Dua Lock, and what it does with your phone.

Last updated: 19 October 2026

Dua Lock is an Android app that shows an Islamic supplication (dua) before opening apps you have chosen to lock. This policy explains what it does with information on your phone. It is short because the app does very little.

The short version

Dua Lock works on your phone, with no account, no sign-in and no analytics. Two things can reach the internet: the leaderboard, which shows two totals on this website, and — in versions that show ads — Google AdMob, described below. The leaderboard is on unless you switch it off — on the last step of the app's introduction, where it is explained with its own switch, or at any time in Settings — and nothing is sent before that introduction is finished. With the leaderboard switched off, and in versions without ads, Dua Lock sends nothing anywhere.

What is stored, and where

All of it stays in Dua Lock's private storage on your phone:

the apps you chose to lock;
your settings — language, reading time, how a dua is confirmed, how long an app stays open, haptics, and so on;
your counts: how many duas you have read, on which days, which ones, and your tasbih totals;
any duas you wrote yourself — they are never sent anywhere;
the name you chose for the leaderboard, if any, and a random key the app made for itself.

Nobody else can read that, including us. Uninstalling Dua Lock deletes all of it. “Reset statistics” in Settings clears the counts without uninstalling.

The leaderboard (on unless you switch it off)

Settings → Leaderboard → “Show me on the leaderboard”, also offered with its own switch on the last step of the app's introduction. While it is on, Dua Lock sends the following to this website (hosted by Cloudflare), within a few seconds of each change, and nothing else:

the name you choose to show — a first name or a nickname — or none, in which case you appear as “Someone”;
two totals: how many duas you have read, and how many tasbih you have counted;
a random key made on your phone, so each update reaches your own row. The website stores only a one-way hash of it, so nobody reading its database could post as you.

The website shows your country next to your name. It is not sent by the app: Cloudflare reports the country a connection comes from (the country only, never anything finer). A code made from your connection, which changes every day, is used briefly to stop one network from flooding the board; it is not stored with your row.

Your name (or “Someone”), country and totals are public on the leaderboard, which updates live. Which apps you lock, which apps you open and when, which duas you read, your history and anything about your phone are never sent.

Switching it off tells the website at once: your row stops being shown or ranked, and your totals stop being taken. The website keeps only the fact that this key chose not to be shown — so the choice holds, including on a phone restored from a backup of this one — and switching back on restores your place. To be forgotten entirely, write to us and we will delete the row.

The accessibility service

To show a dua before an app opens, Dua Lock has to notice the moment that app comes to the front. Android's accessibility service is the only supported way an ordinary app can do this. You are asked to switch it on, and the app does nothing until you do.

The service uses two things:

The package name of the app that came to the foreground — e.g. com.instagram.android — compared against your list of locked apps.
The name written on an icon you tap in your home screen or app drawer, compared with the names of those same locked apps. A launcher reports a tap about a second before the opened app's own window does, and that second is the difference between the dua appearing instantly and the locked app being visible first.

The service is declared with canRetrieveWindowContent="false". It does not read the contents of your screen — not text, not messages, not passwords, not what you do inside any app. Neither of the two values above is written to storage, sent anywhere, or kept after the moment it is used. Which app you were opening is deliberately not recorded, even in your own statistics.

If you switch the service off in Android's settings, the locks stop working. The app says so on its home screen.

The microphone

The microphone is used for one optional feature: confirming a dua by saying it aloud instead of reading it. Android asks for your permission the first time you tap that option, and the feature does not exist until you grant it.

While you are reciting, Dua Lock passes the request to Android's own speech recogniser and asks it to work offline. The recogniser returns text, Dua Lock compares that text with the words of the dua, and then discards it. Dua Lock never records audio, never saves it and never sends it — the leaderboard included.

One honest caveat: the recogniser is a separate app provided by your phone (usually Google's). If your device has no offline language model installed, that app may do the recognition using its own internet connection, under its own privacy policy, which we do not control. If you would rather that never happened, use the default “Read it” mode and do not grant the microphone permission.

Advertising

Versions of Dua Lock that show ads use Google AdMob: one labelled banner near the end of the home screen, one after the whole list of duas, and one at the end of Settings. Ads never appear on the lock screen, over a dua, during the introduction or on the tasbih while you count; there are no full-screen ads; and the app works the same when no ad loads.

To show and measure ads, Google's software in the app collects your device's advertising ID, basic device and app information, your IP address (from which an approximate location is derived) and how you interact with ads. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland the app asks for your consent first, with Google's consent form, and you can change it later from the app's Settings. You can reset or delete your advertising ID, or opt out of personalised ads, in your phone's Settings → Google → Ads. Ads are set to be suitable for all ages. Google's handling of this data is described at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. Which apps you lock or open is never part of it.

The website

If you download Dua Lock from this website, or share a dua on its wall, the website's own privacy notice applies.

Children

Dua Lock is not directed at children under 13. The leaderboard asks for a name only — never an email, a phone number or anything that could be used to contact you.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will appear at this address with a new date at the top.

Questions about this policy or the app: hello@the-world-wall.com
Developer: Mostafa Neqrouz