Deleting your account
Google Play requires a page like this one: a way to ask for your account to be deleted that works from a browser, without installing anything, and without asking anyone for permission.
Last updated: 13 August 2026 Applies to: OpenHeart, the app and openheartapp.org
The short version
- Open the app, go to Settings, then Delete my account. It takes effect immediately and nobody has to approve it.
- If you cannot reach the app, write to [email protected] from the email address on the account.
- Your name, photos, date of birth, bio and location are erased.
- Messages you already sent stay in the other person's conversation with your name removed, because those are also their messages.
- Safety records survive deletion. Deleting an account has never been a way to erase a report about it.
Doing it yourself, in the app
- Sign in.
- Settings.
- Delete my account.
- Confirm.
There is no waiting period, no retention window, and no offer to keep your account instead. The deletion runs in the database as a single operation and it cannot be undone.
Doing it by email
Write to [email protected] from the address you signed in with. Say that you want the account deleted. We reply from a human, and the only thing we need is confirmation that the request comes from the account holder, which is what sending from that address establishes.
Nothing else is required, and we will not ask for identification.
What is erased
Immediately, when you confirm:
| Data | What happens |
|---|---|
| Display name | Erased |
| Date of birth | Erased |
| Bio | Erased |
| Gender and who you were looking for | Erased |
| Location | Erased |
| Photos | Removed from the database and queued for deletion from storage |
| Push notification tokens | Deleted, so the device stops receiving anything |
| Sign-in credential | Deleted, so the email or provider login no longer works |
| Open matches | Closed, on both sides |
What is kept, and why
Deleting an account here is anonymisation rather than removal of the row. That is a deliberate decision, and these are the reasons.
Messages you sent. They stay in the conversation of the person you sent them to, with your name removed. They are that person's messages as much as yours, and letting one participant erase the other's history would be a harassment tool.
Reports and moderation records. If somebody reported you, that report survives. Deleting and re-registering is the standard way to evade a ban, and a safety record that a ban evader can erase is not a safety record.
A blank profile row. The row itself is kept so that the messages and reports above still have something to point at. It holds no personal data after deletion: the fields in the table above are empty or null, and a flag records that the account is deleted.
Suspension records. If the account was suspended, that stays too, for the same reason as reports.
How long the photo deletion takes
Photos are removed from the database the moment you confirm, so no one can see them again from that point. The image files themselves sit in a queue and are deleted from storage by a scheduled job. Expect them to be gone within seven days.
If you never had an account
Nothing to do. This page describes deleting an OpenHeart account, and if you never created one there is nothing about you in the database.
Questions
[email protected], and the code that performs the deletion is
delete_my_account() in the public repository, which anybody can read.