Privacy Policy

Last updated: 5 August 2026

Catch has no account and no tracking. Your lists, your pantry and your progress stay on your device. Two things do leave it: a list photo you choose to scan, which goes to Anthropic (Claude) to be read; and the barcode or name of a food being graded, which goes to Open Food Facts to be looked up.

What we collect

Catch has no account system, no analytics, and no advertising SDKs — there is no identity here to attach anything to, and we do not know who you are. Data leaves your device on exactly two paths, both described below: scanning a list, and looking up a food so it can be graded. Neither request carries your name, a device or advertising identifier, or anything from your lists beyond the one item being looked up.

Data stored on your device

The following is stored only locally on your iPhone and never leaves it:

Your grocery lists and items.
Your pantry, your treat drawer, and the food grades Catch has already fetched.
Your game progress (XP, level, streak, achievements, quests, statistics).
Your app settings (theme, haptics, language, display name).

This data lives in your device's local storage. Deleting the app removes it permanently.

Camera and photos

Catch uses the camera (or a photo you pick from your library) to capture a grocery list.
Scanning uses Anthropic (Claude): the list photo you scan is sent to our text-recognition provider, Anthropic, solely to read the item text and return it to the app. It travels through a small relay we run, which holds the API key so that no secret ships inside the app; the relay passes the photo straight through and keeps no copy. You must give explicit consent first (asked before your first scan; off until you accept), and you can withdraw it at any time in Profile → Settings → Scan with Claude — scanning is unavailable while it is off. The image is used only for that recognition — not for advertising, profiling, or model training — and is not retained beyond what is needed to process the request and the provider's limited abuse-prevention purposes. The recognized item text is stored only on your device.

You can grant or revoke camera and photo access at any time in Settings → Catch.

Food grades and product lookups

Catch tells you whether something is a good buy, and stocks your pantry from what you actually bought. Those verdicts come from Open Food Facts, a free, public, crowdsourced food database. Two things ask it a question:

Scanning a product barcode sends that barcode to Open Food Facts, which returns the product's name, brand, Nutri-Score, NOVA group and additives.
Checking off an item you wrote yourself, or one read from a scanned list, can send that single item's name — "greek yogurt" — to be searched, so your pantry gets a real grade instead of a guess. Catch answers from a built-in table of common foods and from grades already cached on your phone first, so a name is only sent when neither of those knows it, and a grade that comes back is kept on your device so that food is not looked up again.

A lookup carries the barcode or the one food name, plus the identification Open Food Facts asks every client to send: the app's name, its version, and an address to write to if the app misbehaves — ours, not yours. Nothing else goes with it. Depending on the build, the name search either goes to Open Food Facts directly or through a small caching relay we run, which forwards the same query and keeps the answer against that search term for about a week, so the next person asking is served without troubling them again. Neither we nor Open Food Facts can tie these requests to you beyond the network address that every internet request necessarily reveals. Unlike scanning a photo, these lookups are not behind a separate consent prompt: they are what makes a grade honest rather than guessed, and they carry nothing that identifies you.

Sharing

When you tap "Share" on a list, your device's standard share sheet opens so you can send the list text via the app of your choice. Catch does not transmit anything on its own.

Third parties

Catch includes no third-party tracking, analytics, or advertising. Two outside services ever receive anything. Anthropic receives a scanned list photo, only after you have consented, and only to perform text recognition. Open Food Facts receives a barcode or a single food name, and only to return that food's public nutrition data. The two relays described above — the one holding the Anthropic key, the one caching food searches — are small serverless functions on hosting we rent from Vercel, which carries that traffic on its way through as any host in the path does.

Children's privacy

Catch does not collect personal information to build a profile of anyone, including children. The app is rated 4+ and contains no objectionable content.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date above will change accordingly. Material changes will be reflected in an app update.

Contact

Questions? Email clemalb@gmail.com.