The short version: without an account, your pet's records, diary and photos live only on your iPhone. An account is optional. With one, they are also kept on our studio server so they're on every phone you sign in to and shared with the people in your household, and you can make friends, who see only what you choose to share. A few features use our studio either way: a studio portrait, speech bubbles worded by Claude for members, and talking to your pet, where your words (never your voice) are answered by Claude and spoken by ElevenLabs. We never sell your data or use it for advertising.
What Smolbean stores
Your pet's details (name, breed, birthday, weight, microchip number, vet and food), the care schedule you set, the care you log (meals, medicine, walks, play, notes and weight) and the diary entries are stored on your device, inside Smolbean's private storage and its App Group, which is shared only with Smolbean's own widgets and Apple Watch app. Without an account, none of this is sent to us, apart from what is described under Studio portraits, Speech bubbles and Talking to your pet below. With an account, it is also kept on our studio, as described under Your account and Your household.
Your account
An account is optional: everything about looking after your pet works without one, and your membership stays with your Apple ID either way. You make one with Sign in with Apple or Sign in with Google. From them we receive an identifier for you, your name if you share it, and your email address. With Sign in with Apple you can hide your email address, and Apple then gives us a private relay address instead.
We keep your identifier, your display name, the @handle and pet picture you choose for friends, and your settings for notifications and for being found. We do not store your email address. If you turn on "Let people find me by my email", we keep only a scrambled form of it (a keyed hash), which can be matched but not read back. When you delete your account, any Sign in with Apple authorization is revoked.
Your household
With an account, your household's records are kept on our studio so they stay in step on every phone signed in to it: your pets' details, care plans, logs, diary entries, walkers' names and schedules, your pets' photos and studio portraits, and the photos you add to walks. Everyone you invite into your household (up to six people) can see and change all of it.
Some things never leave the phone they were made on: the routes of your walks (where you went), the door codes and key notes you keep for a dog walker, and your own name and phone number as written in your settings. Our studio runs on Cloudflare, which stores this data for us. It is kept until you remove it, leave the household, or delete your account; when the last person in a household deletes their account, the household and its files are deleted from our studio. Each phone keeps its own copy of what it had.
Friends
With an account you can make friends with other Smolbean owners. Friends can see your display name, your @handle, and a card for each of your pets: their name, breed, age, today's mood and walk, and their portrait or photo. They see the moments you choose to share (a walk's distance and time, a diary line, a new portrait, a milestone, with an optional caption and photo) and the paws and treats people send. They never see your pets' records, health details, vet, microchip number, diary (apart from lines you share), walk routes or where you are.
Messages are only possible between friends and are stored on our studio so they reach both phones. Deleting a conversation removes it for you.
Finding friends. People can find you by your @handle (you can turn this off), by a link or code you share, and, only if you turn it on, by your email address in their contacts. When you look for friends among your contacts, Smolbean scrambles each email address on your iPhone (SHA-256) and sends only those, to compare with the people who chose to be found that way. Your contacts are not uploaded or kept.
Keeping it kind. Everything people type for others (handles, names, captions and messages) is checked against a list of words that aren't allowed. Handles, names, captions and shared photos are also checked by Anthropic's Claude before they appear, under terms that don't allow training on them. You can report anything and block anyone; what you report disappears for you at once, and we review reports within a day. When we act on a report we may remove content and suspend accounts, as set out in our Terms.
Notifications
With an account, your iPhone gives our studio a notification token so we can tell you about friend requests, paws, messages and care logged by someone in your household, and quietly let your other phones know there is something new. Notifications go through Apple's push notification service. You can choose which you get in the app, or turn them off in Settings. Reminders for your pet's care are scheduled on your iPhone and do not go through our studio.
Photos
When you choose a photo of your pet, Smolbean uses Apple's on-device Vision framework to lift your pet out of the picture and find their eyes and ears. Only the resulting cut-out is saved, on your device. The photo is not uploaded unless you ask for a studio portrait. Smolbean only sees the photos you choose.
Studio portraits
A studio portrait is your pet painted in a standard pose, with a smile, a blink and a sleeping pose to match. It is made only after you agree in the app, and you can turn it off at any time in the Pet tab.
What is sent. The photo you chose (and up to two more from the same pick, which help the likeness), resized to at most 1600 pixels, goes to our studio server, which runs on Cloudflare. No name, no account and no other data goes with it. The studio asks Google's Gemini image model, through OpenRouter, to paint the portrait, and asks OpenRouter to use only providers that neither keep nor train on what they are sent.
How long it is kept. Your photos are deleted from our studio as soon as the portrait is made, or as soon as an attempt fails, usually within a minute. The finished portrait is deleted from our studio as soon as your iPhone has downloaded it, and in any case within 24 hours. After that, the portrait exists only on your iPhone.
A free preview. During setup you can see your own pet's portrait before deciding on membership. To offer this once per iPhone, our studio may use Apple's DeviceCheck, which lets Apple keep two bits of information about the device for us (in our case: "has had its preview"). It tells us nothing about you.
Speech bubbles
On the Today screen your pet says short things about the care that is due. For members, these lines are worded by Anthropic's Claude: the app sends our studio your pet's name, species, breed and mood and one care fact, such as "Your dinner is due in 2 hours.", and the studio asks Claude to put it in your pet's voice. Your name and your other records are not sent. Anthropic processes these requests under its commercial terms, which do not allow training on them. Without membership, or if you turn speech bubbles off in the Pet tab, lines come from Apple's on-device model or from Smolbean's own phrasebook, on your iPhone.
Talking to your pet
Members can hold their pet on the Today screen and talk to them. It is turned on only after you agree in the app, and you can turn it off, or keep answers written, in the Pet tab.
Your voice stays on your iPhone. What you say is turned into text by Apple's speech recognition on your iPhone. The recording is never sent anywhere.
What is sent. The text of what you said (at most 200 characters), with your pet's name, species, breed, up to three personality traits, mood, chosen voice and a few short facts about today's care, goes to our studio. The studio asks Anthropic's Claude to write your pet's answer, then sends only that answer's text and the name of the voice to ElevenLabs, which turns it into speech under its own terms and privacy policy. Your name is never sent. Anthropic processes these requests under its commercial terms, which do not allow training on them.
How long it is kept. Our studio does not store what you said or what your pet answered. The spoken answer comes back to your iPhone, which keeps it in its cache so hearing it again is free.
The diary read aloud
With Smolbean Plus, you can tap Listen on a diary entry to hear your pet read it. Only then does that entry's text go to our studio and on to ElevenLabs to be spoken, as above; it is not stored by our studio. Entries you don't listen to never leave your iPhone.
What else our studio keeps
To stop abuse and keep costs in check, the studio keeps counts and times of requests for each install, membership and account, so it can apply limits (including how many spoken answers a membership has left this month), and the daily total it spends with Google, Anthropic and ElevenLabs. An install is identified by an anonymous Apple App Attest key that proves the request comes from a genuine copy of Smolbean; a membership by Apple's transaction number. Without an account, none of this identifies you. None of it is shared or sold.
The diary
On iPhones with Apple Intelligence, diary entries are written by Apple's on-device language model from the care you logged that day. The model runs on your iPhone and nothing is sent to Smolbean or to any cloud service, unless you ask to hear an entry read aloud. On other iPhones, entries are composed by Smolbean's own phrasebook, also on your device.
Motion and walks
If you allow Motion and Fitness access, Smolbean reads your iPhone's step count during a walk you start, and looks at today's walking activity to suggest walks you forgot to log. This data is read on your device and never stored outside it or shared.
Purchases
Membership is sold and managed by Apple through the App Store. Smolbean receives only confirmation that a membership is active, never your payment details. For studio portraits, speech bubbles, talking and the diary read aloud, the app shows our studio Apple's signed record of the membership (its product, dates and transaction numbers), so the studio can check it is current. Apple's privacy policy applies to purchases.
Analytics and tracking
Smolbean contains no analytics, advertising or tracking software, and does not track you across apps or websites.
Exporting and deleting your data
You can export your pet's care log as a CSV file at any time, and remove a pet and all of their records from their profile. Without an account, deleting Smolbean from your iPhone deletes everything permanently.
You can delete your account at any time in the Pet tab. That deletes your account, profile, friendships, the moments you shared, your paws and your messages from our studio, and your household too unless someone else is still in it. Your pets stay on your iPhone. Signing out keeps everything on your iPhone and on our studio, ready for when you sign in again.
Children
Looking after a pet in Smolbean is suitable for all ages and needs no account. Accounts, friends and messages are for people aged 13 and over, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new effective date.
Contact
Questions are welcome at hello@smolbean.app.