🪴 Privacy Policy
The short version: we don’t collect any of your data. There are no accounts, no analytics, no ads and no tracking. What you enter stays on your iPhone and in your own iCloud, and is only shared with the people in your house.
What the app stores
To do its job, Sproutmates keeps:
- your house’s name, emoji, room theme and time zone, and each member’s display name, emoji and whether they’re away;
- your plants (name, emoji, kind, drawing, spot in the room, watering interval and an optional note);
- the watering history (who watered which plant, and when, with that person’s name and emoji at the time);
- for people the creator removed: their iCloud identifier and name, so the creator can let them back in;
- an iCloud identifier for each member (a random-looking code from Apple, not your name, email or phone number), so the app knows who is who in a house;
- your settings on this iPhone, such as the reminder time.
This information is stored on your iPhone and in iCloud using Apple’s CloudKit. A house lives in the iCloud of the person who created it and is visible only to the people in that house. We, the developer, have no access to it and no server of our own.
Photos of your plants
You can take or pick a photo of a plant so the app can suggest how to draw it. The photo is looked at on your iPhone only, using Apple’s built-in image analysis. It is never uploaded, never saved, and is discarded right after. Only the drawing (a small list of parts and colours) is kept with the plant. The app doesn’t read your photo library: you choose one photo in Apple’s picker, and the app only sees that photo.
Sharing a house
Each house has one invite link, which only its creator can send. Anyone who has the link can join the house and see its plants, members and history, until the creator removes them. Joining happens through iCloud. The link points to a page on our website that sends you on to iCloud; the part of the link that identifies your house stays on your device and never reaches our website.
If you leave a house, you lose access to it; your past waterings stay in its history under your name, marked “former member”. If the creator hands a house over to another member, the app copies the house into that member’s iCloud.
Reminders
Watering reminders are scheduled by the app on your iPhone. When someone in your house waters a plant, iCloud tells the other phones so their reminders stay right. Nothing goes through a server of ours.
Purchases
Subscriptions, cosmetics and tips are handled entirely by Apple through the App Store. We never see your payment details. To share Sproutmates Plus with your house, the app saves on your shared house whether it has Plus and until when.
Our website
Our website (shilastudio.pages.dev) uses no cookies, no analytics and no tracking. It is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes technical data such as IP addresses to deliver the pages and protect them from abuse.
Who else handles your data
We don’t share your data with anyone. Apple stores your houses in iCloud and handles purchases, under Apple’s own privacy policy. Cloudflare hosts our website. Neither receives anything from us.
What we don’t do
- No analytics, crash-reporting or advertising tools.
- No tracking across apps or websites, and no selling or sharing of data.
- No access to your contacts or location, and no photo library access beyond the photo you pick.
How long your data is kept, and deleting it
Your houses stay on your iPhone and in iCloud until you delete them or leave them. We keep nothing, because we never receive it.
Deleting a house you live in alone (House & profile → Delete house) removes it, its plants and history from iCloud. Leaving a shared house takes it off your iPhone and ends your access; your past waterings stay in the house’s history under your name, marked “former member”. As a safety net, the app keeps a copy of a house you leave or delete inside the app on your iPhone (the newest five copies; they are part of your iPhone’s backup). Deleting the app removes all data on your iPhone, these copies included. Data in iCloud can also be removed in Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage.
Children
Sproutmates doesn’t collect personal information from anyone, including children.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new effective date.
Contact
Questions? Write to ShilaStudio at Shilahunter@pm.me.