Spotter — Privacy Policy

A bird-spotting app for children.

Effective 11 August 2026

Spotter collects nothing and transmits nothing.

There is no account to create, no analytics, no advertising, and no server for your child's information to be sent to. The app has no networking code in it at all. Everything it does — including identifying birds from photos and songs — happens on the device itself.

The short version

Do you collect personal information?	No.
Do you use analytics, tracking or advertising?	No. None of any kind.
Are there accounts or sign-ins?	No.
Does the app send anything over the internet?	No. It contains no networking code.
Where does bird identification happen?	Entirely on the device.
Is audio from the microphone recorded or saved?	No. It is analysed as it arrives and discarded.
Are photos uploaded anywhere?	No. They stay in the app's own storage on the device.
Do you share or sell data?	There is no data to share or sell.

What the app stores, in full

Everything Spotter keeps stays on the device, inside the app's own private storage:

Which birds have been found, the chosen region and optional town name, which badges have been seen, and the dates of finds (these draw the streak).
Which day's "Bird of the Day" was last shown.
Photos the child takes when they catch a bird.

That is the complete list. There are no identifiers, no device fingerprint, no usage log, and no record of where anyone has been.

Permissions, and why each one is asked for

Microphone

Used to identify bird songs. The most recent three seconds of sound are held in temporary memory, examined on the device, and thrown away. Audio is never written to storage, never saved, and never sent anywhere.

Camera

Used to identify a bird from a photo. The picture is examined on the device. Only a photo your child deliberately adds to their collection is kept.

Saving a picture

If you choose "Save Image" while sharing one of your child's finds, Spotter asks permission to add that one picture to your photo library. This is the add-only permission: Spotter can put a picture in, and cannot read, browse, or see anything already there.

All three permissions are requested the first time your child uses that feature, so the reason is obvious — never at launch. Spotter does not ask for location, contacts, notifications, or permission to read your photo library. When a photo is chosen from the library, the system's own picker hands the app that single image and nothing else.

The two ways anything can leave the device

Both are started by the person using the app, and neither sends anything to us:

Sharing a find. The share sheet creates a picture card and hands it to whatever app you choose. Spotter has no server and posts nothing anywhere.
Your own device backup. Catch photos live in the app's documents folder, so they are included in your own encrypted Apple backup if you have backups turned on. This is what lets a new phone keep your child's photos.

Children's privacy

Spotter is designed for children. Because it collects no personal information at all, there is nothing to obtain parental consent for, nothing retained, and nothing that could be disclosed to a third party. No behavioural advertising or third-party analytics code exists in the app, and none will be added without this policy changing first and the app being resubmitted.

Other software in the app

Spotter includes one piece of third-party software: ONNX Runtime, an open-source engine from Microsoft that runs the bird-song recognition model on the device. It has no networking component. Bird photographs and recordings bundled with the app are used under Creative Commons licences, with each contributor credited inside the app.

Changes to this policy

If the app ever changes in a way that affects any of the above, this page will be updated before that version is released, and the date at the top will change.

Contact

Questions about privacy in Spotter can be sent to aklotzbuilds@gmail.com.