Macrometer Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 25, 2026
Who we are: Macrometer is made by Tauren James Brown, an individual developer in California ("I", "me", "we", "us").
Contact: admin@sl3.org, for privacy questions, requests and reports.
Also read: the Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy, which covers the same data in the form Washington and Nevada law ask for; the Terms of Service; and the Ringo crisis protocol.

Macrometer is a food log with friends, for adults 18 and over. You log meals by voice, photo, barcode or search, and if you sign in you can keep streaks with friends, send them food snaps and messages, join a crew, find people at your gym and chat with Ringo, an AI bot. This policy explains what information we may collect, how we may use and share it, how long we may keep it, and the choices and rights you have. It describes how we handle information; it isn't a contract you agree to. Where we need your consent for something, the app asks you for it separately, as described below.

1. What this policy covers

This policy applies to the Macrometer iPhone app, the servers behind it, our legal pages, and any emails or other communications you have with us about Macrometer (together, the "service"). It covers the features that exist today and features we add or change later. We may add, change, test or remove features at any time. If a new or changed feature collects a new category of information, shares it with a new kind of recipient or uses it for a new purpose, we'll update this policy first and, where the law requires, ask for your consent in the app before it applies to you.

Where this policy describes what the app does in a particular way (for example, which data stays on your phone), it describes the version of the app in effect on the date above. Section 15 says how we tell you about changes.

2. Information we may collect

We may collect the following categories of information, depending on which features you use and how you use them. Later sections describe how the current version of the app actually handles each one.

• Content you create or upload, including, for example, what you say or type while logging (Rambles), meal photos and depth readings, food names and amounts, snaps and selfies, messages and dictated text, statuses, your name and emoji, crew and pet names, duel stakes, reports you make, and anything else you choose to put into the service. Free-form content such as a ramble, message or Ringo chat may contain anything you choose to say, including information about your health, mood or daily life, and we process it as described in this policy.
• Account information, including, for example, your Sign in with Apple identifier, a Sign in with Apple token for this app, first name, emoji, account settings and preferences, session information, and push notification tokens.
• Health and fitness information, including, for example, the foods you log and when, logged days, streaks, gym check-ins, duels, and the data you choose to send Ringo for coaching.
• Social activity, including, for example, your friends, crew and gym memberships, invite codes, who you sent snaps, messages, pokes and cheers to, whether messages were read and snaps opened, blocks, reports, and game activity.
• Device, usage and technical information, including, for example, device model, operating system and app version, language and region, random install identifiers, request timestamps and metadata, IP address and the approximate location it indicates, and how you use the features.
• Diagnostics, including, for example, error and crash information and performance data, if we add tooling to collect it.
• Location information, including, for example, the gym you join (a place you were when you joined it). The current version uses your precise location on your iPhone to find nearby gyms and sends only the gym you pick, not your location fix.
• Information from service providers, including, for example, the estimates, food names, status suggestions and Ringo replies generated from what you sent, and data Apple gives us when you sign in or when a notification is delivered.
• Information from other users about you, including, for example, reports about you, copies of messages or snaps you sent that someone reported, what others say about you in their own content, and photos another user sends that show you. We treat a photo as the content of the person who sent it, and our Terms of Service ask users not to photograph people without their permission.
• Communications with us, including, for example, emails you send to admin@sl3.org, reports, and rights requests, and our records of handling them.
• Inferences, including, for example, streaks, trail progress, nutrient estimates, status suggestions and Ringo's coaching replies, drawn from the information above.
• Information from device features you allow, including, for example, photos you take with the camera or pick from your photo library, audio from the microphone while you ramble or dictate, and your location while the gym finder is open. The app asks for each permission when a feature needs it, and you can change them in your iPhone's Settings.
• Transaction information, if we add purchases or subscriptions in the future. Macrometer currently has none. If we add them, Apple would process the payment and we would receive transaction records (such as what was bought and when), not your card number.

Some things we don't collect today, so you know where the lines are: the current version doesn't read your contacts, calendar, or photos other than the ones you pick or take; doesn't read or write Apple Health (HealthKit); doesn't receive your email address; doesn't create faceprints or other biometric identifiers from selfies or run face recognition on them; doesn't create voiceprints or identify you from your voice (speech is only turned into words); and has no advertising, analytics or crash-reporting SDK. If a future version reads Apple Health data, the app will ask your permission first, and we won't use that data for advertising or sell it. If we add analytics or crash reporting, this policy's device, usage and diagnostics categories cover what they collect.

3. What stays on your phone

In the current version, your food log and your body details are stored on your iPhone, in the app's own storage: meals and their nutrition, calorie and macro targets, goal, height, weight, age and sex, weigh-ins and progress photos you add, water, your own streaks, Ramble history (what you said while logging), meal photos and their thumbnails, Progress charts, the pet and game state (Over/Under rounds are the exception: they travel as chat messages, below), and your copy of your chats. We don't keep a copy of your log; the pieces that reach our servers are the ones described in sections 4 and 5. Deleting the app deletes what it stores on your phone; a copy may remain in your own iCloud or computer backups if you use them.

Three answers you give the app also stay on your phone and aren't sent to us: your age (section 12), which version of the Terms you accepted and when, and whether you turned AI features on (section 4) and when.

Two features send parts of your log to a server when you use them: photo and voice estimates (section 4) and, if you turn it on, Ringo coaching (section 5). Other users don't see your meals, calories, macros, weight or body details through the app; they see what you choose to send them and what section 6 describes.

4. AI features and estimates: what's sent to get an answer

AI features are a choice. When you first open the app, after the Terms, it asks whether to turn on AI features, with the buttons Turn on AI features and Not now. The screen says what's sent and where (your voice while you ramble, streamed to ElevenLabs to be written down; what you said, the photo and its depth reading, and food names, through our server to Anthropic's Claude), that the same goes for Ringo chats, snaps that play as a 50-50 and status ideas, that it's used to give you the estimate or the reply and isn't sold or used for ads, that training AI on it is switched off with both providers (Anthropic's terms don't allow it; ElevenLabs' setting is off), and that you can turn it off any time in Me → Privacy & terms. With AI features off, speech to text by ElevenLabs, Ramble, photo estimates, nutrient details, Ringo, the 50-50 and status ideas don't send anything; barcode, search and typing still work. The app records your answer, its date and which version of the screen you saw on your phone. When we add a provider or send something new, the screen asks again anyone who had said yes, and AI features stay off until they answer. Status ideas have their own switch, off until you turn it on, and Ringo coaching has another (section 5).

Each request goes to our server, which runs on Cloudflare, and from there to the provider named. Our server is built to pass the content along and return the answer rather than store it, though request metadata may appear in short-lived server logs. Anthropic processes it under its commercial API terms, which don't allow it to train on our data; as of this policy's date, Anthropic says it deletes API inputs and outputs after a limited period (about 30 days) and keeps a request longer only if its automated safety systems flag it. Anthropic's current terms are published on its site.

Speech to text works differently. With AI features on, your iPhone gets a one-time pass from our server and streams the microphone's audio straight to ElevenLabs over an encrypted connection, so our server never receives the audio. ElevenLabs sends back the words, and those words then go through our server to Anthropic like a typed ramble. ElevenLabs processes it under its API terms. We've turned off the account setting that lets ElevenLabs use our data to improve its models; as of this policy's date, its standard service keeps speech-to-text audio and transcripts in our account's request history until they're deleted, in backups for up to 30 days after, and some of it in its debugging and moderation logs. ElevenLabs' current terms and privacy policy are published on its site.

Every estimate request also carries a random install ID, a code the app makes up the first time it runs. It isn't your name, Apple ID or account, and the current version doesn't join it to your account on the social server. We use it to limit how many requests one phone can make per minute and to protect the service. Our hosting provider processes your IP address to deliver requests and protect the service, and may derive an approximate location from it.

Our server keeps a shared menu cache: restaurant menu items and the nutrition published for them, without a record of who asked for them. It also keeps a running total of what the AI calls cost us.

Today's view vote. The Vote chip on Today lets you pick your favorite of five layouts. Your choice is stored on our server under a second random install ID so you can change it.

5. Your account and the social features

Friends, Crew, Chats, snaps, statuses, gyms and Ringo need an account. You create one with Sign in with Apple. Apple gives us a stable identifier for you in this app and, the first time only, your first name if you choose to share it. The current version doesn't ask Apple for your email address. Apple also gives us a sign-in token for this app, which we keep only so that, when you delete your account, our server can tell Apple to disconnect Macrometer from your Apple Account. Your first name and the emoji you pick are what other people see.

Signed in, the app sends the following to our social server (Cloudflare Workers with a database and file storage, in the United States), and we keep it under your account:

Ringo is an AI bot in everyone's Chats, and chatting with it needs AI features on. Messages and snaps you send Ringo are stored like any chat and are also sent to Anthropic (Claude) to write its reply, together with the recent chat, your first name and the dates you logged lately. If you snap Ringo, only the food photo goes to Anthropic, not the selfie; Ringo is told to react to the food and never to a person in it. Ringo's replies are stored as messages. Ringo is an AI, not a person: its chat says so in a line that stays in view, with where to get help ("Ringo is an AI, not a person. If you're struggling, call or text 988."), and Ringo is instructed never to claim to be human or a doctor, dietitian, therapist or other professional. If a message to Ringo contains plain words about suicide, self-harm or an eating-disorder crisis, our server doesn't ask the AI at all; Ringo answers with a fixed message giving the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, the NEDA text line (text NEDA to 741741) and 911. When that happens our server adds one to a daily count of crisis referrals, so we can report the number as California law requires of chatbot operators; the count holds no name, account or message. Our published crisis protocol describes this in full.

Ringo coaching (optional, off by default). In Me → Ringo you can turn on Let Ringo see your log and rambles. While it's on, each message or snap you send Ringo carries a short text block from your phone: today's and the last 7 days' meals and their times, your daily totals against your targets, your goal, the app's weekly balance check, and your last few rambles word for word, trimmed. Rambles can include anything you said while logging, such as how you slept or a stressful day. The block goes to our server and on to Anthropic for that reply. In the current version our server passes it along without writing it to the database or file storage. Turning the setting on is your authorization for this disclosure to Anthropic for coaching replies; turn it off and no further blocks are sent.

6. What other people can see

The app doesn't show other users your meals, calories, macros, weight or body details. What people can see depends on how you're connected:

• Friends and crewmates (people who accepted your invite code, or whose code you accepted, or who are in your crew) see your first name and emoji, whether you logged on each of the last 60 days, your gym check-in days, your status while it's up, your duo and snap streaks with them, the snaps and messages you send them, whether you've read their messages and opened their snaps, your pokes and cheers, your side of a duel, and your nights on the crew trail. The "Logged today" and "Streaks" switches in Me → What friends see hide today's day, or all earlier days, from everyone, including people at your gym.
• Your crew (up to 8 people) also sees the crew's name, pet, XP and quests.
• People at your gym (anyone who joined the same gym, up to 200 shown, sorted by streak) see your first name, emoji, your current logging streak and whether you logged today, subject to your What friends see switches, and can send you a friend request. They don't see your logged days, snaps, status or messages until you're friends. Leave the gym and you drop off its list.
• Push notifications to your friends carry your first name and, for messages, the first part of the text; a friend request from your gym carries the gym's name.
• Invite links open a web page showing the code.

Snaps, statuses and messages reach you only from people you've connected with, newest first. We don't recommend content or people to you based on a profile of you.

Anything you send another person can be screenshotted, saved or shared by them; we can't control what other users do with content you send them.

7. How we use information

We may use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• Providing the service: making estimates, keeping accounts and sessions, showing friends what you've chosen to share, delivering snaps, messages and notifications, running games, streaks, crews, gyms and duels, running Ringo, and responding to your requests.
• Improving and developing the service: understanding how features are used, debugging, testing, and developing new features. We don't keep the words, photos or depth readings you send for an estimate, and don't use them to evaluate or improve the service, unless you turn on Help improve estimates, a separate setting that asks you first (section 16; not in the app yet). We don't train AI models on your photos, rambles, logs or messages without that setting.
• Safety and moderation: reviewing reports, enforcing our Terms of Service, blocking, keeping removed people from signing back in, counting crisis referrals, and protecting users from abuse. We may review content, including snaps, messages and Ringo chats, by hand or with automated tools (including AI models) when it's reported, when we have reason to think it breaks our terms, or to check that the service and its AI features are working as they should.
• Security and fraud prevention: rate limiting, detecting and preventing abuse, misuse, unauthorized access and attacks, and monitoring our costs.
• Communicating with you: push notifications you've allowed, replies to your emails, and notices about the service or these policies. We don't send marketing emails; we don't have your email address unless you write to us.
• Legal compliance and protection: meeting legal obligations, responding to lawful requests, handling disputes, and protecting our rights, property and safety and those of our users and others.
• Research and analytics: aggregated or de-identified analysis of how the service is used and how well it works.

We don't use your information for targeted advertising, and we don't sell it. We don't use health or fitness information for advertising, marketing or data mining, or disclose it to advertisers, data brokers or information resellers.

Legal bases (EU/UK). Performance of our contract with you for the features you use; your consent, asked for in the app, for AI features, Ringo coaching, status ideas and sending a selfie with a snap, which you can withdraw in the app at any time; our legitimate interests in running, securing, improving and understanding the service, including rate limiting, abuse prevention, error logs and analytics; and compliance with our legal obligations.

8. Who we share information with

We may share information with the following kinds of recipients:

• Service providers that host, store, process, transmit and analyze data for us, including, for example, cloud hosting and storage providers, AI model providers and notification relays. They act on our instructions under written terms that bind them to confidentiality and to using the data only to provide their service to us; they can't use it for their own purposes or sell it. Our current providers are listed below.
• Other users, as section 6 describes and as you direct, for example by sending a snap or message or joining a gym.
• Apple and public databases that process data under their own terms rather than ours, as the table below describes.
• Legal and safety recipients: we may disclose information if we believe it's required by law, regulation, legal process or a government request; to enforce our Terms of Service and investigate possible violations; to detect, prevent or address fraud, security or technical issues; or to protect the rights, property or safety of us, our users or others.
• Business transfers: if Macrometer or substantially all of its assets are sold, merged, transferred or reorganized, or in the course of negotiating such a transaction, information may be transferred to the new owner or prospective owner, who may use it under this policy or a successor policy they notify you of.
• Successors and helpers: people or companies who help us run Macrometer under confidentiality obligations, including anyone who takes over its operation.
• With your direction or consent.

We may also create and use aggregated or de-identified information that can't reasonably be linked to you (for example, how often a food is logged, or how accurate estimates are on average) for any lawful purpose. We commit to maintaining it in de-identified form, to not attempting to re-identify it except to test that de-identification works, and to requiring anyone we give it to in that form to do the same.

Current providers

We may change providers or add new ones that do similar work; the categories above describe what they would receive.

9. How long we keep information

We keep information for as long as needed for the purposes in this policy, including providing the service, resolving reports and disputes, enforcing our terms, complying with legal obligations and protecting the service, and then delete or de-identify it. How long that is depends on the data. The table below describes our current practice; it isn't a guarantee, and copies may remain in backups and logs for a limited time after deletion.

10. Deleting your data, your choices and your rights

Delete your account in the app. In Friends, tap the … next to "Signed in as" and choose
Delete account. Our server first tells Apple to disconnect Macrometer from your Apple Account, then removes your account and the data tied to it from our live systems: friends, crew membership, logged days, snaps and their photos, messages you sent and received, statuses, gym, duels, blocks, push tokens and sessions. An empty crew or gym is removed too. We keep what section 9 says we keep: a report you made stays (without your name on it), and a snap or message of yours that someone reported stays, until the report is reviewed, and the report's record for a while after, as section 9 describes; records needed for legal compliance, disputes or security may stay; copies may remain in backups and logs for a limited time. Meals on your iPhone stay until you delete the app.

Sign out (same menu) ends the session on this phone and keeps the account.

Other controls in the app: Me → Privacy & terms (AI features on or off; Status ideas); Me → What friends see (today, streaks, face in snaps); Me → Ringo (coaching); Chats → the … menu on a chat (block, report); long-press a message (report, including Ringo's); a snap's menu (report, block); your gym's page (leave; long-press a person to report or block); Chats → Blocked (unblock); your iPhone's Settings for camera, microphone, speech, location and notification permissions.

Depending on where you live (for example California, Connecticut and other US states, the EU and UK), you may have the right to know what personal data we hold about you, to get a copy, to correct or delete it, to object to or limit some uses, to withdraw consent, and not to be treated differently for using these rights.

Making a request by email. Deleting your account in the app is the surest way to delete your data, because it's done from your signed-in account. For anything else, email admin@sl3.org and say what you want. Because many people share a first name and emoji, we'll ask you to prove you control the account from inside the signed-in app before we send you a copy of your data, change it or delete it: for example, by posting a status with a short code we send you, or by making another change we agree on that we can see on your account. If you've lost access to the account, we'll tell you what we can do without that proof; we won't release messages, snaps or Ringo chats to someone who can't confirm from the account. We answer within 45 days (or the time your local law sets), and will tell you if we need longer. If we turn a request down, you can ask us to look again by replying to that email. You may use an authorized agent where your law allows one; we'll ask for proof of their authority. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

California (CCPA/CPRA)

Whether or not the California Consumer Privacy Act applies to a service of our size, we give Californians the notices and rights it describes, as follows.

In the last 12 months we have collected, and may collect, these categories of personal information for the purposes in section 7, and disclosed them for business purposes to the service providers in section 8 and, for barcode and food search, to the public databases named there: identifiers (Apple identifier and sign-in token, account ID, random install IDs, push token, IP address); personal information under Cal. Civ. Code §1798.80 (first name); sensitive personal information (health information: what you eat and when, gym check-ins and what you tell Ringo, as described in sections 4 and 5); geolocation data (the gym you joined, which indicates a place you were when you joined it, and the approximate location an IP address indicates); audio, electronic and visual information (snaps, selfies, meal photos, voice audio sent for speech to text, and the words it's turned into); internet or other electronic network activity (device, usage and technical information, server logs); and inferences (streaks, estimates and Ringo's coaching replies). We collect them from you, your device, our service providers (the output they generate), and other users (reports and their content about you). We keep each category as section 9 describes.

We use sensitive personal information only to provide the features you ask for, to keep the service secure and working, to improve the accuracy and quality of the features you already use, and for the other purposes permitted by Cal. Civ. Code §1798.121 and 11 CCR §7027(m). Because of that, the right to limit its use doesn't apply; if we ever use it for a purpose outside those, we'll add a "Limit the Use of My Sensitive Personal Information" control first. We don't sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and haven't in the last 12 months. We don't disclose personal information to anyone for their direct marketing, so California's "Shine the Light" law (Civ. Code §1798.83) gives us nothing to report, and we aren't a data broker. The app asks everyone's age before anything else and turns away anyone under 18 (section 12), so we don't knowingly have users under 18. You can exercise your rights by email or in the app as described above.

Do Not Track and third-party collection (CalOPPA). Macrometer has no website login and no web tracking, so browser "Do Not Track" signals and Global Privacy Control have nothing to act on; we treat everyone as opted out of sale and sharing. Our legal pages and the invite-link page are static pages that set no cookies of our own; our hosting provider may log requests to serve them. No other company collects personal information about you through the app for its own purposes over time and across other apps and sites; the app contains no advertising, analytics or tracking SDK, and we don't allow one.

Washington and Nevada

If you live in Washington or Nevada, the Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy also applies.

11. Health information

What you eat, your gym check-ins, your Ringo chats and Ringo coaching are health-related information under some laws (consumer health data under Washington's My Health My Data Act and Nevada's SB 370, health data under the GDPR). We collect it to give you the features described here and for the related purposes in section 7; the AI features, Ringo coaching and status ideas run only with the consent the app asks for, which you can withdraw in the app. We don't sell it, don't use it for advertising, marketing or data mining, and don't disclose it to advertisers, data brokers or information resellers.

Macrometer isn't designed to store medical records or to diagnose, treat or manage any medical condition, and we don't ask for diagnoses, medications or other medical history. If you choose to mention them in a ramble, message or Ringo chat, they're handled like any other content under this policy.

12. Age

You must be 18 or older to use Macrometer. It isn't directed to children or teenagers, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. Before anything else, the app asks your age. On iOS 26 and later it first asks for the age range on your Apple Account (Apple's Declared Age Range), which you can decline to share; otherwise it asks for your birth month and year. The answer is kept on your iPhone (in its Keychain, so reinstalling doesn't ask again) and isn't sent to us; the app may check Apple's age range again later. Anyone under 18 sees a stop screen and can't make an account, and the app sends no account details or content to our servers for them. As for everyone, opening the app checks a settings switch on our server, which sees the phone's IP address and the app's version. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will delete it. If you think that's happened, or an age was entered wrong, email admin@sl3.org.

13. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect information, appropriate to a small service. In the current version, data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS) and at rest with Cloudflare; session tokens are stored hashed on the server and in the Keychain on your iPhone; and the Sign in with Apple token is stored in our database, which Cloudflare encrypts at rest. Messages aren't end-to-end encrypted. No system is perfectly secure, and we can't guarantee that information won't be accessed, disclosed, altered or lost through a breach of our measures or our providers'. If a breach of our systems or our providers' exposes your personal information, or health information is disclosed without your authorization, we'll notify you as the law requires, including under the FTC Health Breach Notification Rule and California Civil Code §1798.82, in the app, on this page, or by email if we have one for you, and notify regulators where the law requires. Keep your Apple ID secure and tell us at admin@sl3.org if you think your account has been misused.

14. Where information is processed

We're based in the United States, and our providers process data in the United States and may do so in other countries, so your data may be processed outside where you live, under laws that may differ from yours. For people in the EU, UK and Switzerland, transfers rest on the Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK Addendum) in our providers' data processing terms, or another lawful mechanism.

15. Changes

We may change this policy. When we do, we'll update the effective date above and post the new version at this address. For a material change, we'll give you more prominent notice, such as a notice in the app. If a change expands how we collect, use or share personal data you've already given us, we'll give notice first and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent in the app before applying it to you; it won't apply to that data without your consent where the law requires consent.

16. Help improve estimates (not in the app yet)

A future version may add a Help improve estimates setting, off until you turn it on. It isn't in the current version, and we don't train AI models on your photos, rambles, logs or messages without it. When it ships, this section applies and the setting will be where you turn it on and off.

With it on, meals you log from then on would be sent to our server a few hours after logging, and again if you edit them within a short window: the meal photo (with camera and location details removed) or the Ramble words; the depth reading if any; the estimate and which model made it; the foods, portions and nutrition you actually logged, including later edits and deletions; and the time, meal slot, app version and your phone's language and region. Samples would be tied to a separate random contributor ID, not your account or install ID.

We would use samples to measure and improve estimates, to train, fine-tune and evaluate nutrition models (our own, and ones built with providers acting for us), and for quality checks, where people working for us under confidentiality may look at samples. Samples would be kept for a limited period stated in the setting, or until you delete them with Delete what I've shared, which removes them from our live systems; copies may remain in backups for a limited time, and a model already trained on them can't be made to forget, but they won't be used in new training. Photos can show more than food, so don't photograph people, documents or anything private; if we notice personal details in a photo, we aim to delete or blur it. This setting isn't designed to collect your name, contacts, location, weight, body details or goals.

17. Contact

Tauren James Brown, admin@sl3.org.