Frequently Asked Questions

Friends on File is a personal relationship manager. You log conversations with friends, and our AI extracts key details — job changes, family updates, upcoming trips — to build rich, always-up-to-date friend profiles. Next time you meet, you'll have personalised talking points ready.

Friends on File is a web application that works on any device with a modern browser — desktop, tablet, or phone. No app download required.

After chatting with a friend, open Friends on File and write a quick note about what you discussed. Write naturally — no forms or templates. Premium users can also use voice input to dictate their notes hands-free.

Talking points are personalised conversation starters generated by AI based on your friend's profile. Before your next meeting, you'll see suggestions like 'Ask about the Portugal trip' or 'Congratulate the promotion'. You can also create your own.

While Friends on File is designed for personal relationships, many users find it helpful for professional contacts as well. The AI extracts the same kinds of details — role changes, projects, interests — regardless of the relationship type.

Friends on File can add your birthdays, reminders, and time-sensitive talking points (like upcoming trips or appointments) directly to your calendar app. You subscribe once using a calendar link, and your calendar app pulls updates automatically. Apple Calendar typically refreshes every 5–15 minutes, while Google Calendar may take 12–24 hours to show new events. You can set up calendar sync in your account settings.

Date Mode activates automatically when you set a friend's relationship type to 'Dating'. It unlocks specialised features: personalised green and red flags, AI-powered flag analysis on your conversations, pre-date topic suggestions, and an AI dating coach.

Green and red flags are personalised criteria you define for what you're looking for (or avoiding) in a partner. When you log a conversation with someone you're dating, AI analyses it against your flags and highlights matches — helping you spot patterns early.

The dating coach is a conversational AI that knows your dating partner's profile, recent conversations, and your flag history. You can ask it for advice, discuss how things are going, or get help planning your next date. It generates follow-up questions you can save as talking points.

Yes, all plans include Date Mode. Free users get 2 flags and 1 coaching session per month. Plus users get 10 flags and 5 sessions. Premium users get unlimited flags and coaching sessions.

Absolutely. The Free plan is fully functional with up to 5 friends and 10 conversations per month. No credit card required.

We offer three plans: Free (5 friends, 10 conversations/month), Plus (25 friends, 50 conversations/month, all reminders), and Premium (unlimited friends and conversations, voice input, data export, priority AI processing). See our pricing page for full details.

Yes. Upgrade instantly and your new features are available right away. If you cancel, your current plan stays active until the end of the billing period, then you'll move to the Free plan.

Your data is never deleted. If you exceed your plan's limits after downgrading, the extra data becomes read-only — you can still view it, but you won't be able to add more until you're within your plan's limits again.

Premium users can dictate their conversation notes using speech-to-text instead of typing. Audio is never stored — it's converted to text in real-time and only the transcript is saved.

Every Friends on File account requires mandatory two-factor authentication (2FA) using an authenticator app. There is no option to skip 2FA — it's required for all users, ensuring your account is protected even if your password is compromised.

All personal data is protected with field-level AES-256 encryption at rest. Every piece of personal content — friend details, conversation text, AI-generated profiles, and more — is individually encrypted before it reaches the database. Even if the database were accessed directly, the data would be unreadable without the encryption keys.

All data is stored in the EU, specifically in the Netherlands. This ensures compliance with European data protection standards and keeps your data under EU jurisdiction.

We use one-way cryptographic indexes for searching encrypted data. This allows you to search for friends and conversations without ever decrypting the underlying data during the search process — a technique that balances usability with strong privacy guarantees.

Your personal data is encrypted at the field level with keys managed through a dedicated secrets management service. The AI processes your conversations in an isolated, sandboxed environment and only sees scoped data — never your account identity. We follow the principle of least privilege throughout the system.

When you log a conversation, our AI reads your notes and extracts key facts — new jobs, family updates, upcoming trips, interests. It categorises them automatically and detects when multiple friends are mentioned. You review and confirm every extracted fact before it's saved to a profile.

No. Your data is never used to train AI models. Conversations are processed through the AI in a sandboxed, isolated environment strictly for extracting facts and building your friend profiles. No data is shared with third parties for training purposes.

Audio is never stored. Voice input is a pure pass-through — it's streamed to Google Cloud Speech-to-Text, converted to text in real-time, and only the text transcript is saved. The original audio is discarded immediately after transcription.

Premium users can export all their data. This includes friend profiles, conversation history, extracted facts, and talking points. We believe your data belongs to you.

When you delete your account, all your data is permanently deleted — including friends, conversations, profiles, facts, talking points, and reminders. This action is irreversible. There is no soft-delete or recovery period.