Fed the Dog Privacy Policy

Last updated: 11 September 2026

This app is two phones agreeing about one dog, so it is the one app of mine where something does leave your phone, and saying otherwise would be untrue. There is no account of mine, no server of mine, no analytics and nothing sold. What there is: a small record in one of your two iCloud accounts, shared with the other person. This page says whose, and what is in it.

Whose iCloud

Whichever of you sets the app up first and sends the invitation is the one whose iCloud holds the record. It sits in a zone of its own, called Feedings, in the private database of the app’s iCloud container, under that person’s Apple Account. The other person accepts the invitation once and reads and writes the same zone from then on.

The invitation is sent with Apple’s own sharing sheet, through Messages or Mail. There is no pairing code, no account with me, and nothing for either of you to sign up to. Apple holds the record under its own privacy policy, the same way it holds your photographs and your messages, and I have no way to reach it.

If nobody is signed in to iCloud, the app is a one-phone app with the record on the phone. It still works. It just has nobody to agree with.

What is in the shared record

Two kinds of thing, and nothing else:

• Every answer. Which day it was, which meal, whether it was yes or no, when it was said, and who said it. An answer is written once and never edited, which is why two people answering in the same second cannot collide.
• The standing diet. Your dog’s name, the times of her meals, and each meal’s checklist in the words you spoke.

Your name travels with your answers, because the other person needs to see who said the dog had been fed. It is the name on your Apple Account, which is what iCloud sharing hands to the other participant.

What the other person can see

Everything in that zone, which is everything above: the dog’s name, her meals, and every answer either of you has given, with names and times on them. That is the app working, and the reason it exists. Nobody else can see any of it. Only the two of you are on the share, and it is not public, not on the web, and not linked to anywhere.

Taking the last answer back removes that record from the shared zone as well, so the other phone learns about the undo rather than holding something this phone has dropped.

How long it is kept

The app remembers seven days on the phone and drops anything older, so there is no history to browse even if somebody went looking for one. That limit is on the phone, and it does not reach back into iCloud to delete what is already there. Removing the record from iCloud for good is done in the iPhone’s Settings, under your Apple Account, among the apps using iCloud.

On the phone

One file, in a container the app shares with its widget, so the widget and the Lock Screen control read exactly what the app wrote. An answer is recorded there first and the upload is a consequence: answer with no signal and it is written, shown, and pushed when there is one.

What you say

The three setup questions are answered out loud. Your voice becomes words on this iPhone, using two of Apple’s speech engines at once: a slower one whose words are kept, and a faster one that only exists to put words on screen while you are still talking. Everything the fast one produces is thrown away.

The recording is never written down and never leaves the phone. What is kept is the text, because the checklist is the words you used.

Both engines are Apple’s, and both run on the phone. The app sets Apple’s on-device flag on the fast one and will not start it at all on a phone that cannot recognise your language by itself. The accurate one is Apple’s on-device transcriber and has no other mode. So your voice is never sent anywhere to be turned into words, and there is no fallback that sends it to Apple’s servers when the phone finds it hard. iOS says otherwise in its own alert when it asks for speech recognition, because that wording is Apple’s and has to cover every app that asks. This one does not use the part it describes.

The app asks for the microphone and for speech recognition the first time it needs them, behind a page saying why, and you can withdraw either in Settings. It never asks for the camera, and there is no photograph anywhere in it.

Notifications

Each phone schedules its own asks from the shared diet, as local notifications. They fire on time whatever the network is doing. There is also a silent push from iCloud when the other phone writes something, which only tells this phone to go and look; it carries none of the answer and nothing rests on it arriving.

What there is none of

No account of mine, no sign-in of mine, no analytics, no advertising, no tracking, no in-app purchases, and no subscription. No camera, no location, no smart bowl, and no guessing: the app knows what a person told it and nothing else. No score, no streak, and no count of who fed her more, which is a choice about a household rather than a technical limit.

Contact

Questions about this policy: email me at alex@alexecollins.com.

Help with the app itself is on the support page.