Privacy Policy
Meal Maker is a meal planner for iPhone. It has no account, no analytics and no advertising.
Last updated: 6 September 2026
The short version
Meal Maker does not collect, store or sell any personal information about you. There is no sign-up, no user account and no server holding your data. Everything you put into the app — your household size, budget, shop, dietary needs, meal plans, shopping list and spending log — is kept on your own iPhone.
The developer of Meal Maker cannot see any of it. The one planned exception is the optional Family voting feature described below, which is off until you choose to use it, and is not switched on in the current version.
What is stored on your device
The app saves the following in its own private storage on your iPhone:
- Your setup answers: how many people you cook for, weekly budget, chosen supermarket, dietary needs, kitchen appliances and any foods you said you dislike.
- Your weekly meal plan, shopping list, and meals you've hidden or saved.
- Recipes you import or that the app's on-device AI invents for you.
- Your shopping trip log — what you estimated and what you actually spent.
- Your appearance preference (theme and light/dark setting).
None of this is transmitted anywhere. It is removed when you delete the app. It may be included in your own iPhone backup if you use iCloud Backup or an encrypted computer backup — those backups are controlled by you and Apple, not by Meal Maker.
What leaves your device, and when
The app works offline. A small number of optional features make network requests, and only for as long as they need to:
| Feature | What is sent | Who receives it |
|---|---|---|
| Food photos on recipe cards | A short text search based on the recipe name, for example "chicken traybake". No personal information and no identifier for you or your device. | Pexels, the stock photo service. Like any web request, their servers can see the IP address the request comes from. |
| Picking a local supermarket branch on the map | A supermarket name and, if you grant location permission, your approximate location, so the map can show branches near you. | Apple, through Apple Maps. Handled under Apple's privacy policy. If you pin a branch, only its name and coordinates are saved on your phone. |
| Community prices screen (optional) | A request for recently shared grocery prices, including your currency code. Nothing about you. | Open Prices, run by Open Food Facts. |
| Live supermarket prices (optional, when the developer has switched the price service on) | A request for the current prices of the ingredients in your plan — the item codes, nothing about you. No account, no identifier, no location. | The developer's own price database, hosted on Supabase. It holds supermarket prices, not user data, and keeps no record of who asked. |
| Importing a recipe from a link you share | A request for the web page you chose to share with the app, so its ingredients and steps can be read. | Whichever website you shared the link from. |
These requests are not logged by the app, are not linked to you, and are not used to build any profile.
On-device AI
When your iPhone supports Apple Intelligence, Meal Maker can invent a recipe for you. This runs on Apple's on-device model, on your phone. Your dietary needs and preferences are used to write the request, and neither the request nor the result is sent to the developer or to any third party.
Location
Location is used for one thing only: showing supermarket branches near you when you open the map picker. The app asks permission the first time and you can refuse — everything else keeps working, you just pick your shop from a list instead. Your location is never stored by the app and never leaves your device except as part of that Apple Maps search. You can change or revoke the permission at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services.
What Meal Maker does not do
- No user accounts, sign-ins or email addresses collected.
- No analytics, crash reporting or usage tracking of any kind.
- No advertising and no advertising identifiers.
- No third-party trackers or marketing software development kits.
- No selling or sharing of data with anyone, because none is collected.
- No payments, no subscriptions and no in-app purchases, so no payment details ever.
Family voting (optional, not yet switched on)
A future version lets a household propose meals for the week and vote on them together. It is off until you create or join a household: if you never do, nothing about you leaves your device and the rest of this policy is unchanged. When it is switched on, this section applies.
When you create or join a household, the following is stored on a server the developer operates (a Supabase project):
- the household name whoever created it typed, and its 6-character invite code;
- the display name you typed when you joined — use a first name or a nickname, because everyone in the household can see it;
- a random identifier the app generated on your device the first time you used the feature. It is not your Apple ID, your device's serial number or your advertising identifier; it exists only so the server can tell one member of a household from another;
- the titles of recipes you propose for a week, and which proposals you voted for, with the date.
No email address, no location, no contacts, no shopping list, no spending log and none of your other meal plans are sent. There is still no account and no password.
Who can see it
Anyone with your household's invite code can join and then see its name, every member's display name, every proposed meal and every vote, and can propose and vote themselves. The invite code is the only thing protecting your household — treat it like a door key. If it is shared more widely than you intended, leave the household and create a new one, which issues a new code. As the operator of the server, the developer can technically read the database; it is not sold, shared, analysed for advertising or used to profile you.
Removing it
Leaving a household deletes your membership and your votes from it immediately. To have a whole household deleted, email the address below with its invite code.
Children
Meal Maker is a general-audience cooking app and is not directed at children. Because it collects no personal information from anyone, it collects none from children either.
Your rights
Data protection law gives you rights to access, correct and delete personal data held about you. The developer of Meal Maker holds no personal data about you, so there is nothing to retrieve or erase on request. Your own copy is entirely under your control: deleting the app removes it, and you can clear individual parts of it from within the app's settings.
If you believe any of this is wrong, or you have a question, please get in touch — contact details are below.
Changes to this policy
If the app gains a feature that changes any of the above, this page will be updated before that version is released, and the date at the top will change. Meaningful changes will also be noted in the app's release notes.
Contact
Questions about privacy, or anything else about the app: