How Above Water works
From connecting a bank to a balance on your Home Screen, in four steps, and what we keep along the way. Setup takes a few minutes, and after that there is nothing to maintain.
- Connect your banks through Plaid
- Pick the accounts you want
- Place a widget
- How often balances refresh
- What we store
1Connect your banks through Plaid
Sign in to Above Water with Sign in with Apple or your email address, then tap Connect banks. Your bank's sign-in opens inside Plaid, the service that connects thousands of apps to US and Canadian banks. You type your bank password into your bank's own screen. We never see it.
When you finish, Plaid gives us a token that can read account names, types, the last four digits of each account number, and balances. It can't move money, and nothing in the app can make a payment or a transfer. You can revoke it from the app, or yourself at my.plaid.com, which lists every app connected to your accounts through Plaid.
Most banks, credit unions and card issuers in the US and Canada work. If yours isn't in the list, Plaid doesn't currently support it for balances; tell us which one and we'll pass it on. Connect as many banks as you like. Each one is a separate sign-in.
2Pick the accounts you want
Some banks let you choose which accounts to share while you connect. After that, every shared account appears in the app with its current balance. Hide any you don't want to see, such as an old savings account or a joint card you never check, and it stays out of your widgets.
Credit cards show what you owe. When a widget shows one card, it can show what you can still spend on it instead. For checking and savings, you choose whether a widget shows your bank's available balance, which counts purchases still pending, or only posted transactions.
3Place a widget
Touch and hold an empty part of your Home Screen, tap Edit, then Add Widget, and search for Above Water. There are two widgets:
- Balance shows one number: one account, or several added together. It comes in small, medium and large sizes on the Home Screen, and in three sizes on the Lock Screen.
- Accounts lists several balances, each on its own row, with a net total. It comes in medium and large on the Home Screen, and as a rectangle on the Lock Screen.
Touch and hold a placed widget and tap Edit Widget to choose its accounts and how much of the number to show. Precision runs from the exact figure down to rounded ($14.2k), a bar with no digits, or hidden until you tap it. That way a balance on your Lock Screen tells a passer-by nothing. Each widget keeps its own settings, so you can show the exact number on the Home Screen and a rounded one on the Lock Screen.
The Lock Screen steps are on how to see your bank balance on the iPhone Lock Screen. Above Water works on iPad too.
4How often balances refresh
Plaid checks each bank for new balances a few times a day. How often depends on the bank. Above Water picks up the latest figure automatically, in the background, so a widget can change without you opening anything. There's nothing to refresh by hand.
iOS decides when widgets redraw and when background refreshes run, so the exact timing varies with how you use your phone. If a bank stops updating or needs you to sign in again, the widget says so instead of quietly showing an old figure.
Real-time balances straight from the bank are possible, but Plaid charges for every such check, so Above Water doesn't use them today.
5What we store
We keep the account names, types, last four digits and balances Plaid sends, plus one balance per account per day for the last 13 months. That history is what lets a widget show whether today's balance is low or normal for you. We never receive your bank password, and we don't sell your data or show ads.
Disconnect a bank in the app and we revoke the Plaid token and delete that bank's balances. Delete your account and everything goes after 14 days. The details are in the security overview and the data retention and deletion policy.