Effective May 8, 2026
Privacy.
Relay is built so the answer to “what does Relay know about me?” is almost always “nothing.” This page describes exactly what flows where, in plain English.
On this page
How Relay reads your texts
Relay does not read SMS in the background, iOS does not allow that. Apple's Shortcuts app delivers each incoming message to Relay through a Personal Automation you configure during setup. The message body and sender are passed to Relay, classified on-device, and forwarded only to the destinations you've added.
What stays on your device
Every text you receive, every classification result, every retry, every routing rule, every quiet-hours window. None of it is sent to Relay's servers. The full Activity history lives in a local SwiftData store accessible only to the app and its widget extension.
What leaves your device
Only the message content you ask Relay to forward, sent directly from your phone to the destination you chose: a Telegram chat, an email server, a webhook URL, a Slack workspace, a Discord channel, a Microsoft Teams flow, another phone (via the Shortcuts app), or a WhatsApp contact. Relay's servers are not in the path.
Hosted Telegram bot (Quick Setup option)
If you pick “Quick Setup” when adding a Telegram destination, Relay's pairing and send endpoints run on a small Railway-hosted backend. Two things to know:
- The backend stores only your per-install pairing token and the Telegram chat ID it pairs with, both required to deliver messages to the right chat.
- The body of each forwarded message transits the backend during delivery (HTTPS, then on to Telegram's Bot API) and is not retained server-side beyond the request lifetime.
Every other destination kind, user-owned Telegram bot, Slack, Discord, Email, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, Phone, and Webhook, sends device-to-endpoint with no Relay-controlled server in the path.
No analytics, no tracking, no ads
Relay does not collect usage analytics. No third-party SDK is initialized in production builds. There are no advertisements and no advertising identifiers are read.
Permissions
Notifications: required only to alert you when a destination breaks or a forward fails. No other system permissions are requested.
Your controls
Settings → Privacy → Reset all data wipes destinations, activity, pending approvals, and routing rules from this device. Activity rows can be deleted individually with a swipe. Uninstalling Relay removes everything; the iOS Shortcut you installed during setup can be removed from the Shortcuts app.
Children
Relay is not directed at children under 13.
Contact
Questions about this policy: hello@relaysms.app