Privacy Policy

Effective November 15, 2026

Recipe Reduction (“we”, “us”) turns a recipe into a diagram you can cook from. It is available as an iPhone app, as an Android app and at recipereduction.com. This policy explains what we collect, why, who handles it for us, and what you can do about it. We wrote it to describe what the app actually does, not to cover every possibility.

What we collect

Your account. You sign in with Google or with Apple. From the provider we receive your name, your email address and an identifier for your account with them. If you use Sign in with Apple’s “Hide My Email”, the address we receive is Apple’s relay address, not your real one. We never see your password. If you use Sign in with Apple, Apple also gives us a token for that sign-in, which we keep only so that we can end the sign-in with Apple when you delete your account.

Your recipes and cooking progress. The recipe links you paste, the text you paste, the photos you take of a recipe page, the recipes the app extracts from them, and how you use them: which steps you have completed, your serving size, ratings, the notes you write on a recipe and on its steps, meal types, the recipe books you make and which book each recipe is in, and any timer you set. This is the content of your library and it is stored so it is there on every device you sign in on.

Recipe pictures. When the page a recipe came from has a picture of the dish, we fetch a copy when you save the recipe (or, for a recipe saved before the app kept pictures, the first time it is shown) and store it with it, so your library shows it without your device ever contacting that site. You can also attach a photo of your own to any recipe, replace it, or remove it. These pictures are part of your library: they are stored with it and deleted with it.

Suggested recipes. The Add New screen and an empty library can suggest recipes from public recipe pages: pages that people using Recipe Reduction have saved and cooked, pages we have chosen, and recipes from our own account, which get a public page on this site. A suggestion shows the page’s title, its site, details from the recipe, and the picture the page itself publishes for sharing, which our server fetches and stores so that your device never contacts that site to show it. A suggestion never uses a photo anyone attached to their own recipe (only our own account’s recipes can be suggested with their photos), and never says who saved or cooked it. The counts it can show, such as how many people cooked it or liked it, are totals across everyone, shown only once they are large enough to say nothing about any one person. Tapping the site’s name opens that page in your browser, under that site’s own privacy policy.

A page you open in the app’s browser. The phone app has a browser for recipe sites, including ones that will not let our server read a recipe. A page there is loaded by your phone, directly from that site, as any browser would load it; nothing about the pages you look at is sent to us. Words you type in its address bar that are not a web address are sent from your phone to DuckDuckGo as a search, under DuckDuckGo’s privacy policy; we do not see them. Only when you tap “Extract this page” do we receive that page — its text and the recipe data it publishes, without its scripts, styles or images — and its address, and it is read into a recipe exactly as a link you paste is. This browser keeps no cookies or other site data between visits. The sites you open there set their own cookies and run their own code while you are on them, under their own privacy policies.

A recipe’s original wording. Beside the diagram, the app can show a recipe’s ingredient lines and steps as its source wrote them. For a web page we take them from the recipe data the page publishes, or have them copied out of the page during extraction — only the recipe itself, not the article or comments around it. For text you paste or a photo you take, they are copied out of what you sent. This wording is stored with the recipe in your library, shown only to you, and deleted with it; a long recipe is cut short with a link to the page it came from.

Purchases. Subscriptions in the iPhone app are sold and billed by Apple through In-App Purchase. Apple tells us that a purchase happened, its transaction identifier, its status and when it renews or ends. In the Android app they are sold and billed by Google through Google Play; we receive the purchase’s token and ask Google for its status and when it renews or ends. We never collect or store your card details; Apple and Google hold those. On the website, subscriptions are billed by Stripe under the same rule: Stripe holds the card, we hold only a subscription identifier and its status.

A recipe you share by link. From a recipe’s menu you can turn on a link to it. Anyone who has that link can read the recipe as it is in your library at that moment — its title, ingredients, steps, serving count, the wording we kept from its source, the picture attached to it (your own photo if you added one) and the name and address of the site it came from — and can save their own copy. The link shows the first name on your account as the person who shared it (nothing, if your account has no name) and never your email address, your account, which steps you have completed, your notes, your timers or anything else about you. A copy someone saves is theirs, and later changes to your recipe do not reach it. You can turn the link off at any time from the same menu, after which it opens nothing; taking the recipe out of your box or deleting it does the same. A link is only ever made when you turn it on.

A page you share to the app. On an iPhone you can share a page to Recipe Reduction from Safari’s Share button. Safari then gives the app that page as your phone has loaded it — its text and the recipe data it publishes, without its scripts, styles or images — and its address, and the app reads it into a recipe exactly as it reads a page from the app’s browser. If you share a link or text from another app, it is read as a link or text you paste. On an Android phone, sharing a page from Chrome or another app gives Recipe Reduction its address (or the text you shared), which is read as a link or text you paste; the page itself is not sent. Nothing is sent until you choose Recipe Reduction in the Share sheet, and nothing about other pages you visit is ever sent.

Notifications. If you turn on timer notifications, we store the token your phone gives us so we can send the notification, with a short description of the device: in the app, your phone’s model and the app’s version (for example “iPhone 15, 1.2.0”); on the website, the description your browser sends with every request (its “user agent”). On an Android phone the notification is delivered through Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging, which Expo uses for Android. Nothing else about your device is collected for this.

Technical records. Like any web service we keep server logs, which include your IP address and the pages requested, for a short time, to keep the service running and to investigate problems. We also record whether a free recipe was used and whether a request was allowed or refused by the free-recipe limit, so we can see that the limit works. These records are tied to your account identifier, not to your name. For each recipe we read for you, we also record which kind it was (a link, pasted text, a photo, or a page from the app’s browser or shared to it), the website it came from (its name only, such as example.com, not the page’s address), whether it came from our cache, and an estimate of what reading it cost us, linked to your account identifier, so we can see what the service costs to run and notice misuse. Deleting your account removes that link. We also keep daily counts of how often parts of the app are used, such as how many recipes were read or saved, how many times a feature such as the shopping list or a timer was used, how many people reached the sign-in screen or the subscription screen, and how often each suggested recipe was shown, opened and saved; these counts are totals and are not linked to your account or device. Ratings are read the same way, as totals across everyone, to see which recipes and recipe sites people rate highly. If the app or the website hits an error, it sends us a short technical report: what failed, where in our code, which screen, and which version of the app and of your device’s operating system. A report is stored without your account, any device identifier or your IP address, never contains your recipes or anything you typed, and is deleted after 90 days. Apple may also send us crash reports from your iPhone if you have chosen to share analytics with app developers in your device’s settings, and Google may send us crash and performance reports from your Android phone if you have chosen to share usage and diagnostics with Google.

Before you have an account. The first recipe can be diagrammed without signing in. We set a cookie so that recipe can be kept for you if you create an account afterwards.

What we do not collect

No advertising identifiers, no location, no contacts, no analytics profile of you, and no data from other apps. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for advertising.

How we use it

Who handles data for us

We use a small number of service providers, each for one job, and each receives only what that job needs:

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect the rights and safety of people using the service.

Cookies and local storage

The website uses a session cookie so you stay signed in, the pre-account cookie described above, and browser storage for your appearance preference. The app stores your sign-in token and preferences on the device. There are no advertising or tracking cookies.

How long we keep it

Your account, library and purchase records are kept for as long as you have an account. Server logs are kept for a short period and then discarded. A recipe we read for you is kept in a cache that is not linked to any account, whether or not you save it, and it stays there until it is replaced; this is so that the same page, text or photo does not have to be read twice. Deleting your account does not remove it, because nothing in it identifies you. Recipes extracted from public recipe pages in that cache are the ones that can appear in search; the cache keeps the recipe’s original wording beside it, and that wording is never shown in anyone’s search results. A page in that cache can appear in other people’s search results, by its title and address — never with who extracted it, and never a recipe you pasted, photographed or extracted from a page in the app’s browser (those are kept under their content, not their address, so they can only ever match someone who sends the very same recipe). Search results can also show how many people have saved a page, how many times it has been cooked and how many loved it: counts across everyone, shown only once they are large enough that they say nothing about any one person, and used to choose the recipes suggested on the Add New screen.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account from Settings, in the app or on the website, so you do not need the app to do it. If you cannot sign in, write to us at the address below from the email on the account and we will delete it. How to delete your account has the steps. Deletion removes your account, your recipes and your notes on them, your recipe books, your cooking progress, your notification tokens and our records of your subscription. Deleting your account also cancels any active subscription we are able to cancel: a website subscription is cancelled immediately, and a Google Play subscription is cancelled so that it does not renew (if Google cannot be reached, the app tells you to cancel it in the Play Store under Payments & subscriptions). An App Store subscription can only be cancelled by you, in your device’s Settings under your Apple Account, Subscriptions; the app reminds you of this before and after deletion. If you signed in with Apple, deletion also ends Reduction’s Sign in with Apple link, so the app no longer appears under your Apple Account’s Sign in with Apple settings; if we cannot end it, the app tells you to remove it there yourself. Deletion cannot be undone.

Security

Data travels over encrypted connections. Sign-in tokens are stored hashed. Access to the database is limited to what the service needs to run. No system is perfectly secure, and if we learn of a breach affecting your data we will tell you.

Children

Recipe Reduction is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, write to us and we will delete it.

Your rights

You can see and change your recipes and progress in the app at any time, and you can delete everything by deleting your account. Depending on where you live, you may also have rights to ask for a copy of your data, to have it corrected, or to object to certain uses. Write to us at the address below and we will respond. Because the service is hosted in the United States, your data is processed there wherever you use it from.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and, for significant changes, tell you in the app or by email.

Contact

Questions about privacy: admin@recipereduction.com. For help with the app, see Support.