1. Our Core Privacy Promise: 100% Local-First
Recipe Zero (“The Kitchen Cookbook”) is built from the ground up as a local-first kitchen companion for iOS and Android.
2. Information Stored Locally on Your Device
All data you create or import stays on your phone or tablet:
- Recipes & Chapters: Titles, descriptions, ingredients, step-by-step instructions, culinary tags, translated copies, and custom chapters.
- Market / Grocery Lists: Unchecked and checked grocery items and timestamps.
- Dish Photos: Photos you capture or attach from your photo library remain stored locally in your device’s app sandbox.
- Portable Backups: When you use the Save Backup feature in Settings, a portable
.jsonfile is generated locally on your device so you can save it to your own iCloud Drive, Files app, or Notes. We never receive a copy of your backup.
3. Device Permissions & How They Are Used
Recipe Zero only requests iOS or Android permissions when you actively use a feature that requires them:
- Camera (
NSCameraUsageDescription): Used only when you take a photo of a dish or photograph a printed or handwritten recipe card to transcribe it. - Photo Library (
NSPhotoLibraryUsageDescription): Used only when you choose to attach existing dish photos from your camera roll or select a recipe screenshot/photo to scan. - Microphone & Speech Recognition (
NSMicrophoneUsageDescription/NSSpeechRecognitionUsageDescription): Used only while you are actively inside Hands-Free Voice Cook Mode to listen for local navigation commands (“Next”, “Back”, “Repeat”, “Timer”). Audio is never recorded, stored, or shared. - iOS Reminders & Calendar (
NSRemindersUsageDescription/NSCalendarsUsageDescription): Used only when you tap + iOS Alert on a cooking step to schedule a timer reminder in your native Apple Reminders or Calendar app. - Clipboard: Used only when you explicitly tap Paste to import a recipe URL, social caption, or JSON backup from your clipboard.
4. Optional AI Recipe Extraction & Translation (Chef Pro)
When you use Chef Pro AI features (such as scanning a photo of a handwritten/printed recipe card, extracting a recipe from a social media caption, or using AI-enhanced translation):
- The specific recipe image or text you submit is transmitted over an encrypted HTTPS connection to our AI extraction providers (Groq / Google Gemini API) solely to transcribe, structure, or translate the recipe ingredients and steps and return them immediately to your device.
- This data is processed ephemerally in real time and is never used to build user profiles, sold, or shared with advertisers.
- Standard Web URL clipping (JSON-LD / Schema.org), manual recipe creation, batch scaling, and all Basic tier features run locally on your device.
5. In-App Subscriptions & Purchase Verification
Chef Pro subscriptions (Monthly and Annual) are processed directly by Apple (App Store / StoreKit) or Google (Google Play Billing). We use RevenueCat solely to validate anonymous purchase receipts and unlock Chef Pro entitlements across your devices. We never have access to your credit card, billing address, or Apple ID password.
6. Non-Identifying Product Analytics & 1-Tap Opt-Out
To help us understand which features are most useful and continuously improve kitchen reliability, Recipe Zero collects anonymous, non-identifying product analytics via PostHog:
- What Is Collected: Aggregate feature usage events (such as tab navigation, recipe scaling, translation usage, and Cook Mode completion), crash/performance diagnostics, and coarse regional metadata limited strictly to State/Province and Country.
- What Is Strictly Excluded: Our client-side privacy filter explicitly strips and excludes your IP address, City Name, Latitude/Longitude coordinates, Postal Code, personal device name, and any personal recipe titles, notes, or grocery items.
- 1-Tap Opt-Out Checkbox: You can opt out of anonymous product analytics at any time inside the app by checking “Opt out of anonymous product analytics” under Profile & Settings → Privacy & Data Policy. Your preference is saved locally and immediately stops all analytics collection.
7. Data Deletion & User Control
Because all cookbook data lives locally on your device, you have 100% control over your information at all times:
- You can edit or permanently delete any individual recipe, photo, chapter, or Market List item inside the app at any time.
- Deleting the Recipe Zero app from your device immediately and permanently removes all local SQLite database records and photos from your phone (unless you have chosen to save a personal JSON export file to your own Files or iCloud Drive).
8. Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how Recipe Zero protects your privacy, please contact us at support@recipezero.app (or info@recipezero.app) or visit our Support Center.