Kala keeps your phone to what you chose it to be. Holding that in place takes real authority over the phone, and we would rather you knew exactly what that authority is before you buy than find out afterward. This page is the whole of it.

The phone is not on sale yet. This describes the authority Kala holds over any phone it manages. On a phone from us, the setup below is done by hand before it arrives; read it while deciding.

The short version

  • Kala installs as your phone's device owner. That is a formal Android role, the same one companies use for work phones, and it can install apps, remove them, switch them off, and lock certain settings.
  • Setup starts from a factory reset, so Kala never arrives on top of a phone you have already filled.
  • You choose your apps. Almost all of them install through Google Play in the ordinary way, and we never handle those apps ourselves.
  • Apps that are not on your list do not run. An app that was never on your list, and shows up later, gets removed.
  • Taking an app off your list uninstalls it, and putting it back takes effect after 72 hours. Some apps your phone came with are hidden from the start.
  • The home screen becomes the Kala Launcher, and Kala cannot be uninstalled from Settings. A factory reset is the way out.
  • The phone sends us a short status report once a day. It does not send your location, contacts, messages, calls, or browsing.
  • Leaving is always available. A factory reset removes Kala completely, and we never switch on the Android setting that could block one.

Kala manages the phone

When you set it up, the Kala Store becomes the phone's device owner. Android has a formal role for this and it carries genuine authority: installing and removing apps, switching apps off, and locking a few settings so they cannot be undone in a weak moment.

That authority is the product. An app you can uninstall in five seconds is not a limit, it is a suggestion, and the moment you most want to remove it is exactly the moment it needs to hold.

Setup starts from a factory reset

Android only lets a device owner be set on a phone that has not been set up yet. So switching to Kala means backing up your phone and resetting it first. There is no way around that, and it has one good consequence: Kala never sorts through the apps you already had, because at that moment there are none. You start empty and add what you want.

What gets installed

You pick your apps from the Kala catalog. Almost every app in it opens its normal Google Play listing and installs from there, which means Google handles the app and we never touch it. Four we install directly, and two of those four are our own apps. Everything we install directly is named in a catalog file we sign cryptographically, and the phone checks that signature before it installs anything.

Setup installs two apps for you: the Kala Launcher, which becomes your home screen, and Signal, a messaging app. Nothing else from the catalog is placed on the phone, and we install nothing else you did not choose.

What gets switched off, and what gets removed

These are different, and the difference matters.

Switched off. An app that is not on your list will not open. It stays on the phone with its data intact.

Removed. If an app that was never on your list appears on the phone later, Kala uninstalls it without asking. That is the case a difficult evening produces: something pulled down at midnight, gone by morning. It is the sharpest thing Kala does and we would rather say so plainly.

Hidden. A few apps your phone came with are hidden from the start, the bottomless ones: YouTube, Play Games, Google News, and on a Samsung phone its TV, Free, Game Launcher, and browser apps. Android does not let them be uninstalled, so they are hidden instead, and Kala hides them again if they come back.

Taken off your list by you. This uninstalls the app, so anything kept only inside it goes too. Save what you need first. Putting the app back on your list takes effect after 72 hours, and then you install it again yourself.

That wait is deliberate, and it is most of what you are buying. The moment you most want an app back is the moment the limit is doing its work, and a limit you can undo in ten seconds is not a limit. Nothing comes back on its own.

If we drop an app from the catalog, that is the gentler case: it is only switched off, its data left alone.

What else changes

A few settings are locked so they cannot be quietly reversed:

  • The home screen is the Kala Launcher, and it cannot be swapped for another one.
  • The apps that handle your calls, messages, and web links are fixed, so the choice cannot be swapped out later.
  • The phone's address lookups are pinned to a filtering resolver, Quad9, which screens out malicious sites, and that setting is locked. Sites blocked for being bottomless are handled separately, by a list applied to the browser itself.
  • The Kala Store cannot be uninstalled or force-stopped from Settings, and VPNs cannot be configured, since a VPN would route around the filtering.
  • Developer options and safe mode are switched off, and additional users cannot be added to the phone. Each of those is a way around the limit.

The grayscale option

Kala can hold the screen in gray for the apps you want to be quieter, and leave the rest in color. It is off unless you turn it on. To know which app is in front, it uses an Android accessibility service configured to see only which app is open, never what is on the screen. It reads no text and captures nothing you type. The daily status report says whether the feature is switched on and whether your color choices still match what we have on file, and nothing about what you were looking at.

What the phone tells us

Once a day the phone sends a short status report, so we can tell whether the service is working and whether your phone needs help. It contains our own app versions, whether the limits are running, which restrictions are active, how far setup got, and the phone's Android build. It is keyed to a random identifier the phone generates for itself, not to your name, your number, or your Google account.

Your setup is saved so it can be rebuilt. We store the apps you chose, your home screen arrangement and app names, which built-in apps you hid, and your display and Presence settings, so that a reset or a replacement phone can be made yours again. That is a description of your settings, not a record of what you did with the phone.

Notes are different, and they are sealed. If you use Jot and turn its backup on, your notes and the usage history Jot keeps are uploaded locked with a key that never leaves your phone. We hold those bytes and cannot read them, and they are the only thing we store that you would call contents.

What the phone never sends

No location. No contacts, messages, or call logs. No browsing history: the phone's address lookups go to Quad9, never to us, and none of them reach our servers. No readable record of which apps you opened or for how long: that history stays on the phone unless you turn on Jot's sealed backup, and then only you hold the key. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for advertising.

Leaving

You can leave whenever you want, and it does not require our cooperation. A factory reset removes Kala completely and returns the phone to how it arrived.

Android does have a setting that lets a device owner block a factory reset. We never switch it on. The code clears it every time it runs, deliberately, and that is a rule we hold ourselves to rather than a detail we forgot. A phone you cannot leave is a trap, and a trap is a different product from the one we are selling.

The same holds if your subscription ends. Lapsing never makes the phone more restricted, and it never stands between you and loosening the limits or leaving entirely.

Questions

Write to support@thekalaphone.com and a real person will answer. If something on this page turns out to be wrong or unclear, we want to know, and we will fix the page.

The Kala Phone (thekalaphone.com) is operated by Adesse, LLC from Washington State. Mail: Adesse, 1402 Lake Tapps Pkwy SE, STE #104, PMB 117, Auburn, WA 98092. For what this website collects, see the privacy policy.