Terms of Service

1. Agreement to These Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Xiaoning Jin ("Nian", "we", "us"). By creating an account, or by using the Nian mobile application or related services (the "Service"), you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy.

If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Section 15 (Disclaimers), Section 16 (Limitation of Liability), and Section 18 (Dispute Resolution) limit your legal remedies. Please read them.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to create a Nian account. The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly allow anyone under 13 to register.

To enter into these Terms as a binding contract on your own behalf, you must also be at least 18 years old, or the age of legal majority in your jurisdiction if that is older than 18. If you are under that age but at least 13, you may only use the Service with the consent of, and under the supervision of, a parent or legal guardian who agrees to be bound by these Terms on your behalf.

If you set up or manage the Service on behalf of another person (for example, a parent), you represent that you have that person's permission to do so, and that you will tell them what the Service does — including that reminders are recorded and that a designated family member can see whether reminders were answered.

3. What the Service Does

Nian is a medication reminder and adherence-logging tool. It: fires reminders at times you configure, including offline alarms on your device; lets you create and confirm reminders by speaking, using automated speech recognition; records whether you indicated a dose was taken; optionally plays back a voice message a family member recorded for you; and optionally notifies a family member you designated when a reminder goes unanswered.

That is the entire scope of the Service. Anything not listed above, Nian does not do.

4. Not Medical Advice — Not a Medical Device

IMPORTANT. READ THIS SECTION.

NIAN IS NOT A MEDICAL DEVICE. NIAN DOES NOT PROVIDE MEDICAL ADVICE, DIAGNOSIS, OR TREATMENT. The Service does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition.

Specifically, Nian does not: recommend, calculate, or adjust any dose; tell you what to do about a missed dose; evaluate drug interactions, contraindications, allergies, or side effects; interpret any symptom, vital sign, or laboratory result; assess whether your medication regimen is appropriate, safe, or effective; or evaluate cognitive status, decline, or any other clinical condition.

Always seek the advice of your physician, pharmacist, or other qualified healthcare professional with any question about a medication or a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice, or delay seeking it, because of something you saw or did not see in Nian. In a medical emergency, call 911 or your local emergency number immediately — do not use Nian.

You are responsible for the accuracy of the medication names, dosages, and times you enter. Nian repeats what you told it; it does not verify it against any prescription, pharmacy record, or clinical source.

5. Reminder Delivery Is Not Guaranteed

IMPORTANT. THIS IS THE MOST LIKELY WAY THE SERVICE CAN FAIL YOU.

WE DO NOT GUARANTEE THAT ANY REMINDER, ALERT, OR NOTIFICATION WILL BE DELIVERED, DELIVERED ON TIME, RECEIVED, HEARD, OR ACTED UPON.

Reminder delivery depends on conditions outside our control, including: your device being powered on, charged, and not in airplane mode; operating system or manufacturer battery-optimization / power-saving / app-hibernation behavior, which can suspend or kill background alarms without notice; Do Not Disturb, Focus, silent mode, or per-app notification settings; notification, exact-alarm, microphone, or background-execution permissions being granted and remaining granted; network availability; push notification infrastructure operated by third parties; volume, ringer, or accessibility settings; and app updates, reinstallation, device migration, or factory reset, any of which can clear scheduled alarms.

Nian is a convenience aid. It is not a life-safety system, an emergency alert system, a medical alarm, or a monitoring service. Do not rely on it as the only mechanism for anything where a missed dose could cause harm.

6. Automated Speech Recognition and AI Processing Are Imperfect

Nian uses automated speech recognition, and may use automated language processing, to turn what you say into a reminder or an adherence log entry. These systems are probabilistic and make mistakes.

Recognition accuracy is affected by accent, dialect, regional speech patterns, speech impairments, background noise, microphone quality, distance from the device, and connection quality. Older speakers and dialect speakers — a core part of Nian's intended audience — are exactly the population for whom speech recognition is least reliable.

As a result: a dose you did take may be recorded as not taken; a dose you did not take may be recorded as taken; a reminder you asked for may be created with the wrong time, wrong medication name, or wrong dosage; a spoken command may not be understood at all.

A record in Nian showing "taken" means only that the system interpreted an input as a self-report of having taken it. It is not verification that any medication was actually taken. Nian performs no physical, chemical, sensor-based, or biological verification of any kind.

You can and should review and correct any entry the app records.

7. Family Monitoring: Absence of an Alert Is Not Proof That Anything Is Fine

IMPORTANT. IF YOU ARE USING NIAN TO HELP LOOK AFTER A PARENT OR OTHER FAMILY MEMBER, THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PARAGRAPH IN THIS DOCUMENT.

DO NOT TREAT SILENCE FROM NIAN AS CONFIRMATION THAT YOUR FAMILY MEMBER IS SAFE, IS WELL, OR HAS TAKEN THEIR MEDICATION.

If you do not receive an alert, that may mean the reminder was answered — or it may mean that: the reminder never fired (Section 5); the alert was generated but never delivered to you (Section 5); the reminder was answered by someone else, or answered incorrectly; speech recognition misheard the answer (Section 6); your family member tapped "taken" without taking the medication; or the phone was off, offline, out of battery, or left in another room.

Nian does not replace, and must not be treated as replacing: regularly contacting your family member directly; in-person visits and check-ins; professional caregiving, home health services, or medical supervision; or a medical alert or emergency response system.

If you are worried about someone, contact them directly. If you cannot reach them and you are concerned for their safety, contact someone who can check on them in person, or call emergency services. Do not wait for a notification from Nian.

You acknowledge that you have read and understood this Section, and that you will not use Nian as your sole means of knowing whether a family member is safe.

8. Voice Recordings and Consent

8.1 We play back recordings; we do not clone voices. Nian's family-voice feature plays back the exact audio a person recorded. Nian does not create a synthetic voice, does not build a voiceprint or speaker model, and cannot make anyone's voice say words they did not record. Voice cloning is disabled in the Service.

8.2 Your responsibilities when you record someone. You may only record, upload, or save a person's voice if that person is aware of the recording and has agreed to it, and only for the purpose the Service provides — playing a reminder to the intended listener. Where the Service asks the person being recorded to give a spoken or on-screen consent, that consent must be given by that person themselves, not by you on their behalf. Do not record a minor's voice. Do not record anyone who has not agreed. You are responsible for complying with the law where you and the person being recorded are located.

8.3 Withdrawal. Any person whose voice was recorded may withdraw consent at any time. On withdrawal, we delete the recording and its associated consent artifacts, and we stop using it. Reminders that relied on that recording will fall back to a standard voice.

9. Your Account

You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for all activity under your account. Notify us at [email protected] if you believe your account has been compromised. Do not share one account among people who should not see each other's medication data.

10. Family Groups and What Others Can See

If you join or create a family group, members you authorize can see whether reminders were answered and related adherence information for the person being cared for.

Only the account holder (or a person with proper legal authority to act for them) may authorize this access. Adding someone to a family group is not, by itself, permission to view their medication records — the account holder must approve it. You may revoke access at any time.

11. Subscriptions, Billing, and Cancellation

Some features require a paid subscription. Subscriptions are sold and processed through Google Play Billing, subject to Google's terms. We never see or store your payment card details.

Auto-renewal: subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the period ends.
How to cancel: cancel in the Google Play Store subscription settings. Uninstalling the app does not cancel a subscription.
Refunds: handled by Google under Google Play's refund policy. Except where required by law, fees are non-refundable.
Price and plan changes: we may change prices prospectively, with advance notice; changes will not apply to a period you already paid for.
Free trials and promotions, if offered, are subject to their own stated terms.

Pricing shown in the app is provided by the server so that what you see matches what you are charged. If a discrepancy occurs, the amount Google actually charges controls; contact us at [email protected].

12. Acceptable Use

You agree not to: use the Service for any unlawful purpose, or in violation of any applicable law or regulation; record any person without that person's knowledge and consent; impersonate any person, or use the Service to deceive anyone about who is speaking; use the Service to monitor, track, or surveil a person who has not consented to it; reverse engineer, decompile, scrape, or attempt to derive source code from the Service, except to the extent applicable law prohibits that restriction; interfere with, overload, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service or its infrastructure; resell, sublicense, or provide the Service to third parties as a commercial offering without our written agreement; or use the Service in any setting where its failure could cause death, personal injury, or severe harm — including clinical, hospital, institutional, or emergency-response settings.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate this Section.

13. Your Content

You retain ownership of the content you provide — medication entries, reminder text, voice recordings, and similar. You grant us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, process, transmit, and display that content solely to operate and provide the Service to you and to the people you have authorized. This license ends when you delete the content or your account, subject to the retention described in the Privacy Policy.

We do not use your content to train third-party AI models, and we do not sell it.

14. Intellectual Property

The Service, including its software, design, text, graphics, and the "Nian" and "念" names and logos, is owned by Xiaoning Jin and protected by intellectual property law. We grant you a personal, limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive, revocable license to use the app for your own personal, non-commercial use, subject to these Terms.

15. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT: (A) THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE; (B) ANY REMINDER, ALERT, OR NOTIFICATION WILL BE DELIVERED OR RECEIVED; (C) SPEECH RECOGNITION OR ANY AUTOMATED INTERPRETATION WILL BE ACCURATE; (D) ANY ADHERENCE RECORD REFLECTS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED; OR (E) THE SERVICE WILL BE COMPATIBLE WITH YOUR DEVICE OR ITS OPERATING SYSTEM CONFIGURATION.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you.

16. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, NIAN AND ITS OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, AND SUPPLIERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE — INCLUDING ANY MISSED, LATE, UNDELIVERED, OR MISINTERPRETED REMINDER OR ALERT — WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT, STATUTE, OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, AND WHETHER OR NOT WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE TOTAL AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM. IF YOU HAVE NOT PAID US ANYTHING IN THAT PERIOD, OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY IS ZERO.

NOTHING IN THESE TERMS EXCLUDES OR LIMITS LIABILITY THAT CANNOT LAWFULLY BE EXCLUDED OR LIMITED, INCLUDING LIABILITY FOR FRAUD, OR FOR DEATH OR PERSONAL INJURY CAUSED BY OUR GROSS NEGLIGENCE OR WILLFUL MISCONDUCT. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this Section may not apply to you.

17. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Nian and its officers, employees, and agents from any claim, demand, loss, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from (a) your violation of these Terms; (b) your misuse of the Service; (c) your recording of another person without that person's consent; or (d) your violation of any law or the rights of any third party.

18. Dispute Resolution and Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and by applicable U.S. federal law.

Any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in the State of Delaware, and you and we each consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts and waive any objection based on inconvenient forum. This does not prevent either of us from seeking injunctive or other equitable relief in any court of competent jurisdiction to protect intellectual property or confidential information.

Nothing in this Section deprives you of the right to bring a claim in small claims court where that court has jurisdiction, or of any right you have under the consumer protection law of the state where you live that cannot be waived by agreement.

19. Termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time from within the app. We may suspend or terminate your access if you violate these Terms, if required by law, or if we discontinue the Service. If we discontinue the Service, we will give reasonable advance notice and an opportunity to export your data.

Sections 4 through 8, and 13 through 18, survive termination.

20. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms. If a change is material, we will notify you in the app and by email before it takes effect and update the "Last Updated" date. Continued use after the effective date means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not accept them, stop using the Service and delete your account.

21. Miscellaneous

Entire agreement: these Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service.
Severability: if any provision is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect and the unenforceable provision is limited to the minimum extent necessary.
No waiver: our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
Assignment: you may not assign these Terms. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
Force majeure: we are not liable for failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
Google Play: these Terms are between you and Nian, not Google. Google is not responsible for the Service.

22. Contact

Support: [email protected]
Legal: [email protected]
Postal: Xiaoning Jin, 陕西省西安市莲湖区枣园丰盛园7号楼, China