Questions, answered.
What Sessions is, who can read what, what it costs, and what to do if something goes wrong.
About Sessions
What is Sessions?
Sessions is an iPhone app for people in therapy. After a session you talk through what stood out, in a two-minute voice debrief or, with your therapist's consent, by recording the whole session. With Sessions AI, it finds the techniques to practise, the to-dos and the habits you said you'd try; without it, you add them yourself. Each comes back on the day you chose, and a list of what to bring up is ready the night before your next session.
Is Sessions therapy?
No. Sessions helps you organise what happened in your own therapy sessions. It isn't therapy, it isn't medical care, and it isn't a substitute for a clinician. It doesn't diagnose and it doesn't give advice; it organises what you and your therapist said.
Does my therapist need to use it?
No. Sessions is for you, and your therapist doesn't need an account or the app. If you'd like them to know how it works, there's a page for therapists.
What do I need?
An iPhone with iOS 17 or later. Sessions is for iPhone only for now.
Which languages does it speak?
The app is in English, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese.
When can I get it?
Sessions is coming soon to the App Store.
Privacy and your data
Can you read my sessions?
No. Your transcripts, notes, insights, plans, check-in answers, journal and story so far are encrypted on your phone with a key that only you hold. Our servers store only that encrypted text, so the people who run Sessions can't read your sessions, and neither can anyone who gets a copy of our database.
What can your servers see?
A short list of facts the service needs to work: your email address and how you sign in, when a session happened, whether it was a debrief or a full recording, its status, the type and status of each plan and its timing in a few words (like "this week"), when its check-in is due, when journal entries were written, the size of stored files, how long a recording was and whether transcription worked, and when your story so far was last updated. Each request is logged with your account's identifier, never its content. The privacy policy has the full list.
Where are my voice debriefs transcribed?
On your phone, with Apple's on-device speech recognition. The audio of a voice debrief never leaves your phone.
What happens to a full-session recording?
The recording is uploaded over an encrypted connection to a private staging area and sent to ElevenLabs, which transcribes it and labels who is speaking. Our copy of the audio is deleted before the transcript comes back, and every deletion is recorded. ElevenLabs receives the audio and nothing about who you are. Under our current plan ElevenLabs may keep audio under its standard policy.
What if I lose my phone?
Your encryption key is made on your phone. If you set a recovery passphrase, an encrypted copy of the key is stored so you can recover your data on a new phone. Until you set one, only that phone can open what you've saved. We can't reset a passphrase: if you lose it and every device, the data can't be recovered.
How do I sign in?
With Apple, with Google, or with an email address and a password. Your password is stored only as a one-way hash, and it is not the passphrase that protects your content.
Do you show ads or sell my data?
No. No advertising, no tracking, and no sale or sharing of data. The app sends no usage analytics.
Where is my data stored?
With Supabase, and our service runs on Vercel. A database backup holds what the database holds: the encrypted text and the short list of facts above. The privacy policy has the whole picture.
Sessions AI
What is Sessions AI?
Sessions AI is the part of Sessions that sends your words to an AI model. It finds what you said you'd try in a session, writes Talking points and your story so far, asks follow-up questions in the journal, and answers when you use Reflect or Ask your journal.
Sessions AI is software. It can make mistakes, and it isn't your therapist.
Do I have to use it?
No, it's optional. The app asks once, before anything is first sent, and that one answer covers all of it. You can change it any time in Settings › Sessions AI.
Without it, a session is kept as its transcript, you add techniques, to-dos and habits yourself, a check-in asks a fixed question and the journal asks its own questions. Talking points and your story so far aren't written.
Where do my words go?
When a feature needs them, the words are decrypted on your phone and sent over an encrypted connection to our service, which passes them in memory to Anthropic's Claude model and returns the result. Our service doesn't store or log the text or the result, and the result is encrypted on your phone before it's saved. Anthropic processes the text under its commercial terms, may keep it for a limited time, and doesn't use it to train models. Your first name, the kind of therapy you picked and the topics you picked go along only if you tick the box that allows it.
Recording a session
Do I need my therapist's permission?
Not for a voice debrief: that's your own recap after the session, and it involves no one else. To record a whole session you need your therapist's consent. Sessions won't record until you confirm they've agreed to be recorded and to the recording being transcribed, and it notes the time you confirmed.
Recording someone without their consent is unlawful in many places. Read about recording consent.
What should I tell my therapist?
That you're recording the session for your own use; that the recording is sent to a transcription service and then deleted from the app's storage; that the transcript is encrypted so only you can read it; and that you can delete it any time. The app can share a short written note that says this. There's more on the page for therapists.
Pricing and subscription
How much does it cost?
Your first saved session is free. After that, Sessions is $3.99 a week, $12.99 a month or $79.99 a year. See pricing.
What stays free?
Reading, exporting and deleting what you've saved never needs a subscription, and neither do the crisis lines in the app.
How do I cancel?
In your Apple ID settings, at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. On your iPhone: Settings › your name › Subscriptions. Manage subscriptions
Can I get a refund?
Purchases go through Apple, so refunds do too. You can ask Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.
What happens to my sessions if I stop subscribing?
They stay yours. You can still read, export and delete everything you saved.
Your account
How do I export everything?
In the app, open Settings › Export everything. You get one file with your sessions, plans, journal and everything kept on your phone, and you can save any recordings separately.
How do I delete my account?
In the app, open Settings › Delete everything. Every row and file that belongs to you, and your login, are removed immediately. There are no soft deletes.
I forgot my password.
Tap "Forgot password?" when you sign in, and we'll send a reset link to your email address. Your password isn't the passphrase that protects your content, so resetting it doesn't touch your data.
How do I reach you?
Email support@sessionsai.app. The support page covers the common questions.
Safety
What if I'm in crisis?
Sessions can't respond to an emergency. If you're in danger, call 911 in the United States or your local emergency number. In the US you can also call or text 988, or text HOME to 741741.
What does Sessions do if I write something worrying?
Everything sent to Sessions AI is checked for crisis language in five languages. When a check finds it, Sessions AI's words aren't shown, and in their place is a card with numbers you can tap to call or text. "Need help now? Crisis resources" also stands on the screens where you write or talk to Sessions AI. How Sessions handles a crisis