Heartless Chef Privacy Policy

Catnap Apps · Effective October 18, 2026

Who we are

Heartless Chef is made by Catnap Apps ("we"). Questions about this policy: support@heartlesschef.com.

What stays on your iPhone

Everything you keep in the app is stored on your device: recipes and their photos, your cooking journal (notes and photos), grocery list, meal plans, the people in your household and their allergies, diets and tastes, and your settings. We don't have a copy, apart from what you share (below). The AI features below send only what each request needs, and nothing is kept on our side. Your device's own backups (like iCloud Backup) include it as Apple describes. Deleting a recipe or the app deletes it.

iCloud sync

When your device is signed in to iCloud, Heartless Chef keeps your recipes, meal plans, grocery list, household, journal and Recipe Lab chats in your iCloud so your other devices have them too. That's your own iCloud account, under Apple's privacy policy; it counts against your iCloud storage, and none of it passes through us. Turn it off for Heartless Chef in Settings → iCloud → Apps; what's already there stays in your iCloud until you remove it in your iCloud settings.

Household sharing

If you share a household with someone, what you share has to live somewhere you both can reach, so it's kept on our server (Cloudflare, in the United States) until you stop sharing. Nobody who doesn't share a household has anything there.

• What's kept: the grocery lists you've marked as shared, with their lines (what to get, how much, which recipe asked for it, who added it and when it was crossed off), your household's name, and the name each member chose to be seen by (from their own People card). Later versions may add the household's week of meals and the recipes in a shared collection, and this page will say so first.
• Signing in: to know which member is which, you sign in with Apple or Google. We keep only the random user id that provider gives us for the app, never your email or name from it, even when the sign-in sends one. That id is used for nothing else: your recipes, credits and Pro don't change with it.
• Who sees it: the members of your household, and nobody else. We don't read it, analyze it or use it for anything but showing it to your household.
• How long: a line or list you delete is marked deleted so every member's phone hears of it, and removed within 30 days. When a household is deleted, or its last member leaves, everything it shared is removed within a day. Invite codes last 7 days.
• Deleting it all: Settings → People & Sharing → Delete My Household Account removes you from your household and deletes your sign-in record and sessions. Your own recipes, lists and plans stay on your iPhone. Or email support@heartlesschef.com.
• To keep the service from being overloaded, our server counts how many times each signed-in session syncs per hour, for up to two hours.

Shared links

Share as Link on a recipe or a collection makes a web page of it, at heartlesschef.com, so you can send it to anyone or print it as a QR code. It's kept on our server (Cloudflare, in the United States) for as long as the link lives.

• What's kept: the recipe as it's shared in a recipe file (name, description, ingredients, steps, times, servings, nutrition, where it came from) and its photo, the link's code and title, when it was made and last shared, and the random credits account ID of the device that made it (no name or email), so only you can change or delete it. Never your rating, notes, favorites or cooking journal.
• Who sees it: anyone with the link. It isn't listed anywhere, and the page asks search engines not to show it, but we can't promise every one listens, and someone you send it to can pass it on.
• How long: until you delete the link (Settings → Your Library → Shared Links), which removes the page, the recipes and their photos right away. Sharing the same recipe or collection again updates the page under the same link. We may take down a page that breaks the rules for shared recipes in our Terms of Use.
• To keep the service from being overloaded, our server counts the links each credits account and network address (IP) makes per day, for up to 48 hours.

What we don't do

• No account or sign-in, unless you share a household (above).
• No advertising, and no analytics, crash-reporting or tracking tools.
• We don't sell or share your information for advertising, and we don't track you across other apps or websites.

AI features (Heartless Chef Pro)

Recipe Lab, refining a recipe, Ask the Chef while cooking, Plan My Cook's step timings, converting units, and importing a shared recipe the app can't read by itself use an AI model from OpenAI. When you use one of them, the app sends what that request needs to our server, which passes it to OpenAI and streams the reply back:

• Your message, and any photos you attach.
• The recipe you're working on (for refining, cooking questions, timings and converting).
• For an import the app can't read by itself: the shared web page's text, PDF text, or photos.
• Your settings that shape recipes: units, servings, skill level, chef's tone, kitchen equipment and collection names.
• The month, the country in your iPhone's Region setting, and where you cook if you've added it in Settings (a city or region you type), so Recipe Lab's ideas suit the season and what's grown nearby. Never your device's location.
• For Recipe Lab: which meals are already planned in the weeks you're planning (usually the next three), and their names, so the chef can plan around them, and which days have an occasion, without the occasion's name or who's bringing a dish.
• For Recipe Lab: your menus for single meals, their names and which recipes are in them, so the chef can cook one again or plan it. Never your occasion or week menus.
• What the chef remembers about your cooking (Settings → Chef's Memory, where you can see, edit and delete memories, or turn the memory off). The names of people on your People cards are replaced before it's sent.
• Your recipe list: titles, collections, favorites, ratings, and how often and when you made them, so Recipe Lab can suggest your own recipes. If you pick one of its suggestions, that recipe is sent in full.
• For Recipe Lab, only with a message about it (such as “what's on my list?” or “do I need to buy eggs?”): what's still to get on your grocery list, so the chef can answer.
• The allergies, diets, likes and dislikes of the people you mark “Eats Here Every Day”, so the chef can cook around them, and the notes on their cards until each note's end date (with names on your People cards replaced).

Never sent: the names on your People cards, your journal notes, the photos in your recipes and journal, and your grocery list with any other message. Photos go only when you attach them to a message.

Allergies, diets and notes can be sensitive health information. They're sent only so the chef can cook around your household's needs, and they're never sold or used for advertising. Our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy covers them in more detail. You agree once, before first using the AI; you can turn the AI off at any time in Settings → AI & Privacy → Use AI Features, and nothing is sent until you agree again.

Our server runs on Cloudflare Workers. It passes your request to OpenAI and doesn't store your messages, photos or recipes. OpenAI processes the request to write the reply. Under OpenAI's API terms, it doesn't use this data to train its models and may keep it for up to 30 days to monitor for abuse (OpenAI's policies).

Your subscription

Apple handles payment for Heartless Chef Pro and credit packs; we never see your payment details. To confirm a subscription or a credit pack, the app sends Apple's signed record of the purchase to our server, which checks it with Apple's certificates.

For Pro, we use the purchase's original transaction ID to count how many AI requests you've made today and this month. The daily count is deleted after 48 hours and the monthly count when the month ends.

To keep AI costs in check, our server adds up how many requests each AI feature handled per day and how much text they used. These are totals for everyone together, with nothing about who made the requests.

For credits, the app makes a random account ID (no name or email) and keeps it in your iCloud Keychain. Our server keeps that ID, your credit balance, and the transaction IDs of credit packs you've bought, so your credits can be restored on a new iPhone. To give free credits only once per iPhone, we use Apple's DeviceCheck, which stores a single "free credits given" mark for the device with Apple; it says nothing about you. To stop free credits being claimed over and over, our server also counts free-credit claims per network address (IP) for up to two hours.

If an account ever uses the chef far more than anyone could need, we may put a limit on an account; that limit is kept until we remove it.

Recipe photos from Pexels

When you search for a photo for a recipe, your search words go through our server to Pexels. To keep the service from being overloaded, our server counts searches per network (IP) address for up to two hours. The photos themselves download straight from Pexels.

Technique videos from YouTube

When the chef suggests a video and you tap it, its search words (like "how to julienne carrots") go through our server to YouTube's API Services, which find the videos. Our server keeps each search's results for up to 30 days, with nothing about who asked, and counts searches per network (IP) address for up to two hours. The videos play in YouTube's player, from youtube-nocookie.com, and Google's privacy policy covers what YouTube collects when you watch.

Importing recipes from the web

When you import a recipe from a link, the app downloads that page directly from the website, the same way a browser would. If the page includes recipe information in a standard format, the app reads it on your iPhone. If not, and you have Pro, its text goes to the AI as described above.

Voice and dictation

Talking to the chef uses Apple's speech recognition, on your iPhone when it supports on-device recognition; otherwise Apple processes it as described in Apple's privacy policy. Reading steps aloud happens on your iPhone.

Reminders and notifications

Plan My Cook's reminders are notifications scheduled on your iPhone. If you send your grocery list to Apple Reminders, it's saved there and syncs according to your own iCloud settings.

Technical information

Like any internet service, our hosting provider (Cloudflare) receives your IP address to deliver requests and protect the service. Our server doesn't write your content to logs; short technical error messages can appear briefly in Cloudflare's logs while we diagnose problems.

Children

Heartless Chef isn't directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them.

Your choices

• Turn the AI off in Settings → AI & Privacy → Use AI Features.
• Delete anything in the app, or delete the app to remove everything on your iPhone.
• Our server keeps no messages, recipes or People cards. What it does keep is described above: the daily and monthly AI counts for a subscription, for credits the random account ID, its balance and the credit packs bought, and for a household you share the lists you've shared and your sign-in's user id. To ask what we hold or to have it deleted, email support@heartlesschef.com. Deleting a credits account also deletes its credits.

Changes

If we change what the app sends or keeps, we'll update this page and its effective date.