Privacy Policy — Groceries
Effective date: 13 September 2026
Groceries is a shopping list for one person, or for a household sharing one list. This policy explains what leaves your device, why, and what your choices are. There are no accounts, no ads and no trackers, and we do not sell your data.
Who controls your data
Groceries is operated by Serhii Malezhyk, an independent sole proprietor based in Poland. For any privacy question or request, contact [email protected].
Your list lives in your iCloud
Your lists, items and categories are stored in your own iCloud account and synced between your devices by Apple. There is no account to create, and no copy of your list on our servers — we have no way to read it. Apple handles that data under Apple’s own privacy policy.
When you share a list, everyone you invite can see and change every item on it. If you stop sharing, the copy already on someone’s device stays theirs.
What leaves your device, and when
Three features send data to our server, each only at the moment you tap the button that starts it. Nothing is sent while you simply use your list, and nothing is sent in the background unless you turn on Auto-sort, described below.
- Sorting into categories. Sends the names of the items not yet filed, and the names of your categories. With Auto-sort on — it is off by default and switched on in Settings — this same request is also made once each time you leave the app, so items you just added are filed by the time you come back.
- Reading a note into items. Sends the text you typed or dictated into the note panel, and the names of your categories.
- Importing a list. Sends the text you pasted, any photograph of a list you chose, and the names of your categories. A photo is converted and scaled down on your device first, then read once.
Each answer comes back as a suggestion the app applies for you. Use none of these three and nothing about your list ever leaves your device and iCloud.
Where that data goes
Our server runs in London. It passes your request to Anthropic’s Claude models, hands the answer back to the app, and does not keep the text, the photo or the result. Anthropic processes it on our behalf and does not use it to train their models; they hold it briefly for safety monitoring before deleting it.
Our host and network provider keep short-lived technical logs of the kind every website keeps — IP address, time, address requested, response status. Those logs never contain your list, your note or your photo.
The monthly count
Groceries includes a number of free uses of these three features each month. To keep track, our server counts every use that succeeds; one that fails or finds nothing is not counted.
The count is kept against an identifier from the App Store’s record of your download — or, if you are not signed in to the App Store, a random identifier the app creates and keeps in your iCloud Keychain. Before storing it, the server turns that identifier into a one-way code (a SHA-256 hash) that cannot be turned back and matches nothing anywhere else.
What is stored: that code, the app, the month, the number of uses, and when it last changed. Nothing about what you sent. It is held in a database in Ireland (MongoDB Atlas, on Amazon Web Services), and each month’s count is deleted automatically about three months after that month ends.
If you subscribe to Hearth Plus, Apple handles the payment and we never see your payment details. With each request the app sends Apple’s signed proof of your subscription, so the server can lift the limit; the server checks it and does not store it.
What we do not do
No analytics. No advertising. No tracking across apps or websites. No third-party SDKs of any kind. We do not sell or rent your data, and we do not build a profile of you. There is no account. The monthly count is the only thing we hold about your use — no name, no email, no record of what you sent.
Retention and deletion
The monthly count is the only thing we store, and it deletes itself about three months after the month ends. Your list is removed by deleting it in the app, or by clearing the app’s iCloud data in iOS Settings.
Children
Groceries is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from them.
Legal bases for processing
The three features above are processed to provide what you asked for (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)). Technical logs rest on our legitimate interest in running a secure service (Art. 6(1)(f)). The monthly count rests on our legitimate interest in offering a free allowance fairly and keeping the service affordable (Art. 6(1)(f)).
Your rights
You may request access, correction, erasure, restriction or portability, or object to processing. We hold only the coded monthly count, which we cannot trace back to you by name, so in practice this mostly concerns data in your own iCloud, which you control directly — we will help either way. You may also complain to your supervisory authority; in Poland that is UODO.
Changes to this policy
We will update this page and the effective date above if this policy changes.