaves your hand.
Neither panel answers the other's question, so an app can show a short list on one store and a longer one on the other without either being wrong. If a candidate ships on both platforms, read both listings even though you only use one phone: separate forms, not translations, and the gap between them is information.
What "collected" leaves out on purpose
Both forms define their terms narrowly, and the definitions are published rather than hidden. On Google Play a developer need not disclose data that never leaves your device or is processed only ephemerally, and passing data to a service provider acting on the developer's behalf does not count as sharing. On the App Store, a developer may omit a data type where collection is infrequent and not part of the app's primary functionality.
So a thin panel can be accurate and still not mean that little happens. For a companion app the item you care about most is the conversation itself, stored because memory is the feature, and it may appear as one line in a list of twelve or not appear under its own name at all. Read the list for the words that describe your messages before anything else, and treat their absence as a question for the privacy policy rather than as an answer.
Five cells for the data collection column
This is a screening exercise, not a verdict, and it belongs in the same table as the price and the free tier. Three minutes per candidate, before you create a single account:
- Tracking, or sharing. On the App Store, whether anything sits under "data used to track you". On Google Play, whether the shared column has entries. Either tells you the data is leaving the building.
- Whether your conversations are named. Does any item plainly describe messages, chat content or in-app communications. Note the exact label, because the wording varies and the variation is the interesting part.
- Required against optional. A Google Play cell, and the most underrated one. It tells you how much of the list you can decline and still have a working app.
- Encryption in transit, and a stated deletion route. Both are declared in the Data safety block, and a deletion route described there is one you can hold the app to later.
- Whether the two panels for the same app agree. Only for apps on both stores. A wide gap proves nothing by itself and is the best prompt for reading the policy properly.
Write "not stated" where that is the truth. A column of blanks beside a column of specifics separates two apps more cleanly than most feature lists do — the same logic as the columns that actually separate these apps, applied to data rather than price.
Self-reported, and neither store checks it
Here is the limit of the method, and it is a real one. Apple states that the privacy information is self-reported by the developer. Google is blunter still: an app can pay for an independent security review and show the badge, and that review does not verify the accuracy or completeness of the Data safety disclosure itself. Both panels are forms a company filled in because shipping required it.
A disclosure panel is a commitment, not an audit. Compare the commitments, then watch what the app actually does.
That still has value: a public commitment in a fixed format is easier to check and harder to walk back than a paragraph of policy prose. But the data collection column will not break a tie on its own. If two shortlisted apps publish near-identical panels, stop pulling at it — the decision goes back to price, to what the free tier lets you test, and to whether the exit is documented.
Checking the panel against the installed app
Once an app is on your phone, the phone reports on it independently of anything a developer typed into a form.
On an iPhone, App Privacy Report sits in Settings under Privacy and Security. Switch it on and it logs how many times and when each app reached for location, photos, camera, microphone or contacts over the past seven days, alongside the domains the app contacted. On Android, the privacy dashboard under Security and privacy shows which apps used which permissions — seven days on Android 13 and later, twenty-four hours on Android 12.
What you are looking for is narrow: microphone access on a text-only tier, location access at all, any reach toward contacts. Keep the limits in view: a contacted-domain list tells you a connection happened, not what travelled over it, and an unfamiliar model-provider domain is ordinary for an app running on someone else's model rather than a red flag.
Where this fits in the shortlist
The order matters more than the thoroughness. Read the panels while the apps are still candidates, install only the ones that survive, and turn the privacy report on before the trial week starts. Check the exit on the way in rather than the way out: the deletion column is the other one most people fill in too late.
The app we currently recommend lists conversation content as collected rather than leaving the category unmentioned, which reads at first glance like a mark against it and is closer to the opposite. A longer, more specific panel usually means a company that filled the form in properly. A conspicuously short one, on an app whose whole purpose is remembering what you said, is the entry worth a second look.
Frequently asked questions
What data do AI girlfriend apps collect?
It varies by app, and the listing is where you find out rather than guess. Typically an identifier, contact details, purchase history, device and usage data, and the conversations themselves, since memory depends on storing them. Check whether message content is named on the store panel, then check the policy for how long it is kept.
Can I see what data an app collects before installing it?
Yes, on both stores, from a browser and without an account. An App Store listing carries a privacy section sorted into data used to track you, linked to you and not linked to you. A Google Play listing carries a Data safety section covering what is collected, what is shared, what is optional and how to delete it.
Does Apple or Google verify these privacy labels?
No, not in the sense of auditing them. AI girlfriend app data collection panels are completed by the developer, and Google states plainly that even an optional independent security review does not verify the accuracy or completeness of the Data safety disclosure. Treat a panel as a public commitment useful for screening, not as proof.
Disclosure. DearHeart AI may earn a commission if you sign up through a Visit link on this page, at no cost to you. It does not change what we write. How we earn.