InStock Kitchen Privacy Policy

InStock Kitchen ("we", "the app") is designed with privacy as a first principle. This policy describes what data the app handles, where it goes, and why.

Summary

• No accounts. The app does not require sign-up or login.
• No tracking. The app does not track you across other apps or websites.
• No analytics. The app does not include third-party analytics SDKs.
• On-device AI. All grocery image recognition runs locally on your iPhone. Photos you take while scanning are processed in memory and are never saved to storage or sent anywhere.
• Your data stays yours. Your inventory, recipes, and lists live on your device and sync only through your own private iCloud account. InStock Kitchen cannot see them.

What the app does NOT collect

The app does not collect:

• Your name, email, phone number, or any personal identifier
• Your contacts, calendars, photo library, or files outside the app
• Your location
• The photos from your scanning sessions (they are processed in memory and never written to storage — see "On-device AI" below)
• Your inventory, shopping lists, saved lists, scan history, or custom recipes (these stay on your device and in your private iCloud — see "iCloud sync"), except when you explicitly use one of the recipe sharing features described below
• Any behavioral or analytics data

We (the developer) have no server that receives your inventory, lists, recipes, or scans. The only cases where content you create leaves your device are the user-initiated recipe sharing features described in "Recipe sharing."

On-device AI

InStock Kitchen uses two kinds of on-device artificial intelligence, and neither sends your content to us or to any AI server:

• Grocery photo scanning uses an on-device vision model (downloaded once — see "What is transmitted off-device"). Camera frames and imported photos are converted to an in-memory image, analyzed by the model on your iPhone, and then discarded. The original photo is never written to the app's storage and never leaves your device.
• Text features — formatting an imported recipe, suggesting a name for a saved list, and sorting household (non-food) items — use Apple's built-in on-device intelligence (Apple Intelligence) where available. These run locally on your device; your text is not sent to InStock Kitchen, and Apple's on-device models do not transmit it. On devices that don't support Apple Intelligence, the app falls back to simple local rules instead.

iCloud sync

If you are signed in to iCloud, the app keeps your data in sync across your own Apple devices using Apple's CloudKit private database. The data that syncs includes your inventory, your learned item names, your custom recipes, and your shopping and saved lists.

• This data is stored in your private iCloud account, which is governed by Apple's iCloud terms and privacy policy. It is visible only to you, on devices signed in to your Apple ID.
• InStock Kitchen has no server and cannot access this data. We never receive a copy of it.
• Sync is automatic and requires no account or login beyond the iCloud you already use on your device.
• You can stop syncing by turning off iCloud for the app in iOS Settings, and the app's own settings include a "Delete iCloud Data" option that removes your synced data from your iCloud account.

What is transmitted off-device

The app makes network requests only in specific, narrow cases.

1. One-time AI model download (first launch)

The first time you use AI Photo Scan, the app downloads its on-device AI model (approximately 1.8 GB) so all future grocery scans can run fully offline on your iPhone.

• The model is requested from InStock Kitchen's own model mirror, hosted on Cloudflare R2 (models.instockkitchen.com). If that mirror is unavailable, the app falls back to Hugging Face, a public model-hosting platform.
• No identifier of you or your device is attached to the request.
• The hosting provider (Cloudflare, or Hugging Face for the fallback) may log the IP address of the request server-side as part of normal operations.
• This is a one-time download per device. Once downloaded, the model is stored locally and never communicates with any server again — all grocery recognition happens fully on-device.

2. Barcode product lookup

When you scan a barcode (UPC/EAN), the app sends the barcode number only — never any identifier of you or your device — to one or both of the following public product databases, in this order:

• Open Food Facts — a free, community-maintained, open-source food product database (governed by the Open Database License). The app sends the barcode and receives product details (name, brand, category) in return.
• USDA FoodData Central — a free database operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If Open Food Facts does not have the product, the app sends the same barcode to USDA as a fallback, and receives product details in return.

Both providers may log the IP address of the request server-side as part of their normal operations, per their respective terms. InStock Kitchen does not control or have access to those server-side logs.

3. Importing a recipe from a web link

If you choose to import a recipe by entering or pasting a web link, the app fetches that page in order to read the recipe from it. The website you linked to sees a normal web request (which may include your IP address), exactly as if you had opened the page in a browser. InStock Kitchen sends nothing else and receives only the recipe content from the page.

Importing a recipe by pasting text or from a photo is processed entirely on your device and makes no network request.

Custom recipes

The app lets you create your own recipes (name, description, ingredients, method, optional hero photo). Custom recipes you create are stored on your device and synced through your own private iCloud (see "iCloud sync"). They are not sent to InStock Kitchen and are not visible to us during normal app use, unless you explicitly choose to share one using a recipe sharing feature below.

Uninstalling the app deletes all custom recipes from your device; the "Delete iCloud Data" option also removes the synced copy from your iCloud account.

Shopping lists and saved lists

Your shopping list, the items you check off, your saved list templates, and your trip history are part of your personal data. Like your inventory and recipes, they are stored on your device and synced only through your private iCloud. They are never sent to InStock Kitchen.

Recipe sharing

The recipe detail view for a custom recipe offers two share options. Both are always user-initiated — the app never shares a recipe automatically.

"Share with us"

You can choose to send a custom recipe to the InStock Kitchen team for possible inclusion in a future app update. When you tap this button:

• The app opens your default mail app with a pre-addressed email to novotimesoft@gmail.com.
• The recipe content (text + optional hero photo) is attached.
• You review and send the email yourself — the app cannot send it for you, and you can cancel any time before tapping Send.

What we receive via this email is limited to the recipe content you chose to share. We do not receive your inventory, lists, scan history, or any other recipes. Your mail app may include your email address as the sender — that is normal mail behavior, governed by your mail app, not by InStock Kitchen.

"Share with a friend"

You can choose to share a custom recipe with another person via iOS's standard Share Sheet (Messages, Mail, AirDrop, WhatsApp, etc.). When you tap this button:

• The app prepares a packet containing the recipe content and the hero photo (if any).
• iOS's Share Sheet opens with your standard list of destinations — you choose where to send it.

When possible, the app fits the entire recipe inside the share link itself, with no server-side storage, and nothing is sent to our infrastructure.

For longer recipes (many ingredients, detailed methods, or large hero photos), the app instead sends the recipe content to our infrastructure (a Cloudflare Workers KV store) and shares a short link that points to it. In that case:

• The recipe content is automatically deleted after 30 days.
• It is accessed only when the recipient opens the link.
• It is never used by InStock Kitchen for any other purpose.
• No identifier of you or the recipient is attached to the stored content.

Whichever destination you pick may include your account identity at the transport layer as part of how that app delivers the content — that is normal behavior of those apps and is not something InStock Kitchen controls.

Siri & Shortcuts

The app integrates with Siri and the Shortcuts app so you can do things like add an item to your shopping list, hear what's on your list, or ask what you can cook — by voice. These requests are handled by Apple's Siri (under Apple's own Siri privacy handling) and carried out by the app on your device against your local and iCloud data. InStock Kitchen does not receive your voice requests. To help Siri recognize grocery names, the app makes the relevant vocabulary and your current list item names available to Apple's on-device Siri/Shortcuts system; this is not sent to InStock Kitchen.

In-app purchase (InStock Pro)

The app offers an optional one-time "InStock Pro" upgrade. Purchases are processed entirely by Apple's App Store using StoreKit. InStock Kitchen never sees or stores your payment details. Apple confirms your purchase to the app, which keeps a simple local flag noting that Pro is unlocked; that flag stays on your device.

On-device diagnostics

To help diagnose occasional scanning problems, the app keeps a small technical log of recent scans (the text read from labels and the model's raw output — never the photo itself). This log is stored only in the app's private cache on your device, is limited to the most recent scans, and is never transmitted. It leaves your device only if you explicitly tap "Share diagnostics" and choose where to send it.

Apple-provided diagnostics

If you opt into sharing diagnostics with Apple in iOS Settings, Apple may receive anonymized crash logs from the app via its standard developer crash-reporting framework. We use these only to identify and fix bugs. We do not link them to you and cannot identify individual users from this data.

Permissions the app requests

• Camera. Required for grocery scanning, and optionally for taking a photo when you create a custom recipe. Frames are processed on-device only and are not saved.
• Photos (read-only, when you import). Optional. Used only if you choose to import an image from your library — to analyze a grocery scene or to use as a recipe's hero photo. Imported images are not transmitted.

InStock Kitchen's website

The companion website, instockkitchen.com, exists primarily to support the "Share with a friend" feature so that recipients without the app can view a shared recipe in a browser, and to host the one-time AI model download. The website does not require sign-in and does not run analytics. For long recipe shares, it uses Cloudflare Workers KV to temporarily store the recipe content for 30 days so the short link can load. Otherwise, the website does not collect or store data about visitors beyond what your browser and the hosting provider (Cloudflare) record as part of normal web traffic (such as IP address). Cloudflare's data practices are governed by their own privacy policy.

Data retention

Your data — inventory, custom recipes, shopping and saved lists, scan history, and any recipe photos you attach — is stored on your device and, if you use iCloud, synced to your own private iCloud account. We keep no copy on our servers.

• Uninstalling the app deletes the local copy from that device.
• The app's "Delete iCloud Data" setting removes the synced copy from your iCloud account.
• The only content that is ever stored off your device is a recipe you deliberately share via "Share with a friend" when it is too long to fit in the link, which is deleted automatically after 30 days.

Children

The app is rated 4+. We do not knowingly collect data from children or anyone else.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the next app update will include a note in the release notes. The most recent version of this policy is always available at instockkitchen.com.

Contact

Questions about this privacy policy or about how the app handles your data: novotimesoft@gmail.com