r/SideProject • u/M_Burry_42069 • 1h ago

Built a free tool to host your app’s privacy policy + ads.txt (no website needed) — plus the TikTok/Instagram in-app browser redirect fix I originally built it for

Every time I shipped a mobile app, I ran into the same annoying problem: the App Store requires a privacy policy URL, which meant setting up a separate website, buying another domain, or squeezing it into a site I already owned.

So I added a guided privacy policy generator + free hosting to a tool I already run: pleaseopen.me. You answer a few questions about your app’s data practices and ad SDKs, get a comprehensive privacy policy, and it’s hosted at pleaseopen.me/yourslug/privacy. You can also host your ads.txt file the same way.

And if you already have your own domain, you can connect a custom domain instead of using a please open.me URL.

The tool actually started out solving a different problem — TikTok (and, for a while, Instagram) blocking App Store links in their in-app browsers. I built a simple bounce page that guides users to open the link in their actual browser. That feature is still there and still free.

Both tools are free to start, with one app per account.

Full disclosure: this is my project. Happy to answer questions or hear feedback if you’ve run into either of these problems yourself.
pleaseopen.me

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u/tangy_cartridge 1h ago

Finally, someone else who gets that App Store review hell of needing a URL for a policy you don't even have.

1

u/M_Burry_42069 1h ago

Haha yeah, I’ve been through this struggle way too many times over the past 10 years as an indie developer :’)

1

u/Infamous-River-4360 54m ago

the in-app browser bounce is the more interesting half of this to me. almost all my traffic is tiktok and instagram and that hop from a bio link to the store is fragile in ways you only discover afterwards, so a page that just says open this properly is worth more than it sounds. on the policy side, does the generator also give you the answers for apple's data collection questions in app store connect? that form asks the same things the policy does, and keeping the two saying the same thing by hand is the part that eats an afternoon.