PlantRx helps you identify plants (and insects, birds, mushrooms, and weeds), read plant health, and follow simple care plans. This policy explains what information the app handles and why. We collect the minimum needed to make the app work, we do not sell your data, and we do not show ads.
When you photograph a specimen for identification, the photo is sent over an encrypted connection to our processing backend and forwarded to the AI identification services that power the app (Pl@ntNet for species identification and Google Gemini for health and care assessment; iNaturalist is used for reference data). Photos submitted for identification are processed to produce your result and are not kept on our servers afterward.
If you choose to save a plant to My Garden or a journal entry, a small compressed thumbnail of your photo is stored with your account so the feature works. Full-resolution originals stay on your device.
The camera and photo library are used only to capture or choose the picture you are identifying. Nothing is read from your library without you picking it.
Creating an account (with Sign in with Apple, Google Sign-In, or email and password) stores your email address, display name, and optional profile photo with our authentication provider, Google Firebase. If you use Sign in with Apple and choose to hide your email, we only ever see Apple's private relay address. Your garden, care schedules, and journal are stored in Firebase (Firestore) under your account, are protected by per-user security rules, and are visible only to you.
You can let PlantRx use your approximate location so care advice matches your local climate. When you allow it, the app requests a low-accuracy (roughly city-level) position and sends those coordinates to Open-Meteo for a forecast and to BigDataCloud to turn them into a place name. Those coordinates are used to answer that one request; they are not stored with your account and are not used to identify you. You can also type a city instead, and the app works fully if you deny location access.
If you send feedback or report a bug from inside the app, the message is sent to our processing backend and recorded in a private spreadsheet that only we can read. A bug report also generates an email to us so it is not missed.
Alongside your message, the report carries the app version and build number. Unless you switch off Include device details on the form, it also carries your device model (for example "iPhone 17,1"), your operating system version, your account id, how you signed in, whether the app could reach the network, and — if the report was written straight after a failure — the error text and the id of the scan that failed. The form shows you this line before you send, and turning it off still sends the message and the app version, because a report that does not say which build it came from cannot be acted on.
Your email address is only included if you tick "You can email me back". If you leave it unticked, no address is attached and we have no way to reply.
Reports are kept for as long as they are useful for fixing the app. Because a report is a record of a conversation with us rather than part of your account, deleting your account does not delete reports you have already sent — write to us at the address below if you want one removed.
PlantRx offers a paid yearly subscription. Purchases are handled entirely by Apple's App Store or Google Play. We never see or store your payment details — the app only asks the store whether your subscription is currently active.
Your account data (garden, journal) is kept until you delete it or your account. You can delete individual items in the app.
You can delete your whole account from inside the app — Profile → Delete account. That permanently removes your account and everything stored with it: your garden, saved scans, journal entries, wishlist and profile. It cannot be undone, and it is separate from cancelling a subscription, which is handled by Apple or Google. If you would rather we did it, email us at the address below from your account email.
Feedback and bug reports are the one exception, as described above.
PlantRx is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new effective date.
Questions or deletion requests: ykidsy666@gmail.com