Legal
Privacy Policy
plantu is a gardening app built to work offline: almost everything it knows lives on your phone. This policy explains the few things that leave it, why, who receives them, and how to remove them.
At a glance
- Your garden stays on your phone unless you choose to sign in.
- The camera turns on only when you open it, and a photo is sent only when you ask plantu to identify, check or plan from it — after you have agreed the first time.
- Location is used only if you allow it, for local weather.
- No ads, no tracking across other apps or websites, no profiling.
- We never sell your data.
- You can delete your account, and everything synced to it, inside the app.
1What stays on your phone
Your garden — plots, beds, plantings, watering records, health checks, notes, the photos in your gallery, the log and your settings — is stored on the device itself. If you never sign in, none of it is sent anywhere, and deleting the app deletes it.
2What is collected, and why
| Data | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Location (the coordinates of your garden) | Only after you tap “Use my location” and allow it | Local rainfall and temperature. The coordinates are stored on your phone and sent to the weather and place-name services below. They are never sent to our own database, and never with your account. |
| Photos you take to identify a plant, check its health or plan a bed, and the wish you type for a bed | Only when you tap to identify, diagnose or design a bed, while signed in, and only after you have agreed the first time plantu asks | The photo goes through our identification service to Anthropic’s model, is used to answer that one request, and is not stored by us. See Photos and the camera. |
| Email address and name | Only if you choose to sign in with Apple, Google or an email code | To keep your garden in your account so it survives a lost phone and reaches your other devices, and to count the identifications your plan includes. Sign-in is optional. |
| Your garden data | Only while signed in | Synced to our database so the same garden appears on your devices. |
| Identification counts | Each time a photo is identified or checked | One row per photo — when, and which subscription it counted against — so your monthly allowance adds up correctly and cannot be spent twice. No photo or answer is kept in it. |
| Purchase status | Only if you subscribe to plantu Pro | To know whether Pro is active on your devices, how many identifications remain, and to restore purchases. Payment is handled entirely by Apple; we never see your card or Apple ID. |
| Your answers to the welcome questions | Once, when you finish setting up the app | Language, how you heard about plantu, gardening experience, what you came for, roughly how many plants you have, whether you allowed location and reminders, and the app version. Stored against a random id made on your phone — no name, email, account or coordinates — to understand who uses plantu as a whole. |
| Feedback you send | Only when you submit the form | To fix and improve the app. Sent without your name or email, unless you write them in the message yourself. |
| Error reports | When something in the app goes wrong | So we can fix it: the error, where it happened, and the app version. No name, email, garden, photo or location. |
| Messages and the launch list on plantu.space | Only when you send a message or join the list | Messages reach us as email so we can reply. The launch list keeps your email address, when you joined, and the page and language you joined from, only to tell you when plantu is available; every mail lets you unsubscribe. |
3Photos and the camera
- The camera runs only while the camera screen is open, and stops the moment you close it or take the photo. It never runs in the background or at launch.
- Before the first photo is sent, plantu asks, and says where it goes. Nothing is sent until you agree.
- A photo leaves your phone only when you tap to identify, check or plan from it. It is shrunk first, and cropped to the frame you saw.
- It goes to our identification service, run on Cloudflare, which holds it in memory for the length of the request and passes it to Anthropic for the answer. We do not store the photo on any server.
- Anthropic processes it under its commercial terms: it is not used to train models, and Anthropic may keep it for a limited time for safety and abuse monitoring before deleting it, as its own policy describes.
- The photo and its answer stay in the gallery on your phone until you delete them. A health check you save to a plant becomes part of your garden data.
- Photos can show more than a plant — a house, a street, a person. Please frame the plant.
4Who else receives data
These providers process data only to deliver their part of plantu, under their own privacy terms. Several are based in the United States, so your data may be processed outside the country you live in, with the safeguards those providers offer for international transfers.
| Provider | What it receives |
|---|---|
| Supabase — database and sign-in | Your account email and name, your garden data while signed in, identification counts, welcome answers, feedback, error reports and the launch list. |
| Cloudflare — website and identification service | Requests to plantu.space, including a photo you send, for the length of that request. |
| Anthropic — plant identification and bed design | The photo you chose to identify, check or plan a bed on, the wish you typed for a bed, and the list of plants plantu knows. Not used to train models. |
| Open-Meteo — weather | The coordinates of your garden, to return the forecast and rainfall. |
| BigDataCloud — place names | The coordinates, to turn them into the name of your town or city. |
| RevenueCat — subscriptions | Your purchase and subscription status, and an app user id. |
| Apple | Payment and subscription handling, and Sign in with Apple. If you ask Apple for a refund, how much of Pro you used (sent through RevenueCat), so Apple can decide it. |
| Sign in with Google, only if you choose it. | |
| Resend — email delivery | Messages you send us through the site, our replies, and the launch mail. |
5Legal basis
Where the law asks for one (for example the GDPR), we rely on:
- Providing what you asked for — your account, sync, identifications, purchases and replies to your messages.
- Your consent — location, sending a photo for identification, and the launch list. You can withdraw it at any time.
- Our legitimate interest in keeping plantu working and fair — error reports, anonymous welcome answers, and counting identifications so they cannot be abused.
6Keeping and deleting your data
- Everything on the phone is deleted when you delete the app, or from Settings → Start over.
- Your account and everything synced to it can be deleted inside the app: Settings → Account → Delete my account. This removes your garden from our database along with the account, ends plantu’s access to your Apple ID if you signed in with Apple, and cannot be undone.
- Identification counts are kept after an account is deleted, with the link to the account removed, only so a subscription cannot be spent twice by making a new account.
- Welcome answers, feedback and error reports are kept without identifying information, and only as long as they help improve the app.
- Messages and the launch list: ask and we delete them; unsubscribing takes you off the list.
- Location can be switched off at any time in iOS Settings → plantu → Location.
7Your rights
You can ask what data we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to how we use it. Write to us at the address below and we will answer within one month. Deleting your account in the app deletes your synced data immediately. Depending on where you live, you may also have the right to complain to a data protection authority.
If you live in California or a similar US state: we do not sell or share personal information, and plantu carries no advertising.
8Children
plantu is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age where you live), and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has given us data, write to us and we will delete it.
9Security
Everything travels over HTTPS. Your synced garden can only be read with your own sign-in, and the tables for counts, feedback and the launch list cannot be read with the key inside the app at all. No system is perfectly secure, but we keep what is stored deliberately small.
10Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the effective date at the top changes with it, and the app always links to the current version.
11Contact
Questions about this policy or the data plantu holds about you:
The developer of plantu is responsible for your data (the “controller”).