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Privacy Policy
Effective: 15 September 2026 · Last updated: 15 September 2026 · Version: 1.1
GreenThumb keeps a list of your plants and reminds you to water them. It collects what it needs to do that, and nothing else. There is no advertising, no analytics, and no tracking of any kind.
- You can use GreenThumb without an account. Everything you enter then stays on your device.
- If you sign in, your email address and your garden — plants, tags, notes, watering history, photos, and progress — sync to our hosting provider so your devices agree with each other.
- Photos you take for plant identification are sent to PlantNet to name the species. Nothing else leaves the app for a third party.
- No analytics SDKs, no advertising identifiers, no third-party trackers, no data brokers. Your data is never sold or shared for advertising.
- You can erase everything — on this device and on our servers — from Settings, at any time.
This policy covers the GreenThumb iOS app and the backend service the app talks to when you are signed in. GreenThumb is published by Tyryn Crow ("we", "us"), the data controller for the information described here.
Using GreenThumb means this policy applies to you. If you disagree with it, please don't use the app — and if you have already signed in, section 8 explains how to erase what has been stored.
GreenThumb has no account requirement. Everything the app does — adding plants, watering them, writing notes, earning XP — works with no session at all, entirely on your device. Signing in adds a copy on our servers so your devices stay in step and so a garden can be shared.
| What | Why it exists | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | Identifies your account, delivers sign-in links, confirmations and password resets | Server, when signed in |
| Password (optional) | An alternative to emailed sign-in links. Stored only as a salted hash — never in readable form | Server, when signed in |
| Plants | Name, species, icon, colour, watering interval, dates added, watered and snoozed | Device, then server |
| Tags | Your own labels and their colours, e.g. "Living Room", "Low Light" | Device, then server |
| Notes | Free text and a health rating you write about a plant, with its date | Device, then server |
| Watering history | When a plant was watered, how late it was, and the XP earned — this is what the charts and streaks are built from | Device, then server |
| Progress | XP total, current and longest streak, watering counts, unlocked achievements | Device, then server |
| Photos | Plant photos and your profile picture, taken with the camera or chosen from your library | Device, then server |
| Identification photo | A single photo you explicitly submit to name a species | PlantNet, via our server |
| Invite email address | The address you type when inviting someone into your garden | Server, when signed in |
| Invite code | The code redeemed to unlock the full version, and the resulting entitlement | Server, when signed in |
GreenThumb contains no analytics, attribution, crash-reporting or advertising SDK. It does not read your location, contacts, calendars, health data or photo library beyond the images you pick yourself. It does not request the advertising identifier (IDFA) and does not track you across other apps or websites. We do not build profiles, and we do not sell or rent personal information to anyone.
Camera access is requested only when you take a plant photo or use identification, and is used for nothing else. You can decline, and the rest of the app carries on working.
- Running the app. Showing your plants, working out what needs water, keeping streaks and achievements honest.
- Syncing. Copying changes between your devices and, if you share a garden, to the person you share it with.
- Signing you in. Sending magic links, confirmation emails and password resets to the address you gave.
- Identifying a plant, when you submit a photo for it.
- Support. If you email us, we use your message and address to reply.
Where the UK/EU GDPR applies, we rely on contract (running the service you asked for, including sync and identification), consent (camera access and notification permission, each revocable in iOS Settings), and legitimate interests (keeping the service secure and abuse-free). We do no automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects.
When you use identification, the photo you chose is uploaded to our server and passed to the PlantNet identification API, which returns candidate species and confidence scores. Only the image and the plant part you selected (leaf, flower, fruit or auto) are forwarded — nothing that identifies you or your account travels with it, and PlantNet is not told who sent the photo.
We do not retain the submitted photo on our server after the request completes. PlantNet's own handling of images sent to its API is governed by its policies, and is outside our control. This feature only runs when you tap it, on a photo you chose.
You can invite one other person — a partner, housemate or family member — into your garden by entering their email address. If they accept, you both see the same plants, tags, notes, photos and watering history, and a watering by either of you counts for both.
While a share is active, each of you can see the other's email address, so you both know who you are gardening with. Anything in a shared garden is, by design, visible to the other member. Either of you can end the share at any time from Settings; after that, new changes stop flowing between you.
Accepting an invitation replaces the plants on the joining device with the shared garden's. GreenThumb warns you before this happens.
Watering reminders and the app badge are local notifications, scheduled by the app on your own device. There is no push server, and no notification content is transmitted anywhere. You choose whether to allow notifications and can withdraw that permission in iOS Settings at any time; the app keeps working without them.
- Supabase — our hosting provider, supplying the database, authentication, file storage and the function that proxies identification requests. It processes your data on our instructions, under contract.
- PlantNet — receives identification photos only, as described in section 4.
- Apple — distributes the app and handles the App Store relationship. We receive no personal information about you from Apple.
- Anyone you invite into your garden, as described in section 5.
We may also disclose information if legally required to do so, or where necessary to protect our rights or someone's safety. If GreenThumb is ever transferred to another owner, your data may transfer with it; we will say so in this policy before that takes effect. Beyond this list, nobody else receives your data — we do not sell or share it for advertising or cross-context behavioural advertising.
Your garden is kept for as long as your account exists, because it is the app's whole content. You are in control of removing it:
- Delete individual items — plants, tags and notes — in the app. Deletions propagate to your other devices and to a shared garden.
- Erase everything. Settings offers a full wipe: every plant, tag, note and watering record is deleted on this device, on your account, and on every device you sync to, along with the stored photos. It cannot be undone.
- Sign out to stop syncing. What is already on the server stays until you wipe it or ask us to close the account.
- Close your account. Email us (section 14) and we will delete the account and everything attached to it, normally within 30 days.
Deleted records may persist briefly in encrypted backups held by our hosting provider before those expire on their normal rotation.
All traffic between the app and our servers uses TLS. Every table is protected by row-level security, so a signed-in account can only read and write its own garden and any garden explicitly shared with it — the same rule guards stored photos. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes. The identification API key is held in server-side configuration and is never shipped inside the app.
No system is perfectly secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security. If a breach affects your personal data, we will notify you and the relevant regulator as the law requires.
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access the personal data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, receive a portable copy, object to or restrict certain processing, and withdraw consent you previously gave. Most of these you can exercise directly in the app; for the rest, email us and we will answer within the time the law allows.
If you are in California: we do not sell your personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we will never discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights. If you are in the UK or EU and think we've handled your data badly, you can complain to your local supervisory authority — though we'd appreciate the chance to put it right first.
GreenThumb is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
Our servers are operated by Supabase and your data may be stored and processed in a country other than your own. Where data is transferred out of the UK or EEA, it is protected by the appropriate safeguards our provider maintains, such as Standard Contractual Clauses.
If this policy changes, the updated version is posted here with a new "last updated" date. Material changes — a new category of data, or a new recipient — will be flagged in the app before they take effect. Continuing to use GreenThumb after a change means you accept the updated policy.
Questions, requests, or a data-deletion ask:
Please put "GreenThumb Privacy" in the subject line so it doesn't get lost.