Food Ally keeps your food diary on your own device. We do not have an account for you, we cannot see what you have eaten, and we do not sell anything about you to anybody.
What stays on your device
Everything you log — meals, foods, portions, water, saved meals — is stored in your browser’s local storage on the device you used. It is not uploaded to us and we cannot read it. The details you give during setup (sex, age, height, weight, activity level and whether you want to lose, maintain or gain) are stored the same way and used only to work out your daily calorie range on your device.
Because of this, clearing your browser data, using private browsing, or switching to a different phone will lose your diary. There is currently no backup.
What leaves your device
When you describe a meal by speaking or typing, the text of that description is sent to Google’s Gemini API so it can be turned into an estimate. It is sent without your name, your setup details, or anything else that identifies you. Google processes it under their API terms; on paid API tiers Google states that content is not used to train their models.
When you speak a meal, the app records a short audio clip (up to 30 seconds) and sends it to Google’s Gemini API to be turned into text, which is then turned into an estimate. The clip is sent without your name, your setup details, or anything else that identifies you. We do not keep the recording: it is used for that one request and then discarded. Nothing is recorded unless you press the microphone button, and your phone will show its own recording indicator while it is listening.
When you scan a barcode, the barcode number is sent to Open Food Facts, a public food database, to look up the product. Nothing about you is attached to it. The camera image itself never leaves your device — the barcode is decoded in your browser.
When you search for a food by name, the words you typed are sent to two public food databases — Open Food Facts and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s FoodData Central — to find matching products. Nothing about you is attached to the search.
What we log on the server
Our servers keep short-lived technical logs — the time of a request, its IP address and whether it succeeded — to keep the service working and to stop abuse of our API key. If something goes wrong, the app may send us an error message describing the fault. We ask it not to include what you were eating, but errors are unpredictable, so please do not put anything private into the app that you would mind appearing in a crash report.
Feedback you send us
If you use the feedback button, we receive what you type and basic technical details about your device and app version. If you write to us from your own email address, we will have that address. We use it to reply and to fix things, nothing else.
Analytics and advertising
There are no adverts and no advertising trackers. We do not sell or share personal data with third parties for marketing.
Children
Food Ally is for adults. It is not intended for anyone under 18, and calorie tracking is not something we think belongs in the hands of children.
Your rights
Because your diary is on your device, you are in control of it: deleting the app data, or uninstalling, removes it. Under UK GDPR you have rights of access, correction, erasure and objection over any personal data we do hold — which in practice means server logs and anything you have emailed us. Contact us and we will act on it.
Contact
Email shapsinfo@gmail.com.
This notice describes what the app actually does. It has not been reviewed by a solicitor, and it is not legal advice.