Meridian

Privacy policy

Last updated: 2026-10-18.

Meridian ("we") is a study app. This page explains what we collect and why.

What we collect

• Your account basics: name and email address (and profile photo if you sign in with Google), used to sign you in and show your account. If you sign up with email and password, your password is handled by Google Firebase Authentication; we never see or store it. If you sign in with Apple, you can choose to hide your email.
• Profile details you choose to add: grade, age range, school, study goals and colour theme, used to personalise the app.
• What you add: classes, notes, uploaded files' text, lecture transcripts, tasks, grades, clubs and activities, exam plans and study progress.
• Basic usage: study time and answers, used for your streak, skill map and statistics.

How it's used

• To run the app for you: save your work, sync it across your devices and build your study games.
• AI features: when you build a unit, use the tutor, make a study guide, mark a written answer, set up exam prep, import screenshots or use quick add, the relevant text (and any photos or screenshots you attach) is sent to our AI provider, Anthropic, to generate the result. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, this data is not used to train their models.
• Homework help: photos or text of a homework problem are sent to the AI to give you hints and check your work. They aren't stored.
• Screenshots: screenshots you import (for grades or assignments) are sent to the AI to read and are not stored; only the rows you choose to import are saved.
• Help videos: suggested videos are found with a YouTube search of your unit's topic (not your notes) and play from YouTube in privacy-enhanced mode. YouTube's own privacy policy applies when you watch.
• Video lessons: to build a lesson, Meridian searches YouTube for the skill's topic and sends the link of a public YouTube video to Google's Gemini AI, which maps where each idea starts and ends in the video. Only the video link is sent to Google, never your notes, answers or account details. The map is saved and shared so other students who get the same video don't need a new one. Lesson questions and explanations are written by our AI provider, Anthropic, from your notes.
• Friends and study rooms (optional): if you pick a username, friends you add can see your first name, username, character, streak, study minutes this week, your weekly league and XP, and whether you're in a study room. People can only find you by your exact username or an invite link; there is no public search. In a study room, the people in that room see your character, your session goal and your reactions. There is no free-text chat.
• Canvas (optional): if you connect Canvas, your private calendar feed link is saved in your account so assignments can sync. If you import grades, your Canvas access token is sent through our server to Canvas only to read your courses and scores; it is never stored on our server, and it's kept on your device only if you choose "remember". Disconnect any time in Settings.
• School calendar (optional): the district calendar and national test dates are built into the app. If you add your school's calendar link, it's saved in your account and our server fetches that link for you to read the events; the events themselves are kept on your device. If you upload a calendar PDF or photo, it's sent to the AI to read the dates and isn't stored; only the dates you choose to add are saved.
• Focus sounds: generated on your device; nothing is sent anywhere.
• Spotify (optional): if you choose a Spotify playlist, we save its link (and name) in your account, and in a shared study room the people in that room see it. The music plays in Spotify's own player, loaded from Spotify; you sign in to Spotify there, not through us, and we never see your Spotify account. Spotify's privacy policy applies to that player.
• Solo focus sessions: kept on your device only. They become visible to others only if you tap "Invite friends", which turns them into a study room.
• Problem reports (optional): if you send a report (Settings, Report a problem), we save what you write, the category you pick, any screenshots you attach, your account's user ID, and a few technical details (the app version, which screen you were on, your browser and your window size) so we can find and fix the problem. Screenshots are resized on your device before they're sent, which also removes hidden photo details such as location. The text and technical details of a report (with your account ID) are saved in Firebase and also sent to a private Google Form and Google Sheet. Screenshots go to a private Google Drive folder. Only the Meridian team can open them. They're not shared with anyone else.
• Live lecture recording: uses your browser's built-in speech recognition. In some browsers (for example Chrome) the audio is processed by the browser maker's speech service. We don't store audio; only the text transcript is saved.

Online games

When you play Block Quest or Nitro Arena online, the players' devices connect straight to each other (peer to peer) so the game stays fast. That means:

• Other players can see your IP address. A direct connection needs each device's network address (its IP address), so the other players' devices see yours and yours sees theirs. An IP address can show roughly where you are, such as your town or your school's network. Only play online with people you know.
• Your display name is shown to everyone in the game.
• Connection setup is stored in Firebase. To connect, the game saves a short record in our Firebase database (under sessions/): the game code, the players' account IDs and display names, and the connection details each device needs, which include its IP address. The record is deleted when the host closes the game. If a network blocks direct connections, your game moves go through a temporary record of your own in the same place instead, which is deleted shortly after you leave.
• Finding each other: to work out how to connect, your device asks a STUN server run by Google or Cloudflare for its public IP address. Those servers see your IP address, but nothing else about you or the game.

Club hubs

A club hub is a members-only space for a club inside Meridian. Anyone can start one and becomes its owner.

• What is saved in a hub: the club's name, colour and 6-character join code; a member list with each member's display name (the name on their Meridian profile), role (owner, board or member), optional club title and join date; announcements; meetings (with any place, Meet or Zoom link and notes); events with their checklists and budgets; key dates; contacts that the board adds (a name, and optionally a role, email address, phone number and note); links to the club's Google Sheets and Drive; members' RSVPs; and a list of the accounts removed and banned from the hub.
• Who can see it: only members of the hub. Other people can't open, list or search hubs. Joining needs the join code, and anyone who has the code can join straight away, so only share it with your club.
• What other members see: everything in the hub, including every member's display name, role and title, who posted each announcement, the contacts the board has added, and members' RSVPs. Don't put anything private in a hub, and don't add someone's phone number or email without asking them.
• Who can change it: the owner and board members can post, edit, and remove or ban members. Other members can only change their own entry and their own RSVPs. The owner can hand ownership to a board member.
• Leaving and deleting: you can leave a hub at any time, which removes your name from its member list and your RSVPs. Announcements you posted stay in the hub. If you delete your Meridian data or your account, you are removed from every hub you joined. This needs an internet connection and can occasionally fail, so if you want to be sure, leave your hubs yourself first. If you are the owner and the hub has other members, ownership first passes to a board member or, if there is none, to the member who joined earliest. If you are the only member, the hub is deleted. Only the owner can delete the whole hub, which removes it for every member.
• Reminders: your choice of hub reminders is saved in your own account, and the reminders are made on your device. Other members can't see them.
• Reporting an announcement: this opens an email to us, which you can choose to send. It includes the hub's name and code, the poster's name and account ID, and when it was posted. Nothing is sent unless you send the email.
• Where it's stored: in Google Firebase, with the rest of your data.

Grade import

You can copy your grades from a school grade portal (Focus, PowerSchool, Skyward, Infinite Campus, Aeries, Schoology or another one) or from a spreadsheet or CSV file, and paste them into Meridian.

• We never ask for your portal password. Meridian doesn't sign in to your portal, and our server never contacts it. You copy the page yourself.
• Read on your device first. Meridian reads the pasted grades on your device. When it can, nothing you pasted is sent anywhere.
• If your device can't read it: the pasted text (up to about 15,000 characters) is sent through our server to our AI provider, Anthropic, to find the assignments and scores. This works the same way as screenshot import. If the page you copied also shows your name, student ID or other classes, that text goes too, so copy just one class's assignment list.
• Not stored: our server passes the text on and doesn't save it, and Meridian doesn't keep it. You see the rows it found and choose which ones to import. Only the rows you import are saved, in your account, as grades.
• Your portal choice and link (optional): when you press "Find my grades", Meridian saves in your account which portal you picked and, if you entered one, your link to it, so it can open the portal for you in one tap next time. This is saved even if no grades are imported. Meridian doesn't visit the link; it opens in your own browser when you tap it.

Cookies and local storage

Meridian doesn't use advertising or tracking cookies, and we don't run analytics. We only use storage that the app needs to work: your browser's local storage and IndexedDB (to remember your settings and keep your work available offline) and Google Firebase's sign-in storage (to keep you signed in). Because this storage is strictly necessary, there is no cookie banner. You can clear it any time in your browser settings, which signs you out on that device.

Services that process your data

• Google Firebase (sign-in and Cloud Firestore database): stores your account and study data, the text of problem reports, and club hubs (see Club hubs).
• Google Forms, Google Sheets and Google Drive: hold a private copy of problem reports, and any screenshots attached to them, for the Meridian team.
• Vercel: hosts the website and runs our server functions.
• Google and Cloudflare STUN servers: only when you play a game online. They tell your device its public IP address so players can connect, as described in Online games.
• Anthropic (Claude): the AI that builds units, hints and feedback gets only the text or photos for that request. This includes grades you paste, when your device can't read them (see Grade import).
• Google Gemini and YouTube: used for video lessons and help videos, as described above.
• Canvas: only if you connect it.
• Your school grade portal (Focus, PowerSchool and others): never contacted by us. You copy your grades and paste them in, as described in Grade import. If you save a link to it, the link opens in your own browser.

We don't use advertising networks, data brokers or analytics SDKs. We only collect what a feature needs, and you can skip every optional field.

Emails

We don't send marketing emails. If you join the Meridian Plus waitlist we may email you once or twice about the launch. Every email will have an unsubscribe link, and you can also leave the list any time in the app (Meridian Plus → Leave the list).

Where it's stored

Your data is stored in Google Firebase (Cloud Firestore) and is private to your account, except the online-game records described in Online games and the club hubs you join or start, which every member of that hub can see (see Club hubs). The app is hosted on Vercel.

What we don't do

• We don't sell your data or show ads.
• We don't load trackers, fonts or code libraries from other companies. Meridian's code, fonts and libraries are all served from meridianstudy.app itself, so opening the site doesn't send your visit to a font or script host such as Google Fonts or a CDN. The only other services your device contacts are Google Firebase (sign-in and data storage) and, only when you open them, embedded YouTube videos (in privacy-enhanced mode), the Desmos calculator, Spotify in study rooms, and Google's and Cloudflare's STUN servers when you play a game online. In online games, the other players' devices also connect to yours directly and can see your IP address (see Online games). The AI and video providers described above are contacted by our server, not by your device.
• We don't share your notes with other users.

Your choices

• Delete everything at any time: Settings → Delete all my data.
• Delete your account (your login plus all your data) in the website or the iPhone/Android app: Settings → Delete my account. If you can no longer sign in, email us from the address on your account and we will delete it within 30 days.
• Questions or requests: contact meridianstudyapp@gmail.com.

Children

Meridian is intended for students aged 13 and older. If you are under 18, please make sure a parent or guardian is okay with you using it. If we learn someone under 13 has an account, we delete it.

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