Privacy Policy
Sapida is an iOS app for logging food and digestive symptoms and spotting the connections between them. It was built to keep your data on your phone. This policy explains, in plain English, what data the app handles, what (little) leaves your device, and why.
- Your food diary, symptoms and health data are stored on your device only. There is no Sapida account, no sign-up and no Sapida server holding your data.
- The app currently does not sync to iCloud — your data does not leave your phone unless you export it yourself.
- The only things sent to third parties are food lookups: a food name or barcode sent to a nutrition database.
- No ads, no analytics, no tracking, no selling of data. The app contains no advertising or analytics software.
Who we are
Sapida is developed by Iain McAndrew, a sole independent developer based in the United Kingdom, who is the data controller for any personal data processed in connection with the app.
Contact: hello@sapida.app
This policy is written to comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
What the app stores — on your device
Everything you enter in Sapida is stored locally on your iPhone using Apple's SwiftData database:
- Food entries (what you ate, when, portions, nutrition values and ingredients)
- Symptom entries (Bristol scale, severity scores, custom symptoms and any notes)
- Custom foods, meal templates and favourites
- Cached nutrition lookups (so repeat searches work offline)
- Your settings and preferences
We cannot see any of this. There is no Sapida server, and the app does not sync your data to iCloud or any other cloud service.
Apple Health (HealthKit)
With your permission, Sapida reads data from Apple Health — sleep, steps, walking distance, active energy, exercise time, heart rate, resting heart rate, workouts, water intake and mindfulness minutes — to show alongside your symptoms so you can spot wider patterns.
- Health data is read and processed on your device only; it is never uploaded, shared or sold.
- Sapida does not write anything to Apple Health.
- In line with Apple's rules, HealthKit data is never used for advertising or marketing, and you can revoke access at any time in the Health app or iOS Settings.
What leaves your device, and why
Sapida talks to a small number of external services, and only sends the minimum needed for each job. Your symptom history, health data and identity are never included in these requests. Note that any request over the internet necessarily reveals your device's IP address and standard connection metadata to the service that receives it.
Open Food Facts
Why: product and nutrition lookup when you search for a food or scan a barcode.
What it receives: the search text you typed, or the barcode number you scanned. Open Food Facts is a non-profit open food database (openfoodfacts.org).
USDA FoodData Central
Why: nutrition lookup for generic foods (e.g. "banana").
What it receives: the food name being looked up. FoodData Central is run by the US Department of Agriculture.
Apple
Why: voice input, AI meal parsing and subscription purchases.
Voice input: if you dictate a meal, the audio is transcribed using Apple's speech recognition, which may process audio on Apple's servers depending on your device and language settings.
AI meal parsing: plain-English food descriptions are interpreted by Apple Intelligence on your device — the text is not sent to us or to any AI provider.
Purchases: Sapida+ subscriptions are handled entirely by Apple through the App Store. We never see your payment details; the app only learns whether you have an active subscription.
Bug reports
If you choose to send a bug report from the app, it opens a pre-filled email in your own mail app addressed to our support inbox. The email includes basic diagnostics (app version, device model, iOS version, locale, subscription status — yes/no) and a technical log file from the app. You can review, edit or remove anything before sending — nothing is sent automatically.
No ads, no tracking, no selling of data
Sapida contains no advertising, no analytics SDKs and no third-party trackers. We do not sell, rent or share your personal data with anyone. We have no data to sell — it lives on your phone.
How long your data is kept
Because your data is stored on your device, you are in control of it:
- It stays on your phone until you delete it: remove individual entries at any time, erase everything at once with Clear All Data in the app's Settings, or delete the app itself (which removes all Sapida data).
- You can export your data as CSV or JSON at any time (Sapida+ feature) — exports are created on-device and shared only where you choose to send them.
- If you email us, we keep the correspondence only as long as needed to help you.
Children
Sapida is not directed at children and is not intended for use by anyone under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children — and since the app collects no personal data on our servers, there is nothing for us to collect.
Your rights under UK GDPR
You have the usual rights over your personal data: access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection. In practice, because your data is stored only on your device and we cannot access it, you exercise most of these rights directly in the app — view and edit entries, export them, or delete them.
For anything we do hold (essentially, emails you've sent us), contact hello@sapida.app and we'll respond within one month.
If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data, you have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.
Legal bases
Where UK GDPR applies to the little processing that touches us or our service providers: food lookups and purchases are processed because they're necessary to provide the service you've asked for (performance of a contract), and support correspondence is handled under our legitimate interest in helping users and improving the app.
Changes to this policy
If the app's data practices change — for example, if iCloud sync is ever added — this policy will be updated and the "last updated" date changed before the change ships.
Contact
Questions about this policy or your data: hello@sapida.app