1. Who this is
BetterCook (the "App", "we", "us") is a UK-based, independently operated app. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect when you use the App, why, and what rights you have over it.
We are not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us at hello@bettercook.app and we will delete it.
2. What we collect
We collect only what the App needs to function.
Account information, collected when you create an account:
- Email address and password (password is handled entirely by Firebase Authentication, we never see or store it in plain text ourselves), or, if you use Sign in with Apple or Sign in with Google, the email that service shares with us, which for Apple may be a private relay address if you chose to hide your real one
- Display name (the name you choose when you first share a plate, and can change in Profile; if you sign in with Apple or Google, we deliberately do not use the name they offer, since your display name is shown publicly next to any photo you share)
Units, set from your phone region when you start and editable any time in Profile:
- Your preferred measurement system (metric or imperial)
We do not ask for or store allergy or other health information. See the in-app disclaimers (Profile → Legal & Safety) for what the App can and cannot promise about ingredients.
Usage and progress data, generated as you use the App:
- Which pathways you have started, your current step, and which steps and recipes you have completed
- Recipes you have marked as favourites
- Badges earned for completing pathways
- Shopping lists you generate from recipes, and which items you have checked off
- Ratings you give recipes during the post-cook reflection step (how tough it was, how it tasted, your confidence with the technique)
Usage analytics, collected automatically via PostHog as you use the App:
- Which screens and features you use, and actions you take in them, for example starting a pathway, completing a step, rating a recipe, or reporting a photo
- The optional comment you write after cooking a recipe or finishing a pathway, sent with your ratings
- How you signed in (email, Sign in with Apple or Sign in with Google) and whether a sign-in worked or failed, with a technical error code, never your email or password
- Your onboarding choices, for example the learning goal you picked
- Basic technical information: device model and type, operating system, app version, and your device's language and time zone setting
- Approximate location, worked out from your IP address when the App contacts our analytics provider: country, region and city only. We use it only to understand in broad terms where our users are. It does not use your device's location services, and we do not store your IP address itself
- Technical error reports when the App hits a problem: the error message and where in the App it happened
- These events are linked to your account through an internal user ID, not shown to you directly and not your email or display name
- We use usage analytics to continually improve the App. You can stop sharing usage analytics at any time with the "Share usage analytics" switch in Profile, Legal and safety. Sharing is on by default
Our website (bettercook.app): when you visit our website we count visits using PostHog, the same EU-hosted analytics provider the App uses, set up so that it stores nothing on your device: no cookies and no local storage. To tell visits apart, PostHog's servers combine your IP address and browser details into a code that changes every day and cannot be turned back into either. The IP address itself is not kept.
We record which page you visited, the site that linked you to us, any campaign tags in the link, your approximate location (country, region and city, worked out from your IP address), your device and browser type, how far down the page you scrolled, which sections you saw, and which buttons you pressed. We do not record anything you type. We use this only to understand which parts of the website work. It cannot identify you and is not linked to your App account. If your browser sends a Do Not Track signal, we record nothing.
Account record, kept on your account so it survives a reinstall:
- When you accepted the Terms and the food-safety notice, which version of each you accepted, and how you accepted the Terms
- Your learning goal and weekly cooking goal, and a log of the recipes you have cooked
Information we do not collect: we do not collect payment information (there is nothing to buy in the App today), and we do not use any advertising SDK or ad network. We do not access your contacts, and we do not use your device's location services (GPS); the approximate location above comes from your IP address only. We use your camera or photo library only when you choose to add a plate photo or profile picture, and only for the photo you take or select. If you turn on Hands-free in Cook Mode, the App uses your microphone to listen for a few cooking commands, such as "next step", and only while Cook Mode is open and Hands-free is on. Your speech is turned into text by Apple's speech recognition on your device and is not recorded, stored or sent to us or anyone else. We only receive which command was used (for example "next step"), never what you said.
3. Why we collect it
We use your information only to operate the App for you:
- To authenticate you and secure your account
- To track and display your progress through pathways
- To generate shopping lists from the recipes you select
- To remember your favourites and award badges
- To continually improve the App, using usage analytics that show how it is used
- To respond if you contact us for support
We do not sell your information. We do not share it with advertisers. We do not use it to build a profile of you for any purpose beyond running the App you're using.
4. Who processes it
Your data is stored and processed by Google Firebase (Firebase Authentication and Cloud Firestore), acting as our data processor. We also use PostHog, a product analytics processor based in the EU, to collect the usage analytics described in Section 2 (in the App and on our website), and Cloudinary, an image hosting processor, for photos you choose to share and your profile photo. We keep an encrypted copy of our safety backups (described in Section 5) with Microsoft OneDrive, a cloud storage provider. Each of these processors is bound by terms that require at least the level of protection this policy describes. We do not use any advertising SDK, ad network, or any other third-party processor beyond these.
Recipe and pathway images are hosted on Cloudinary and loaded directly from their servers, so your device does make requests to Cloudinary's CDN to display these images. Plate photos you choose to share, and your profile photo, are uploaded to Cloudinary and shown in the App alongside your display name. We do not send Cloudinary your email address or any other account details. The photos you choose to share, including a profile photo, are the only personal content it receives.
5. How long we keep it, and how to delete it
We keep your account and associated data for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account at any time from Profile → Delete account. Deleting your account permanently removes:
- Your account (email, display name) from Firebase Authentication; if you signed in with Apple, we also ask Apple to revoke that sign-in on our end (a Google sign-in is simply removed from your account here; you can also remove BetterCook from your Google account’s connected apps)
- Your user document, including your measurement setting, badges, and favourites
- Your shopping lists
- Your pathway progress
- The record of any plate or profile photos you shared, so they stop appearing anywhere in the App
- The recipe and pathway reviews, ratings and comments you wrote
This deletion is immediate and irreversible, and we do not restore an account you have deleted. We do not keep a long-term backup of deleted account data, but we take regular safety backups of our database, which include account data. They are encrypted, kept on our own computer and as an encrypted copy in Microsoft OneDrive, and each one is deleted within 30 days of being made (OneDrive may hold a deleted copy in its recycle bin for up to 30 further days). So data you delete can remain in these backups for up to about 60 days. One current limitation: the image file for a shared photo is hosted with our image provider, Cloudinary, which automatically keeps a backup copy of every upload and does not delete that copy when the photo is removed. Deleting your account removes your photos from the App everywhere but does not automatically delete the hosted file or its backup copy; contact us at hello@bettercook.app if you want them removed and we will do our best to remove both by hand.
What stays after deletion, so it is not a surprise: reports you made about other people's photos are kept as an anonymous moderation record, because the identifier on them points at an account that no longer exists; and usage analytics already sent to PostHog stay there, tied only to an internal ID that no longer belongs to any account.
6. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or delete your personal data, and to object to or restrict certain processing. You can exercise most of these directly in the App:
- Access and correction: view and edit your profile and units any time in Profile
- Deletion: Profile → Delete Account, as above
- Export: contact hello@bettercook.app and we will provide a copy of your data in a portable format
If you are in the UK or EU, these rights are provided under UK GDPR / GDPR. If you are in California, you have rights under the CCPA/CPRA. If you believe we have not honoured a request, you have the right to complain to your local data protection regulator (in the UK, the ICO).
7. Security
Firebase Authentication and Firestore encrypt data in transit and at rest, and our Firestore security rules restrict your private data (profile, progress, shopping lists) so that only you, signed in, can read or write it. Photos you choose to share, their captions, and the display name shown with them are visible to other signed-in cooks, by design. No system is perfectly secure, but we do not store your password ourselves in any form, Firebase handles that entirely.
8. Changes to this policy
If we materially change what we collect or how we use it, we will update this policy and, where the change is significant, notify you in the App before it takes effect.
9. Contact
Questions about this policy, or to exercise any of the rights above: hello@bettercook.app.