Privacy Policy

Last updated: 19 October 2026

1. Who we are

CrocoDiary – Calorie and Macro Tracker ("CrocoDiary", "the app", "we", "us") is made by James Pearce, an independent developer based in the United Kingdom. For the purposes of UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018), we are the controller of the personal data described in this policy that passes through our systems.

Contact: support@crocodiary.app
Our postal address is shown on our Google Play and App Store listings, or is available on request by email.

2. Data that stays on your phone

Everything you log in CrocoDiary is stored in the app's private storage on your device. This includes your food diary, exercise, water, custom foods and recipes, goals, body weight, the body details you enter for calorie estimates (sex, year of birth, height and activity level), daily notes, progress photos, and your settings.

We do not receive or have access to this information. It leaves your phone only in the ways described below, which you start or control yourself.

If you add the CrocoDiary home-screen widget, today's calories, macros and water are shown on your home screen, where anyone looking at your phone can see them. The widget gets them from the app on your phone; nothing is sent anywhere.

Some of this, such as weight and what you eat, is information about your health. Keeping it on your device is a deliberate choice so that it stays under your control.

3. Data that leaves your phone, and why

3.1 AI meal logging (Premium)

When you use Log meal photo or Describe meal, the app sends to our server:

• the photo(s) you take or choose, and/or the text you type or speak;
• your phone's language and region setting (for example "en-GB"), so portion sizes match your country;
• your store's proof of purchase, so we can check that you have an active Premium subscription: a purchase token from Google Play, or on iPhone the signed purchase record (transaction) from Apple's App Store.

Our server passes the photo, description and region to Anthropic, whose Claude AI model estimates the foods and nutrition, and then sends the estimate back to your phone. Our server does not store your photos, descriptions or the results. To prevent abuse and control costs, it counts each subscription's AI requests for the current day, using a scrambled (hashed) form of your purchase token (Google Play) or of your subscription's transaction number (App Store) rather than your name, and clears the counts every day. It also briefly remembers internet addresses that send invalid subscriptions, to block misuse.

Anthropic processes this data on our behalf. Under its commercial terms it does not use it to train its AI models, and it deletes it automatically within 30 days, unless it is flagged by its automated safety systems or it is legally required to keep it. See Anthropic's Privacy Center.

Our server runs on a cloud hosting provider that processes data only on our behalf and under our instructions.

Please only send photos of food. Avoid including people's faces or documents in meal photos.

Purpose and legal basis: to provide the AI feature you have asked for (performance of our contract with you), and, for any health-related information in your photos or descriptions, your explicit consent, which you give each time you choose to send one. You can stop at any time simply by not using the feature.

3.2 Voice input

If you describe a meal by voice, the app uses your phone's built-in speech recognition service (on most Android phones this is provided by Google; on iPhone, by Apple, which may process the audio on its own servers). The audio is handled by that service under its own privacy terms. CrocoDiary only receives the resulting text. Microphone access is used only while you are speaking to the app.

3.3 Food search, barcodes and nutrition labels

When you search for a food or scan a barcode, the search words or barcode number are sent to:

• Open Food Facts (privacy policy), a free, open database of food products; and
• USDA FoodData Central, the US Department of Agriculture's food database (searches only).

These services see your device's internet address, as with any website, but nothing that identifies you by name.

Barcodes and nutrition labels are read on your phone; the photos and camera images are not uploaded. Nutrition labels (and, on Android, barcodes) are read using Google's ML Kit; on iPhone, barcodes are read by Apple's built-in scanner. The numbers read from a label simply fill in a food you then save on your phone. ML Kit sends Google basic diagnostic information about how it is working, such as your device model, Android or iOS and app version, a random per-installation ID (not used to identify you), performance figures and error codes. Google says it does not pass this to third parties. See ML Kit's data disclosure for Android and iOS.

3.4 Importing a recipe from a website

If you import a recipe from a web address, your phone downloads that page directly from the website you entered. That website sees the request as it would if you visited it in a browser.

3.5 PDF export fonts

If you export your diary as a PDF and it contains Chinese, Japanese or Korean text, the app downloads the font it needs from Google Fonts (fonts.gstatic.com) the first time. No diary content is sent.

3.6 Backups

On Android:

• Weekly backup to Google Drive (optional, off until you switch it on): the app saves a backup file of your data and progress photos to a "CrocoDiary Backups" folder in your own Google Drive. You sign in with Google, and the app asks only for permission to see and manage the files it creates, not the rest of your Drive. The app stores your Google account email on your phone to show which account is connected. We cannot see your Drive or your backups.
• Back up everything creates a backup file that you save or share wherever you choose.
• Android backup: like most apps, CrocoDiary allows Android to include your diary (not photos) in your phone's backup to your Google account, so it can be restored on a new phone. Photos are included only when you copy everything directly from an old phone to a new one. You control this in your phone's settings.

On iPhone:

• Weekly backup to a folder (optional, off until you switch it on): you choose a folder with Apple's Files picker, for example in your iCloud Drive or on your iPhone, and the app saves a backup file of your data and progress photos there. The app only has access to the folder you chose. If the folder is in iCloud Drive, the backups are stored by Apple in your iCloud account. We cannot see them.
• Back up everything creates a backup file that you save or share wherever you choose.
• iPhone backup: like most apps, CrocoDiary's data (including progress photos) is included when your iPhone backs up to iCloud or to a computer, so it can be restored on a new iPhone. You control this in Settings → your name → iCloud → iCloud Backup.

On both:

• Save progress photos to gallery (optional): copies progress photos to a CrocoDiary album in your phone's gallery (on iPhone, the Photos app). If your gallery backs up to the cloud (for example Google Photos or iCloud Photos), those copies will be backed up too.

Data you put in Google Drive, iCloud, your Google account or a file you share is then held by those services under their own terms.

3.7 Purchases

Premium subscriptions are sold and billed by Google Play on Android and by Apple's App Store on iPhone. We never see your payment card details, your name or your email address. The store tells the app whether you have an active subscription, and each time you use AI meal logging our server asks the store to confirm it (remembering the answer for a few minutes): Google, using your purchase token, or Apple, using the subscription's transaction number from the purchase record the App Store gave the app. The stores' handling of your payment is covered by the Google Privacy Policy and Apple's Privacy Policy.

3.8 Apple Health (iPhone, optional)

If you turn on Settings → Sync with Apple Health and allow it in Apple's permission screen, CrocoDiary:

• saves to Apple Health your weight, the calories, protein, carbohydrate and fat of each meal you log, and your water;
• reads from Apple Health weights saved by other apps (for example a smart scale), to fill days with no weight in your diary, and workouts saved by other apps and watches, which are added to your diary as exercise.

This happens entirely on your iPhone. Data from Apple Health is never sent to our server, to Anthropic's AI, or to anyone else, and is never used for advertising. Weights and workouts brought in from Apple Health become part of your diary on your phone, so they are included in backups that you make (see 3.6), which go only where you choose. You can choose exactly what CrocoDiary may read and write, or turn it off, in the Health app (Profile → Apps → CrocoDiary) or in CrocoDiary's Settings. Turning it off doesn't delete what was already saved in Apple Health; you can delete that in the Health app.

3.9 Sharing and exports

If you export a PDF or CSV, or share a backup file, it goes only where you send it.

4. What we don't do

• No adverts or advertising IDs.
• No analytics, crash-reporting or tracking tools (apart from the ML Kit diagnostics described in 3.3).
• We never sell your data or share it for marketing.
• We don't use your data to train AI models, and Anthropic doesn't either (see 3.1).

5. Permissions the app uses

6. International transfers

Anthropic, USDA, Apple and some Google services are based in the United States, and Open Food Facts in France. Where personal data is sent outside the UK, it is protected by the safeguards UK law requires: for Anthropic, standard contractual clauses approved for UK transfers, which are part of Anthropic's data processing addendum; for France and the rest of the EU, the UK's adequacy regulations.

7. How long data is kept

• On your phone: until you delete it, use Settings → Erase all data, or uninstall the app.
• AI requests: not stored by us; deleted by Anthropic within 30 days (see 3.1). Daily request counts: cleared each day.
• Emails you send us: as long as needed to help you, then deleted within 2 years.
• Backups in your Google Drive, iCloud Drive or files you saved: until you delete them.

8. Deleting your data

Because there's no CrocoDiary account, you are in control:

• In the app: Settings → Erase all data, or uninstall the app.
• Google Drive backups: delete the "CrocoDiary Backups" folder at drive.google.com, and remove CrocoDiary's access at myaccount.google.com/connections.
• Android backup: manage it in your phone's backup settings or Google account.
• iPhone backups to a folder: delete the backup files in the Files app (for example iCloud Drive → CrocoDiary). iCloud Backup: manage it in Settings → your name → iCloud.
• Anything else: email support@crocodiary.app.

9. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to access, correct or delete your personal data, to restrict or object to its use, to data portability, and to withdraw consent at any time. As we hold very little data about you, most of these you can exercise directly in the app. For anything else, email support@crocodiary.app and we'll reply within one month.

You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113). We'd appreciate the chance to help first.

10. Children

CrocoDiary is not intended for anyone under 18, and we don't knowingly process children's data. Calorie tracking isn't suitable for everyone – see our Terms of Use.

11. Security

Data travels between the app and our server, Anthropic, the food databases and Google over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Your data on the phone is protected by Android's or iOS's app sandboxing and your device's encryption and screen lock.

12. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top, and for significant changes we'll tell you in the app before they apply.