This policy explains what Folia collects, why we need it, who else is involved and the choices you have. In short: we only use your information to run the app for you and your household. We don’t show ads, sell data or use tracking or analytics tools. We follow the UK GDPR.
01What we collect
Your account: your email address, and either a password (stored only as a secure hash) or your Google account ID if you sign in with Google. With Google sign-in we also keep your Google name and profile photo link, refreshed each time you sign in. We record which version of these terms you accepted, and when. Your plant records: the plants, rooms, care reminders, care history, notes, health check results and where-it-came-from notes you add, and the photos you take or upload. Your settings, such as units, what you track and seasonal care. Feedback you send us, with your app version and platform.
- Plants, rooms, reminders, care history, notes and health checks you add.
- Photos you choose to take or upload. Folia only uses the camera and photo library when you ask it to.
02Photos and what’s in the background
Photos can show more than your plant. Faces, documents, screens or anything that identifies your home may be in the background, and identification photos are sent to Plant.id. Frame the plant and check the background before you take it. Photos you add to a plant are stored privately and shown only to you and your household. Photos you use for identification or a health check are also sent to Plant.id.
03How we use it
To run Folia for you: keeping your collection in sync across devices and with your household, identifying plants, checking their health, showing care information, adjusting schedules for the seasons, suggesting watering changes and scheduling reminders. Reminder notifications are scheduled on your device. To guess your hemisphere for seasonal care, the app looks at your phone’s time zone and region on the device; only the choice you confirm is saved. We don’t collect your location or contacts, and we never sell your information or use it for advertising.
04Sharing with your household and friends
If you join or create a shared household, its members see the household’s plants, rooms, photos, notes, care history and health checks, who did each piece of care, and each other’s names and profile photos. They don’t see your email address or password. When you leave a household, the plants stay with it. Friends in other households, who you add with a code, see only what you share: the names, photos and milestones of plants you share or that are linked to theirs by a cutting, your profile name, and the reactions and preset messages you send them. Nobody can find you by email or name. Removing or blocking a friend stops their access straight away, and so does turning off Friends and sharing in Preferences, which pauses all of it both ways until you turn it back on. Reports about misuse are kept so we can review them.
05Who else is involved
Cloudflare hosts our servers, database and photo storage. When you identify a plant or run a health check, the photos or search terms you submit are sent to Plant.id (kindwise s.r.o., Czech Republic), which processes them under its own privacy policy. To show species descriptions, we look up the species name on Wikipedia, without any personal details. Google is involved only if you choose Google sign-in. Push notification tokens aren’t collected: reminders are scheduled on your phone. If you share a sitter link from Vacation mode, anyone who has the link can see that plant-care list (your trip dates, the sitter’s name, plant and room names, and your notes, but no photos, email or address) and tick tasks off, until three days after the trip, until you turn the link off, or until you catch up. We store only a fingerprint of the link, not the link itself.
06Where and how it’s stored
Your data is stored with Cloudflare, mainly in Western Europe. Photos are private: they’re only served to signed-in members of your household. Passwords are never stored in readable form, and connections to Folia are encrypted.
07How long we keep it
We keep your information while your account exists. Deleting a plant deletes its photos, history and health checks. Clearing your plant data deletes every plant in your household. Deleting your account permanently removes your account and settings. If you were the only member of your household, its plants, photos and history go too; otherwise the other members keep them. To protect against abuse, we briefly keep counts of sign-in attempts, exports and health checks for up to two days. Our hosting provider keeps short-lived technical logs.
08Your choices and rights
You can view and change your information in the app, export a copy of it (More → Account → Data & Privacy → Export my data), clear your plant data and delete your account at any time. Under the UK GDPR (and the EU GDPR if you live in the EU) you can also ask us to correct or delete your data, restrict or object to how we use it, and complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk) or your local data protection authority.
09Children
Folia is not intended for anyone under 16, and we don’t knowingly collect information from children.
10Changes and contact
If we change this policy in a significant way, we’ll ask you to accept the new version in the app. For privacy questions or requests, send us a message in the app: More → Help & Legal → Send Feedback.