SnapCal ("we", "our", "the app") is built by Ionut Danut Cardos and is designed to be private by default. This policy explains what data the app handles and how.
The short version
📱 Your data stays on your iPhone. Meals, goals, favorites, history — all stored locally.
🤖 AI food scanning sends your food photo to OpenAI's servers for analysis. The photo is processed and immediately discarded — it is NOT stored by OpenAI or by us.
🚫 No account required. No sign-up, no login, no email.
🔍 No analytics, no tracking, no advertising IDs. Zero third-party SDKs.
What data the app uses
1. Data you create
- Meals you log, food items, daily calorie totals, macronutrients
- Your profile (name, age, height, weight, activity level, calorie goals)
- Recipes you mark as favorites
- Scan history (count of scans used for the free tier limit)
All of this is stored exclusively on your device using Apple's SwiftData framework. It is never uploaded to our servers (we don't have servers).
2. Photos and AI scanning
- When you scan food, your photo is sent to OpenAI's API (GPT-4o Vision) via our backend proxy for AI-powered food identification and nutrition estimation.
- The photo is sent via encrypted HTTPS, processed by OpenAI, and immediately discarded. OpenAI does not store or use your photos for training per their API data usage policy.
- We do NOT store your photos on any server. The only copy exists on your device.
- Photos you log with a meal are stored locally on your device only.
- If you are offline, the app falls back to on-device Vision analysis (Apple's built-in classifier) which does not transmit any data.
3. Camera access
- The app requests camera permission to allow you to scan food and fridge contents.
- The camera is only used while the app is open and you are actively scanning.
4. Photo library access (optional)
- If you choose to pick a photo from your library instead of taking a new one, the app reads that image to analyze it.
- We never upload library photos or index your library.
5. In-app purchases
- If you purchase SnapCal Plus, the transaction is handled by Apple's StoreKit.
- We never see or store your payment information.
- Your purchase status is remembered on your device and verified via your Apple ID.
What we do NOT do
- We do NOT have analytics (no Google Analytics, no Firebase, no Mixpanel, no custom analytics).
- We do NOT have advertising (no ads, no ad SDKs, no IDFA tracking).
- We do NOT share your data with anyone.
- We do NOT sell your data.
- We do NOT have a backend server that receives your meals or profile data.
- We do NOT use third-party trackers.
Data you can delete
- Clear all data: Settings → Your data → Delete my account & data will permanently delete every meal, log, correction, and your profile from this device.
- Export your data: Settings → Your data → Export my data (JSON) gives you a complete copy.
- Delete the app: uninstalling the app removes all local data immediately.
Third-party content attribution
The app includes offline databases and images from these sources:
- USDA FoodData Central (nutrition data) — public domain
- Wikibooks Cookbook (recipes) — Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
- Wikimedia Commons (recipe photos) — Creative Commons licenses (mostly CC-BY-SA)
- TheMealDB (additional recipes & photos) — used under their published free-use license; each imported recipe credits TheMealDB.com in its attribution field.
- Open Food Facts (packaged-product lookup) — Open Database License (ODbL). Queries are made at scan time; no product images are stored locally.
- OpenAI GPT-4o Vision API — used for AI food identification (cloud).
Full attribution lists are available in Settings → About → Licenses & attributions.
Children
The app is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect any data from children.
Changes to this policy
If we ever change this policy, we will update the "Last updated" date above and bundle the new version with the next app update.
Contact
Questions or concerns? Email office@caiostudio.eu