What Plantout stores on your device

Plantout keeps these in its own database, settings and photo folder on your device:

• your gardens: the name you give each one, the pin you place, its height, its time zone, the place or postcode you picked, the microclimate you chose, and your temperature unit;
• your plantings, repeat sowings and reminders, your own plants and their months, and any frost dates you change;
• your bed log notes, harvests, seed packets and the photos you add to them;
• your thermometer readings, your morning frost check-ins, and when you covered or shaded a planting;
• the forecast nights for your garden’s area, so tonight’s answer shows without a connection;
• your settings, and a short summary of tonight’s answer for the home-screen widget.

Plantout also keeps a copy of your Plantout Pro status on the device so it shows at once when the app opens. It does not collect contacts or health data.

Forecasts for your garden

Tonight’s answer and the coming nights come from Trueframe’s forecast service, operated by Trueframe Digital and hosted on Cloudflare. Plantout asks it about a grid square about 5 km across that holds your garden, and a 100 m height band. The request never carries your exact pin, your garden’s name or anything you wrote. Like any internet request it carries your device’s IP address; our service does not log it. The service gets its weather forecasts from MET Norway for that grid square. Your phone never contacts MET Norway.

Plantout asks again when the forecast is due to change, including in the background, so that your frost alerts stay up to date.

Placing your garden

• Garden search runs on your device, from a list of Australian suburbs and postcodes built into the app. What you type is not sent anywhere.
• Map: while the garden map is on screen, Plantout loads map pictures from OpenFreeMap, so OpenFreeMap sees roughly which area you are looking at and your device’s IP address.
• Garden height: when you confirm or move the garden pin, Plantout downloads one terrain picture of the area around it (about 8 km across) from Terrain Tiles, a free public dataset hosted by Amazon Web Services, and reads your garden’s height from it. The request names that area, not your exact pin. Without a connection, you can type the height yourself.
• Time zone: worked out on your device from the pin. Nothing is sent.

Your exact garden pin is not sent to any of these services. They only see the approximate areas described.

Permissions

• Location (optional): asked only when you tap “Use my location”, used while the app is open to place the pin once, and you still confirm the pin. Plantout does not use your location in the background. Saying no does not stop you searching or placing the pin by hand.
• Notifications (optional): asked only when you tap “Turn on alerts”. Alerts and reminders are scheduled on your device; there is no push server.
• Camera and photos (optional): used only when you take or choose a photo for your bed log or a seed packet. Photos stay on your device, unless you put them in a backup you make.

Reading a seed packet

When you scan a seed packet, the text is read on your device: by Apple Vision on iPhone and iPad, and by Google ML Kit on Android. The photo and its text are not uploaded. On Android, Google ML Kit sends Google technical information about how the text reader performs (such as the app’s name and version, an installation identifier and timings), never the photo or its text, as described in Google’s ML Kit terms.

Diagnostics (on by default, with an off-switch)

To find and fix crashes and slow screens, Plantout sends diagnostic reports. This is on by default. You can turn it off at any time in Settings → Diagnostics → Crash diagnostics. Two services receive reports:

• Trueframe’s crash-reporting service, operated by Trueframe Digital, receives a crash report: the app and its version, your platform and operating-system version, the error and where in the code it happened, and the time. The report has no device, installation or user identifier.
• Sentry (EU region) receives errors and crashes, app-start and screen timings (named by screen, never by what is on it), session health, technical log lines and counters, the layout of the app’s widgets at a crash, the app version and build, device and operating-system information, and sampled performance profiles on Apple devices. Screenshots and session replay are turned off, and Sentry’s default personal-information fields are turned off. Sentry may attach a random installation ID, used to count how many installs a problem affects. It is made fresh for each installation and is not linked to you or your account.

Reports never include your gardens, plantings, notes or photos on purpose. Like any internet request, each report carries your device’s IP address. Turning the switch off stops new reports: crash reports, errors, timings and log lines are no longer sent. If you turn it off while the app is open, Sentry may still receive short notes that a session started or ended, until the app is fully closed and opened again. A crash or freeze in that same session may also still be reported. This is technical diagnostics, not advertising or behavioural tracking.

Copy for support, on the same screen, puts the app’s details on your clipboard for you to paste into an email to us. Your notes, photos and garden places are not included, and nothing is sent unless you send that email.

Purchases

Plantout is free to download. Plantout Pro is optional, as an annual or monthly subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase. Payment is processed by the Apple App Store or Google Play; Trueframe Digital never sees or stores your payment details.

Purchases are also confirmed and restored through RevenueCat, our purchase-processing provider. When you buy or restore, RevenueCat receives the store’s transaction information, an identifier the app makes (there is no account, and we never send your name or email), and the standard details any internet request carries, such as app version, platform and IP address. It never receives your gardens, plantings, notes or photos.

The stores and RevenueCat handle this data under their own privacy policies.

Widgets, Shortcuts and Spotlight

The Plantout widgets show tonight’s answer and, on the medium widget, the coming nights. To do this, the app writes a short summary on your device that the widgets can read. On iPhone and iPad, Siri, Shortcuts and Spotlight can answer whether it will frost tonight, log a planting, a cover or this morning’s frost, or open a crop guide; Spotlight lists the crops from the app’s built-in guide. Plantout does not send any of this anywhere.

Backups and files you make

Backup, restore and export are free, in Settings → Export & Backup. Plantout never backs up on its own. A backup is a file you make, in the place you choose:

• Backup file: everything in Plantout, photos included, saved to a place you choose or sent with your device’s share sheet.
• iCloud Drive (iPhone and iPad): the same file, kept in your own iCloud Drive, which Apple stores under your Apple Account.
• Export (CSV) and Add to calendar (one .ics calendar file with your planting dates): files you save or share yourself.

The place or app you choose receives the file. Trueframe Digital never receives it. If you have turned on your device’s own system backup (iCloud Backup, or Android backup to your Google account), that backup may also include Plantout’s data, kept by Apple or Google under your account.

Other connections

Plantout uses the network only for the forecast, map and garden height requests above, to send diagnostics (see Diagnostics above), to talk to the app store and RevenueCat for Plantout Pro, to show the store’s own rating prompt, for an iCloud Drive backup when you start one, and, on Android, for Google ML Kit’s technical information. Links in About and Settings open in your browser. Any request to these services carries the normal connection data that service needs to answer it.

Who else handles this data, and for how long

Sentry and RevenueCat work for us as service providers. Their terms let them use this data to run and improve their service for us, and require them to keep it secure, so it has the same protection this policy describes. Sentry may also use parts of it that cannot identify anyone for its own business, such as statistics and new products. Trueframe’s crash-reporting service runs on Cloudflare, which stores its reports for us. When a fatal crash arrives, the service also posts a short alert to our developer’s Discord channel: the app and its version, the platform and operating-system version, the kind of error and its first line.

Sentry keeps timings, logs, counters and profiles for 30 days and everything else, such as errors and crash layouts, for 90 days, then deletes them; its backups are deleted 90 days after they are made. Reports in Trueframe’s own crash service, and its Discord alerts, carry no identifier and stay until we delete them. RevenueCat keeps your purchase record while we use its service.

Your control and deletion

Delete a planting, log entry, photo, harvest, seed packet, reading or your own plant in the app, remove a garden (Plantout always keeps one), or remove all of Plantout’s data by deleting the app. Backup and export files you saved elsewhere, including iCloud Drive copies, stay where you put them until you delete them. The only records held off your device are your purchase at RevenueCat, under the identifier the app made, and diagnostics. To ask us to delete either, email us at the address below.

Children

Plantout has no account, no chat, no ads and no way to contact other people.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update this page and the “Last updated” date above.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Email [email protected]. Publisher: Trueframe Digital, Melbourne, Australia.

This policy applies to Plantout on iPhone, iPad and Android.