TimeLie Terms of Service

Draft for review; not yet effective. Updated on 22 September 2026. The operator, contact email and service regions are confirmed; data-handling arrangements and the effective date still require confirmation.

Operator: chenxinkai, an individual operator ("we", "us", "our").

Contact: chanthinker@foxmail.com.

Service regions: Countries and regions outside mainland China. The service is not offered in mainland China; availability elsewhere remains subject to applicable law and the actual areas where it is offered. Effective date: [To confirm].

1. Scope and eligibility

These Terms cover the TimeLie application and its associated account, timeline, node, media storage and collaboration services. The TimeLie Privacy Policy explains how personal information is handled. Third-party services also have their own terms, without relieving us of responsibilities that apply to us by law.

TimeLie is only for people aged 18 or older who have the legal capacity required to use the service. Anyone under 18 must not register, sign in or use TimeLie, including account-free offline mode. Parental permission is not an exception. Do not misrepresent your age or help someone bypass this restriction. If we learn that an account does not meet the age requirement, we will investigate and take appropriate steps, including restricting service, terminating the account and handling related information as required by law.

Read these Terms before using the service, especially the provisions on storage, collaboration, deletion and responsibility. If you disagree, do not register or continue using the service. Merely viewing these Terms is not acceptance and does not replace a separate notice or consent required by law.

2. Accounts and security

Online services require the username, email, password and verification information requested by the interface. Whether an invitation code is required depends on the registration settings. New usernames must contain 8-20 English letters, digits or underscores and cannot consist only of digits. New registration passwords must contain 8-20 characters, including both an English letter and a digit. New format rules apply to existing accounts only where relevant to the actual registration or modification flow.

Use an email address you are entitled to control. Protect your password, verification codes, sessions and custom storage credentials. Do not rent or sell accounts or impersonate others. If you notice unauthorized access or exposed credentials, change your password and contact us promptly. Necessary identity checks may be required, but we will not ask you to post passwords or verification codes publicly.

A username is not a verified legal identity. The current registration process is not identity or age verification. You remain responsible for meeting the age and identity requirements.

3. Services and storage choices

TimeLie lets you organize text, photos and videos over time, manage a main timeline and other timelines, and collaborate with invited people. Feature availability, quotas, file limits, compression settings and collaborator limits follow the applicable interface and service configuration. Material adverse changes will be notified as required by applicable law.

Fully offline mode: No cloud account is required. Structured timeline and node records are stored in the application's private directory on the current device. Media remains an original URI reference: the offline recording process does not copy original media or upload it to our service. Uninstallation, clearing application data or device failure may destroy records; restoration after reinstallation is not guaranteed.

Local media with an online account: Media files remain on the device, but timeline records, text, dates and media references may be stored on our servers. "Local media" therefore does not mean that all business data is offline. Moving or deleting an original file, revoking access or changing devices can make the media unavailable.

Official storage: When you submit a publication, save or another explicit upload action, the application processes and uploads selected media according to that flow. Compression or transcoding may change format, quality, bitrate or resolution. Cloud copies should not be treated as lossless backups of original media.

Custom storage: You select and configure an external upload service. Check your authority to use it and its pricing, public access, hotlink protection, retention and deletion rules. Displaying a returned URL does not mean we control the provider or can delete its files for you. The private-access protections of official storage do not automatically apply to custom storage.

4. Content rights and collaboration

You retain your lawful rights in your content. To deliver the features you choose, you give us a non-exclusive permission to store, transmit, process, compress, generate previews of and display the content to you and authorized collaborators, only as necessary for those features. This does not grant permission to use private content for public promotion, sale or unrelated purposes. Any necessary retention after termination is governed by the Privacy Policy and applicable law.

Before uploading another person's image, voice, text or other information, ensure you have a lawful basis and any necessary authorization. Content depicting a minor does not make minors eligible to use TimeLie. Adults must obtain any guardian authorization or other consent required by applicable law and avoid unnecessary sensitive information.

The timeline creator manages invitations and membership. Collaborators may view or edit content within their actual permissions. Node synchronization stays within timelines belonging to the same creator; collaborators must also have access to both the source and destination. Creating a node as a collaborator does not authorize moving it to a timeline owned by that collaborator or another creator. The server determines editing permissions using all of the node's timeline associations.

Check the audience before inviting others or synchronizing a node. Synchronization can expose content to destination members, and the same node may share updates across associated timelines. Removing a member or revoking access cannot recall previously obtained downloads, screenshots or other copies. Existing short-lived media links may also remain valid until expiry. Leaving collaboration does not necessarily remove all joint records. Contact us about ownership, privacy or deletion disputes.

5. Prohibited conduct and enforcement

Do not use the service for unlawful activity; child sexual exploitation or abuse material; non-consensual intimate imagery; privacy or intellectual-property infringement; fraud; harassment; threats; hatred or incitement to violence; malware; unlawfully obtained data; or other illegal content.

Do not bypass access controls, misuse accounts, steal private files, disrupt the service, make abusive bulk requests, send unsolicited invitations or emails, or evade clearly stated limits. This does not unreasonably restrict lawful security research or statutory rights.

Report concerns through in-app Feedback or our contact email. Do not redistribute illegal or sensitive material in order to report it. Depending on the facts, risk and law, we may request corrections, restrict access, remove content, or suspend or terminate accounts. Where lawful and reasonably practicable, we will provide an explanation and a way to challenge the decision. These rules do not imply that automated moderation, round-the-clock staffing or immediate handling is currently available.

6. Deletion, account closure and backups

Available application features allow you to manage or delete records, request exports and request account deletion in Account Settings. Removing a media reference from a node does not immediately erase the stored file. Files referenced elsewhere or awaiting cleanup may remain. Unreferenced official media may be removed through maintenance; temporary storage or reuse of unpublished uploads is not a promise of permanent retention.

The current account-deletion flow verifies an email code and records your request. Signing in successfully within 3 days cancels the request; after 3 days, normal sign-in is blocked. The 3-day period is not a countdown to automatic, complete data erasure. Administrators subsequently handle the account and associated data under confirmed procedures and applicable law. Completion times, necessary exceptions and backup rotation must be specified in the final Privacy Policy.

If you cannot access the application, send an account or data-deletion request to our contact email. Provide only the information needed to identify the account, not your password. We will verify the request and explain its scope and handling arrangements. Joint content, custom storage and legally retained information will be addressed separately; disabling an account alone is not treated as completion of data deletion.

Manage offline records on the device. Deleting an in-app reference does not delete the original system-gallery file. Custom storage files may require a separate request to their provider. Keep independent backups of important originals.

7. Third parties, availability and changes

Online features depend on networks, devices, servers, email and storage services. External links and upload endpoints are operated by their respective providers; review their terms before use. We remain responsible for our applicable legal duties, but do not guarantee uninterrupted operation of any device, network or third-party service, permanent retention, zero data loss or end-to-end encryption.

If paid features are introduced, their price, scope, duration, refund and renewal rules will be disclosed before purchase. These Terms do not authorize automatic charges. Where maintenance, upgrades, security risks or law require changes or discontinuation, we will explain the effects and provide appropriate migration or export arrangements to the extent reasonably practicable and required by law.

8. Responsibility and disputes

Each party is responsible as provided by applicable law. Problems involving device damage, deliberate deletion, inaccessible originals, unauthorized sharing or a user-selected external service must be assessed according to the actual cause and each party's responsibility, not automatically attributed to one party.

Nothing in these Terms excludes non-excludable consumer, privacy or other statutory rights, or liability for intentional misconduct, gross negligence or any other matter that cannot lawfully be excluded. Describing a service as provided "as is" does not remove statutory duties.

Contact us first to discuss a dispute. If it cannot be resolved, you may seek relief from a competent authority or court under applicable law. The service-region statement does not exclude mandatory laws applicable because of the operator's location, actual data processing or users' statutory rights. Governing-law and dispute provisions still require review before publication; these Terms do not designate a single exclusive forum.

9. Updates and contact

Updated Terms will identify their version and effective date. Material changes to eligibility, data purposes, charges or content rights will receive appropriate notice, and renewed consent where required. Editing a webpage alone does not establish consent to a new processing purpose.

The Chinese and English versions are intended to convey the same rights and obligations. Ambiguities should be resolved consistently with applicable law and accurate understanding, without using translation differences to reduce statutory rights.

For account, security, content, privacy or contractual concerns, contact chenxinkai at chanthinker@foxmail.com.