How to check if a keyboard app is actually sending data on iPhone
Settings screens for Full Access, Location and Tracking only show what a keyboard is allowed to do. One separate screen, App Privacy Report, shows what it has actually done — every domain it has contacted and every sensitive data type it has touched, over the last seven days.
Every Settings screen covered elsewhere on this site — Full Access, Location Services, Tracking, Camera and Microphone — answers the same kind of question: what is this app allowed to do. A switch set to off or an app missing from a list is real evidence, but it is evidence about permission, not about behaviour. There is a separate screen built for the other question — what has this app actually done — and it is worth knowing about by name, because it is easy to use once you know where it lives and it does not depend on trusting a privacy label.
What App Privacy Report actually is
It lives at Settings → Privacy & Security → App Privacy Report, below the individual permission categories rather than alongside them, which is likely why people who have gone looking for Location Services or Tracking never scroll far enough to notice it. It is off by default. The first time you open it, iOS asks you to turn it on rather than showing you anything, and that switch matters more than it looks: the report only starts logging from the moment you enable it, not before. There is no way to see a week you did not have it running for.
Once it has been on for a few days, it holds a rolling seven-day record covering every app and extension on the phone, a keyboard included, broken into a few parts.
The two sections that matter for a keyboard
- App Activity — for each app, which sensitive data categories it accessed and how many times: location, contacts, photos, camera, microphone, and the rest of the categories that show up elsewhere on this site as their own individual Settings screens. This is where "granted the permission" turns into "actually used it, this many times, this recently."
- App Network Activity — for each app, the actual domains it contacted over the last seven days, and how many times. This is the one that answers the mobile-data and tracking questions directly: a keyboard with nothing listed here made no network requests at all in that window, on wifi or on cellular.
A third section, Website Network Activity, covers domains contacted from inside Safari and is not relevant to a keyboard extension, which never has a browser view of its own to load anything into.
Reading a keyboard’s own entry
Open App Privacy Report and tap into either section, and the list is alphabetical by app name — a keyboard extension shows up under its containing app’s name rather than under the keyboard’s own name inside Settings, the same pattern as the Location, Camera and Microphone screens. Tap that app’s row in App Network Activity and, if it has contacted anything, you get an actual list of domains rather than a yes-or-no switch: a syncing dictionary reaching its own servers, an online sticker search calling out to a CDN, an analytics library reporting home. If the row is empty, or the app does not appear in the list at all, nothing was contacted in that window — not "nothing that you know of," an actual absence in a system-level log the app itself has no way to edit.
The App Activity section works the same way for sensitive data: tapping into it for a given app shows exactly which categories it touched and a timestamped count, rather than the single "granted / not granted" line the individual Location or Camera screens give you. A keyboard that has never been granted camera access will simply be absent from that category entirely, which lines up with — and gives you an independent second check on — what those individual permission screens already told you.
Why this is worth doing instead of just trusting a privacy label
An App Store privacy label is something a developer fills in and submits; App Privacy Report is a log the operating system keeps on the app’s behalf, with no code path for the app to write to it or clear it. The two usually agree, and when they do not, the report is the one actually generated by what the app did on your phone rather than by what the developer declared it would do. It is also the one place that turns a permission question into an activity question: Location Services tells you whether a keyboard could ask for your location, but App Privacy Report tells you whether it has, and when, and how often, for real.
The one limitation worth knowing before you rely on it
Because the log only starts once you turn the feature on, it cannot tell you anything about a keyboard’s past behaviour before that point — installing App Privacy Report today and checking it today only gives you today onward. If you are evaluating a keyboard you already have installed, turn the report on, use the keyboard normally for a few days the way you always do, and then check back rather than expecting an instant answer the first time you open it.
Where Kibo fits
Kibo makes zero network requests and has no server on the other end for anything to be sent to, so its entry in App Network Activity has nothing to list, whether you check it the day you install it or a year later — there is no behaviour for the log to catch because there is no code path that opens a connection in the first place. Full Access stays off by default and is read in exactly one place, the Copy word, Copy line and Paste buttons on the keyboard toolbar, which reach the system clipboard rather than the network; App Privacy Report has no bearing on that switch either way, since a clipboard read is not a network request or a sensitive-data category the report tracks. Every theme, all 17 key sounds, every backlight effect, the emoji and kaomoji panels, the fancy text styles and all 30 typing languages run entirely on the device.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find App Privacy Report on iPhone?
Settings → Privacy & Security → App Privacy Report, below the individual permission categories like Location Services and Camera. It is off by default — the first visit asks you to turn it on rather than showing data immediately.
Does App Privacy Report show what a keyboard did before I turned it on?
No. It only logs from the moment you enable it forward, on a rolling seven-day window. There is no retroactive record, so checking a keyboard you have had installed for months only tells you about the days since the feature was switched on.
How is this different from checking Location Services or the Tracking screen?
Those screens show what an app is allowed to do — a permission granted or denied. App Privacy Report shows what actually happened: the specific domains an app contacted and the specific data categories it accessed, each with a count, over the last seven days. Permission and activity are different questions, and this is the one screen that answers the second.
Try it on your own keyboard
Kibo is a free custom keyboard for iPhone with real mechanical key sounds, a wardrobe of themes and RGB backlight effects. No account, no ads, and it works with Full Access left off.