Short version: your weigh-ins, photos and food log stay on your iPhone and in your own private iCloud. We cannot see them. To use the app you make an account, so we hold the email address you sign up with, the year you were born and, if you give it, your sex. If you scan a meal, the photo or description is sent to be estimated and is not kept. There are no ads and no tracking.
Your account
You sign in with Apple or with an email address and a password. We store that email address (or the private relay address Apple gives us, if you hide yours) and an account ID, with our sign-in provider, Supabase. A password is stored only in a scrambled form that cannot be read back. The account says who you are and whether you have subscribed. It does not hold your weigh-ins, photos or food.
At sign-up we also ask the year you were born, to confirm you are 13 or older, and your sex, which you can leave unanswered. Both help us understand who uses the app. If you turn on "Email me tips and news", we may send you email about Tracker Turtle. That is off unless you turn it on, and every such email has a way to stop them.
You can delete your account at any time in You > Delete Account. That removes the email address and the account for good. A subscription is managed by Apple and is cancelled in your iPhone's Settings.
Subscriptions
Tracker Turtle Plus is bought through the App Store. Apple handles the payment. We never see your card or your Apple Account details; we learn only that a subscription is active.
Meal scans
If you scan a meal with a photo or describe one in words, that photo or text is sent to our server and on to Anthropic, whose Claude model estimates the calories and macros. The photo and the text are not stored by us once the estimate comes back. We keep a count of the scans each account makes and how large they were, to enforce the daily limit and to pay for the service. The photo you see on a logged meal is a small copy kept on your phone and in your own iCloud.
What the app stores
Your weigh-ins, your progress photos, your goal and your settings. If you use the Food tab, also the foods you log and your daily calorie and macro targets, along with the answers those targets were worked out from: your sex, date of birth, height and how often you work out. These are saved inside the app on your device. Photos are not saved to your photo library unless you choose to share or save one yourself.
iCloud
If you are signed in to iCloud, the app syncs your weigh-ins, photos, goal, food log and daily targets to a private CloudKit database in your own iCloud account so they survive a new or reset phone. Only you can access it. We cannot see it. You can erase it from You > Erase All Data.
Barcode lookups
When you scan or type a food barcode, the app sends that barcode number to Open Food Facts, a non-profit open database of food products, and gets back the product's name and nutrition for you to check. When you search packaged foods by name, the app sends the words you typed and the country your phone is set to, and choosing a result looks that product up by its barcode. Nothing else is sent with either: no account, no device identifier and no cookies. Like any website, Open Food Facts sees the internet address the request comes from, and it keeps logs of requests as described in its privacy policy. A product you have logged before is found on your phone and is not looked up again. The everyday foods, drinks and add-ons you can search are a list inside the app, and searching them sends nothing. If you never scan a barcode or search packaged foods, nothing is sent.
Apple Health
Apple Health access is optional and off until you turn it on in You > Apple Health. If you allow it, the app writes your body weight to Health and can read body weight from other sources to fill days you did not log. Health data is never sent to us or to anyone else, and is not used for advertising.
Camera, photos and Face ID
The camera is used only to take the progress photos you choose to take, to photograph a meal you choose to scan, and to read food barcodes. A barcode is read on your phone; no image of it is sent anywhere. The photo library is used only when you pick a photo to import or save a photo or video you shared. Face ID or your passcode is used only to unlock your photos inside the app; the app never receives your biometric data.
Notifications
The morning reminder is a local notification scheduled on your device. Nothing is sent to a server.
Data we collect
Your email address and account ID, the year you were born, your sex if you gave it, whether you asked for marketing email, and a count of your meal scans. Nothing else. The app contains no analytics, advertising or tracking code, and we do not sell or share what we hold.
Children
The app is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new date.