Privacy policy
The short version: Quill & Lantern keeps your data on your phone. There are no accounts, no ads, no analytics, no crash reporting, and no tracking, and we never sell or share your information. We, the developers, cannot see what you log, because it never reaches us.
Who we are
Quill & Lantern is made and published by Dylan Oxford, an independent developer in Washington State, USA. “We” in this policy means the developer of Quill & Lantern.
What the app stores, and where
Everything you enter (food logs, recipes, quests and their history, workouts, weight entries, supplements and the doses you mark, the Privy count if you turn it on, XP, streaks, and settings) is stored in a database on your device. It is not sent to us or to any server we run. Deleting the app deletes this data, unless you have made a backup. Because we never have a copy, we can't recover it for you.
When the app connects to the internet
- Food lookups. About 33,000 foods, with their barcodes, are built into the app and work without a connection. When you search for a food or scan a barcode the app doesn't have, it sends that search term or barcode number directly from your phone to USDA FoodData Central and Open Food Facts. No account, name, health data, food log, or other information about you goes with it, and nothing passes through us. Like any website you visit, these services receive your device's IP address with the request, and their own privacy policies apply to it. The app never contributes anything to either database.
- Supplement lookups. When you tap Look it up while adding a supplement in the Apothecary, the app sends your search words, and then the number of the label you pick, directly from your phone to the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database. Nothing about you, your supplements, or when you take them goes with it. As with food lookups, the service receives your device's IP address. You can always type a supplement in yourself instead.
- Backups. A backup file you export from the Strongbox goes only where you send it, such as your own files, email, or a cloud drive. We can't access your backups.
- Tips. Tips are optional. If tips are added inside the app, the App Store or Google Play will process them, and we'll never see your payment details; Apple or Google only report the tip amount to us. Until then, tips go through Ko-fi on this website (see below).
Cloud backup to Google Drive
Cloud backup is off until you turn it on in the Strongbox. When you do, Google shows its own screen to choose an account and allow access. The app asks for one permission: its own app data folder in your Google Drive (Google calls this access drive.appdata). It can't see, open, or change anything else in your Drive.
- What's stored: backup files of your Quill & Lantern data (the same contents as an exported backup), uploaded directly from your phone on the schedule you choose. The app also reads your Google account's email address to show which account backups go to; it stays on your phone.
- Who can see it: the folder is private to the app and doesn't appear among your Drive files. We, the developer, never receive your backups, your Google account details, or the access Google grants. Nothing passes through any server of ours. Google's privacy policy applies to your Google account and Drive.
- How it's used: only to save, list, restore, and delete your own backups, at your request or on your schedule. It's never used for advertising, never sold, never shared, and never read by people. Quill & Lantern's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
- Deleting it: in the Strongbox, tap Delete cloud backups, or turn cloud backup off and choose Delete them. You can also remove the app's access, and its hidden data, in your Google Drive settings under Manage apps, or at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
Cloud backup to your own iCloud on iPhone is planned and will work the same way.
Turning lookups off
If you'd rather your phone never contact USDA, Open Food Facts, or the NIH label database, turn on Bar the door (Offline mode) in Settings, under Your data. With it on, the app makes no food or supplement lookups at all: search and barcodes use only the built-in foods, foods you've already looked up, and foods you add yourself, barcodes scanned earlier are never looked up later, and supplements are added by typing. It's off by default.
Camera
The camera is used only when you scan a food barcode, a recipe QR code, or a nutrition label. Everything is read on your phone with open-source tools built into the app (ZXing for codes, and Tesseract on Android or Apple's built-in text recognition on iPhone for labels). No Google services are involved, and the camera image never leaves your phone. A label photo is deleted as soon as it's been read, and the numbers it finds are shown to you to check before anything is saved.
Health data
On Android, if you turn it on in Settings, the app saves the workouts you log, and the calories they burned, to Health Connect, so other health apps you've allowed can see them. Android asks your permission first. The app does not read anything from Health Connect. This data stays on your device, is never used for advertising, and isn't shared with us. You can turn it off at any time, in the app or in Health Connect's settings. Support for Apple Health on iPhone will work the same way.
Sharing recipes
When you share a recipe, the recipe itself is packed into the link, QR code, or file you send. It includes the recipe's name, servings, ingredients with their amounts and nutrition, and, if you choose, its instructions, tags, and the name you type as the sender. It never includes photos, your food log, or anything else from your phone. You choose who receives it, and they can pass it on like any message.
If someone opens a recipe link in a web browser, the recipe is decoded inside their browser. The recipe part of the link comes after the #, and browsers never send that part to our website's server.
Reminders
Reminders and notifications are scheduled on your phone. They do not use a server.
This website
This website uses no cookies, analytics, or tracking scripts, and loads its fonts and art from our own server. Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, processes basic technical information such as IP addresses to deliver the site and protect it from attacks; see Cloudflare's privacy policy. If you follow our link to Ko-fi, Ko-fi's privacy policy applies there.
Contacting us
If you email us, we use your email address and message only to reply to you. We don't add you to any mailing list. Please don't send your food log or backups; we never need them.
Children
Quill & Lantern is not directed at children under 13. Because the app collects no personal information from anyone, it collects none from children.
Your choices
- See or change your data: it's all in the app, on your phone.
- Back it up: turn on Cloud backup in the Strongbox to keep copies in your own Google Drive.
- Take it with you: save a backup file from the Strongbox, or export your quests.
- Delete it: in the app, open Settings, then Strongbox (Backup), and tap Delete all data. Deleting the app, or clearing its storage in your phone's settings, does the same. There's no other copy to delete, apart from backup files you saved yourself and any cloud backups in your Google Drive (see above).
- Stop all food lookups: turn on Bar the door (Offline mode).
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, we will update it here and change the date at the top. We won't start collecting data without saying so plainly first.
Questions
For any question about privacy or this policy, email Dylan Oxford at [email protected].