Privacy Policy

Last Updated: March 2026

Introduction

Ask Rosemary ("we," "our," or "us") is a recipe app that helps you decide what to cook tonight. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your information when you use our mobile application.

By using Ask Rosemary, you agree to the collection and use of information as described in this policy.

Information We Collect

Account Information

When you create an account, we collect:

• Email address — Used for account identification and communication
• Name — If provided through Google or Apple Sign-In
• Account creation date — To manage your account

You can sign up using Email and password, Google Sign-In, or Apple Sign-In. If you use Apple's "Hide My Email" feature, we only receive your anonymous relay address.

Preferences You Provide

To personalise your experience, we collect preferences you choose to share:

• Household size and household type — To scale recipe servings appropriately
• Whether you have young children — To suggest family-friendly recipes
• Dietary requirements — Such as vegetarian, gluten-free, or allergies
• Ingredients to avoid — Foods you do not want in recipes
• Cooking skill level — To match recipe complexity to your experience
• Regional preferences — For measurement units and ingredient availability
• Cuisine preferences — Your preferred styles of cooking
• Pantry items and kitchen equipment — To tailor recipes to what you have

Dietary requirements and avoided ingredients may be considered health-adjacent information. We collect this solely to personalise your recipe experience and do not share it with advertising platforms.

Content You Create

When you use the app, we store:

• Recipe requests — Ingredients, preferences, and free-text notes you input when asking for recipes
• Saved recipes — Recipes you bookmark to your cookbook
• Imported recipes — Recipes you bring in from URLs, pasted text, or photos
• Edited recipes — Modifications you make to saved recipes
• Meal plans — Weekly meal plans you create
• Shopping lists — Generated from your meal plan and any items you add manually
• Kitchen inventory — Items you add to your kitchen by category
• Cook history — Recipes you mark as cooked, used to improve recommendations
• Questions to Rosemary — Free-text questions you ask during cooking, stored with the recipe
• Personal cooking notes — Notes you add after cooking a recipe
• Support messages — If you contact us via the in-app support form, we store your email and message

Automatically Collected Information

We automatically collect:

• Device information — Device model and operating system version
• App usage data — Features used, screens viewed, session duration, and app lifecycle events (open, close, background)
• Crash reports — Technical errors to help us fix bugs
• General location — Country and region level only, derived from device settings
• Deep link attribution — How you arrived at the app, such as from a shared recipe link
• Push notification token (FCM token) — A device identifier stored to your account to enable push notifications. Only collected if you grant notification permission.

We do not collect precise GPS location, contacts, or microphone data.

Camera and Photo Library

Ask Rosemary uses your camera and photo library for two purposes:

Recipe import — If you choose to import a recipe by taking a photo or selecting an image from your library, the image is sent to our servers and processed by Anthropic's Claude AI to extract the recipe.

Kitchen scanning — If you use the kitchen scan feature, photos you take of your fridge, groceries, or kitchen counter are sent to Anthropic's servers to identify food ingredients visible in the image. These photos are processed in real time and are not stored by us or Anthropic beyond the processing request.

We do not access your camera or photo library at any other time, and we do not access photos you have not explicitly chosen to share.

Note: If your photo contains personal content such as faces, documents, or unrelated items, that content will be included in the image sent to Anthropic for processing. We recommend photographing only what you intend to share.

Deferred Deep Links

We use a deferred deep link service (Smler) to detect whether you arrived via a shared recipe link before installing the app. On first launch, this service may briefly read your device clipboard to detect a pending link. No clipboard content is stored or transmitted beyond this link detection check.

Recipe Import from Social Media

When you import a recipe from a social media URL (such as Instagram or TikTok), we send the URL to a third-party service to retrieve the post content. The URL may reveal the social media source of the recipe but does not include your social media credentials or account information.

iOS Share Extension

If you share content into Ask Rosemary from another app such as Safari or a social media app, we receive only the URL or text you chose to share. This is processed the same way as a manual recipe import.

How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

• Generate personalised recipes based on your preferences, pantry, and equipment
• Power the meal planner and suggest recipes for your week
• Import and clean up recipes from external sources
• Answer your cooking questions in context
• Store and sync your cookbook, meal plans, kitchen inventory, and shopping lists across devices
• Improve our service — understand which features are useful and fix problems
• Manage your subscription and process payments
• Send push notifications for trial reminders and re-engagement — only if you have granted notification permission
• Measure the effectiveness of our advertising (see Conversion Tracking below)
• Communicate important updates about your account or the service
• Respond to support requests you submit through the app

Conversion Tracking & Advertising

We use conversion tracking from Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and Pinterest to measure how effective our advertising is. When you take certain actions — such as signing up or starting a subscription — an anonymised signal is sent to these platforms. Your email address is hashed using SHA-256 before transmission and is never sent in plain text to Meta or Pinterest.

These platforms do not receive your personal recipe data, saved content, dietary information, or preferences. They receive only event signals (such as "a subscription was started") and your hashed email for matching purposes.

On iOS, we request App Tracking Transparency permission after you sign up. If you decline, conversion tracking events are not fired.

You can opt out of ad tracking at any time via iOS Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking, or Android device ad settings.

Artificial Intelligence Processing

Ask Rosemary uses Anthropic's Claude AI to generate recipes, answer cooking questions, and process imported recipe content. When you use these features, relevant information is sent to Anthropic's servers for processing. This may include:

• Your recipe preferences, dietary requirements, and household information
• Ingredients and free-text notes you enter
• Questions you ask Rosemary
• Images you submit for recipe import
• Photos you take using the kitchen scan feature
• Recipe text you paste for import

Anthropic processes this data in accordance with their Privacy Policy and API usage policies. We do not send your name, email address, or account identifier to Anthropic.

Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services to operate Ask Rosemary:

Anthropic (Claude AI) — AI processing for recipe generation, cooking questions, recipe import, and kitchen scanning. See above for details.

Firebase (Google) — Authentication, cloud data storage, image hosting, and push notifications via Firebase Cloud Messaging. Your account, preferences, recipes, meal plans, kitchen data, shopping lists, and FCM token are stored in Firebase.

RevenueCat — Subscription management and payment processing. RevenueCat receives your anonymous user ID and purchase information.

PostHog — Product analytics to understand how the app is used. Receives anonymised usage events, screen views, and your user ID.

Firebase Analytics — App event tracking linked to your user ID for understanding feature usage and Google Ads conversion measurement.

Replicate — AI recipe image generation. Only the recipe name and food description are sent — no personal information.

Spoonacular — Ingredient autocomplete suggestions. Only your search text is sent.

ScrapingBee — Fetches external recipe URLs you submit when standard fetching is blocked. Only the URL is sent.

RapidAPI (Instagram/TikTok scraper) — Retrieves recipe content from social media URLs you submit for import. Only the URL is sent.

Smler — Deferred deep link detection on first app launch. May briefly read clipboard to detect a pending link.

Meta & Pinterest — Conversion tracking as described above. Receive hashed email and anonymised event signals only.

Google Fonts CDN — Downloads fonts used in the app interface via standard HTTPS requests.

Data Storage and Security

• Cloud storage — Account data, preferences, recipes, meal plans, and shopping lists are stored in Firebase (Google Cloud) with encryption at rest
• Local storage — Some preferences and cached data are stored on your device using Hive, an unencrypted local database. This includes dietary preferences, household information, and cached recipes for offline access
• Device image cache — Recipe images may be cached on your device for performance
• Secure transmission — All data sent between your device and our servers uses HTTPS encryption

We retain your data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we will delete your personal data including all saved recipes, meal plans, kitchen data, shopping lists, and generation logs. Support request records containing your email and message are retained for up to 90 days after account deletion for service continuity. Pseudonymised import logs (using hashed identifiers) are retained as aggregate data.

Your Rights and Choices

Access and Export

You can view your saved recipes, preferences, meal plans, kitchen inventory, and account information within the app at any time.

Correction

You can update your preferences, dietary requirements, pantry, kitchen inventory, and meal plans at any time in the app settings.

Q&A History

You can delete your Ask Rosemary question and answer history for any saved recipe using the trash icon in the Ask Rosemary panel.

Deletion

You can delete your account from within the app via Settings > Delete Account. This permanently deletes your account, all saved recipes, meal plans, kitchen data, shopping lists, generation history, cook history, and associated personal data. Local device data including preferences and cached recipes is also cleared.

Advertising Opt-Out

You can opt out of ad tracking on iOS via Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking. On Android, use your device's ad personalisation settings.

Push Notifications

You can disable push notifications at any time via iOS Settings > Notifications > Ask Rosemary, or Android Settings > Apps > Ask Rosemary > Notifications. Disabling notifications does not affect any other app functionality.

Children's Privacy

Ask Rosemary is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe we have collected information from a child under 13, please contact us at support@askrosemary.com and we will delete it promptly.

International Users

Ask Rosemary is operated from New Zealand. If you are accessing the app from outside New Zealand, your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in New Zealand and other countries where our service providers operate, including the United States.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes by posting the new policy in the app or sending you a notification. Your continued use of the app after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or your personal data, please contact us:

Email: support@askrosemary.com

This Privacy Policy is effective as of March 2026.