Privacy
Effective 29 September 2026 · Last updated 23 October 2026
Cookfold is a recipe box for your phone. It has no accounts, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. This page explains the little data it handles and why.
On your phone
Your recipes, notes, photos, meal plan, shopping list, pantry and settings are stored only on your phone. We have no copy. They are included in your phone’s own backups (such as iCloud Backup), which are controlled by you and your phone’s maker, not by us. You can also export your recipes to a file in Settings. On the website, the same things are kept in your browser’s storage on that device.
iCloud sync
If you turn on iCloud sync (part of Cookfold Pro), your recipes, photos, meal plan, shopping list and kitchen settings are also stored in your own iCloud account, in a folder only Cookfold can use, so they stay the same on your devices. Apple stores that data under your Apple ID; we can’t see it. Turning sync off stops it; you can remove the data in the Settings app under your Apple ID › iCloud › Manage Account Storage.
Recipe photos
In the app, photos of imported recipes are downloaded by your phone from the website they came from and kept on your phone so they show offline.
On the website, and on a shared recipe page, a recipe’s photo loads directly from the website it came from each time it is shown. That site receives your IP address, as it would if you visited it, but not the address of the page you were on.
Importing a recipe from a link
In the app, your phone reads the recipe page itself. If a site refuses, the link is sent to our small web service (hosted on Cloudflare), which fetches that page and returns the recipe it finds. On the website, every link you import goes through that web service, because a browser can’t read another site’s pages directly. We don’t keep the link or the page.
Reading a screenshot
In the iPhone app, text in a picture is read on your device by iOS and the picture is not uploaded. On the website, the text reader and its English language data are downloaded to your browser from jsDelivr (a public service for code libraries) when you first use it, and the language data is kept in your browser’s storage for next time. The picture is read in your browser and is not uploaded.
Hands-free cook mode
In the iPhone app, if you turn on hands-free in cook mode, Cookfold uses the microphone to listen for a few words (“next”, “back”, “repeat”, “timer”, “stop”, “ingredients”). Speech is recognized on your device by iOS; the app only uses on-device recognition, so your voice is not sent to Apple or to us, and nothing you say is recorded or saved. Listening stops when you turn hands-free off or leave cook mode.
Widgets and Lock Screen timers
The Cookfold widget and the cook timer on the Lock Screen show a recipe name and a timer from your phone. They are kept in a storage area on your phone shared only by Cookfold and its widgets.
Sharing a recipe
When you share a recipe as a link, a copy of it (name, ingredients, steps, time, servings, nutrition, author, rating, source link and web photo, but not your notes, tags or your own photos) is stored by our web service under a long random link, so the person you send it to can open it. Anyone with the link can view that copy. Shared copies are deleted automatically after two years.
Purchases
Cookfold Pro is sold through the App Store. Apple handles payment; we never see your card. We use RevenueCat to check whether your Apple ID has an active Cookfold Pro purchase. RevenueCat receives an anonymous app user ID and your purchase history for Cookfold, nothing that identifies you.
Children
Cookfold is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect their data.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new date. Questions or requests: support@dillongreen.dev.