Ten minutes. That's the difference between Composed being "another planner I installed" and "the thing I open first every morning." Below are the settings and permissions that make the magic happen — and, for each one, why Composed needs it.
We don't ask for anything we don't use. Every item here has a clear, direct benefit to you. Turn on what helps. Skip what doesn't. Come back and flip them later if your mind changes — nothing is one-way.
Notifications
Why: Composed's departure alerts are the feature people most miss when they try something else. The app reads live traffic to tell you exactly when to leave for a dentist appointment — not a generic "your event starts in 30 minutes" guess. Without notifications, none of that reaches you.
What we send: departure reminders with real traffic, prep-task nudges the day before, and gentle awareness pings for events more than a day out. Never red, never "overdue," never guilt. Quiet by default between 10 PM and 7 AM unless an event is time-critical.
Enable: iOS Settings → Composed → Notifications → Allow Notifications. Or open the Composed app, go to Settings, and tap the Push Notifications row — it'll walk you there.
Location — "While Using" is enough
Why: Travel time to your events is the core of departure alerts. Without your current location, the app can't tell you when to leave. We recommend "While Using" — Composed only reads your location while the app is open or a live departure countdown is running. It's never collected in the background, never stored on our servers, and never used for anything other than calculating travel time to your events.
Always is optional and only activates during a journey — when you've started heading to an event. It gives the live progress ring on the Dynamic Island and Lock Screen. If you don't need that, skip it.
Enable: iOS Settings → Composed → Location → While Using the App.
Calendar — Apple and Google both work
Why: Composed is much more useful when it can see what's already on your calendar. The prep-task engine focuses on events that need preparation; it has to know what's coming up. With calendar sync on, Composed picks up events you create in Apple or Google Calendar and offers prep lists automatically. Events you create inside Composed can flow back the other direction (opt-in via the "Write-back" toggle).
Privacy posture: calendar data stays on your device unless you explicitly import events. Composed doesn't upload your full calendar to our servers. See our Privacy Policy for the full Google Calendar API Services User Data Policy disclosure.
Enable: Composed → Settings → Calendars & Integrations. Tap "Connect Apple Calendar" or "Connect Google Calendar". You can turn on write-back for either one independently.
Microphone + Speech Recognition
Why: Voice input is the single fastest way to schedule anything. Say "dinner with Maya at Nobu Friday at 7" and Composed builds the whole event — date, time, venue, reminder, prep list — in a second. Typing the same thing takes eight times longer.
Privacy posture: your first-pass transcription happens on-device via Apple's Speech framework. For accuracy, the audio is briefly sent to our backend for a Whisper pass, then discarded. We don't store the audio. See the Privacy Policy for the full chain.
Enable: iOS Settings → Composed → Microphone and Speech Recognition. Both toggles on. Composed will prompt you the first time you tap the microphone — just tap Allow.
Photo Library — screenshot capture
Why: Snap a flight confirmation, hotel booking, concert ticket, or event poster, and Composed will parse the whole thing into a structured event — including airports with their correct timezones, hotel stays with check-in/check-out dates, and everything in between. Without photo library access, the screenshot import button can't open.
Privacy posture: we only read images you explicitly pick. iOS's "Selected Photos" access works fine — you don't need to grant access to your whole library. The image is sent to our AI vision provider for parsing and not retained. If you attach a screenshot to an event, it's stored in your private encrypted cloud storage, only accessible to your account.
Enable: iOS Settings → Composed → Photos → Selected Photos (or All Photos if you prefer), and/or tap "Choose from photo library" in the Add screen.
Contacts — lets friends find you
Why: When a friend is already in Composed and wants to invite you to an event, Composed needs to know which "you" they mean. Matching happens against the email addresses and phone numbers you've verified — see the next section for how.
Privacy posture: when you give Composed contact access (optional), we hash your contacts' phone numbers and email addresses locally on your device using SHA-256 before anything is sent to our server. We never see the raw data. The server just returns "these 3 of your contacts are on Composed" — nothing else. You can revoke this at any time.
Enable: iOS Settings → Composed → Contacts → Allow.
Be findable — your email + phone
This is the one most people miss, and the one that unlocks the biggest quality-of-life jump once your circle uses Composed.
Why: Friends inviting you to an event look you up by the email or phone they already have for you. If you signed in with Apple and chose "Hide My Email," your Composed account is attached to a privaterelay address — no one who doesn't already have you on their phone knows to type it. Adding your real email and/or phone number makes you findable the way people expect.
What we do with it: your verified email and phone are stored so other Composed users who already have them in their contacts can invite you. It's never public, never sold, never used for marketing (that's a separate opt-in — see "Tips & updates" below). Never searchable by someone who doesn't already have your info.
Enable: Composed → Settings → Profile → Add Email or Phone. Type it in, tap Send Code, enter the 6-digit code we text or email you. Takes twenty seconds.
Tips & updates (optional)
Why: The Composed team writes an occasional note — new features, thoughtful reads, behind-the-scenes stories, never more than a couple a month. If you like the app and want to hear what's next, opt in during onboarding or via Settings. Nothing spammy.
What we send: welcome note on opt-in, then 1–2 emails per month. Always with a one-click unsubscribe. We treat the list like a newsletter, not a marketing funnel.
Enable: Composed → Settings → Notifications → Tips & updates. Toggle on or off anytime. Unsubscribing also takes you out of the list on our end immediately — not a "unsubscribe can take up to 10 days" thing.
Sign in with Apple (our default)
Why: We built sign-in around Apple's privacy primitives because they're the most respectful of user autonomy. You can use "Hide My Email," which routes a privaterelay address to your real inbox without ever giving us the real one. You can revoke the relay at any time from iOS Settings and we stop being able to reach you — zero friction, zero database scrubbing required.
Recommendation: use Apple sign-in with Hide My Email on. Your real identity stays private. If you want friends to find you, add your real email or phone as a contact identifier (the section above) — that's separate from sign-in and gives you fine-grained control.
Composed Pro
Most of what Composed does is free, forever — unlimited events, calendar sync, voice scheduling, screenshot import, departure alerts, reminders, notes, the whole day-to-day use. Pro unlocks the heavier features: unlimited AI prep checklists, flight + hotel intelligence, multi-device sync for shared events, priority support, and early access to new things.
Pro is available as a weekly plan ($7.99), an annual plan ($29.99, works out to $0.58/week), or a one-time lifetime purchase ($79.99). No ads, no data sales, no "free tier crippled for conversion" nonsense.
Where to buy: Composed → any Pro feature prompt, or Settings → Composed Pro.
Widgets and Live Activities
Why: The Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets give you a glance at today's plan without opening the app. Live Activities put a countdown to your next event on the Dynamic Island — especially useful during travel.
Enable: long-press your Home Screen → tap the + → search for "Composed" → pick a widget size. Live Activities are on by default as long as you have notifications enabled.
Troubleshooting — if something isn't working
Notifications not arriving: iOS Settings → Composed → Notifications → make sure it's on and not set to "Silent." Check that Focus modes aren't filtering the Composed app.
Departure alerts off: requires both Notifications (above) and Location — "While Using" is enough. Check iOS Settings.
Calendar not syncing: Composed → Settings → Calendars & Integrations. Disconnect and reconnect. For Google, revoke access at myaccount.google.com/permissions first if it stays stuck.
Invite from a friend didn't arrive: make sure the email or phone they tried is a verified identifier on your account (Settings → Profile). An unverified one won't match. See "Be findable" above.
Everything else: email [email protected]. A human replies, usually within a day.
What we don't ask for, and why
- No IDFA. No ads. No tracking across apps or websites.
- No third-party analytics SDKs. Our analytics are first-party, pseudonymized, and never shared.
- No background audio recording, ever. Voice is captured on-demand and discarded after transcription.
- No selling, sharing, or brokering your data. Full stop.
Questions? Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, or [email protected].
Set it up once. Stay composed.
Voice events, AI prep tasks, departure tracking — the recommended setup takes ten minutes.