Privacy Policy

Effective September 29, 2026 · Last updated October 20, 2026

Plantagram ("Plantagram", "we", "us") is a social app for sharing and identifying plants, available at plantagram.garden and as an installable app. This policy explains what information we collect, why, who can see it, which outside services are involved, and how you can delete it. Questions: Plantagram.app@gmail.com.

1. Information we collect

Account information

• Sign-in details. You sign in with Google or with a one-time code (or link) sent to your email address. We store your email address and a unique account ID. If you use Google, Google shares your name, email address and profile picture with us.
• Profile. Your username, display name, and optionally a profile picture and a short bio. You can also switch your account to private, which means new followers need your approval.

Content you create

• Plant photos and captions, including the plant's name and species if you add or confirm one.
• Reels (short videos), with any caption and music track you choose, and any text you add on the video (it's drawn into the video on your device, and also saved as text with the reel so it can be checked like a caption).
• Plant Nursery (plant clinic) posts, where you describe a problem with a plant and add a photo.
• Comments, replies, @mentions, likes, upvotes, saved posts, field notes, follows and follow requests.
• Learn favorites: the plant videos you star in the Learn tab. We store the YouTube video ID with its title, channel name and thumbnail link, not the video itself.
• Species suggestions you make on other people's posts, and reports of missing species.
• Direct messages, and message requests you send or accept.
• Reports you file about content or people, and the people you block.

Information from your device, with your permission

• Camera and microphone. The camera is on only while the app's Camera tab is open, and turns off when you leave it. Nothing is saved or sent unless you take a photo or record a video and then post it. The microphone is used only in Video mode.
• Photos and videos you choose from your library.
• Location. See section 2.
• Contacts (Follow contacts). Only if you use it, and only on browsers that allow it (Chrome on Android; iPhone browsers don't). You choose which contacts to share. Their email addresses are turned into scrambled codes (SHA-256) on your device and only those codes are sent to check which belong to Plantagram accounts. Names, numbers and the codes are not saved; we only count how many you checked each day (kept 7 days) to stop abuse. You can stop others finding you this way: Settings → Following and invites → "Let people who have your email find you". It is on by default.
• Push notifications. If you turn them on, we store the push address your browser gives us, its encryption keys, and your browser's user-agent string (the browser and device type), so we can deliver notifications to that device.

Information we derive

• Plant identification results. When you post a photo, our own plant identifier (on a Plantagram computer, see below) looks at it first, right after posting; if it isn't sure, the photo is sent to Pl@ntNet once to suggest the species. A photo you choose but don't post is never sent to Pl@ntNet, and neither is a photo you post as a landscape (chosen before the camera opens) or with a field note: those aren't identified at all (a landscape photo still gets the on-device plant check). Before posting, a small model on your phone only checks that the photo shows a plant (see section 5). On the Identify page, our own plant identifier looks at the photo first; the photo is sent to Pl@ntNet only if it isn't sure. To check how accurate our matcher is, we keep a short record of which plant it suggested and how sure it was, next to Pl@ntNet's answer (and, for a post, linked to that post). No photo is kept in this record, and it is deleted after 180 days. Our own plant identifier runs on a Plantagram computer: a small copy of the photo (at most 512 pixels) is sent to it over an encrypted connection, together with your sign-in token so it knows the request comes from a Plantagram user. The photo is only read in memory and is not stored there. For a post, its suggestion (and, when Pl@ntNet was also asked, Pl@ntNet's answer) is kept next to the post so we can check its accuracy; this record is only seen by our admins and is deleted after a year (or when the post is deleted).
• Identifications used. How many of your 4 daily Identify-page identifications you've used today, so we can show what's left. Your phone's time zone is used to know when your day starts; it isn't stored.
• Plant "fingerprints". When a plant is identified with at least 60% confidence (when you post it, or on the Identify page), or when you accept someone's species suggestion, your device computes a numeric fingerprint of the photo. We store it with the species name to help identify plants when our main identification service is unavailable. A fingerprint is a list of numbers, not the photo, and can't be turned back into the photo. Our own plant identifier keeps the same kind of fingerprint on the Plantagram computer, for the same photos and under the same rules, so it keeps getting better at recognising plants; it is stored with the plant name (and, for a post, which post it came from, so a later name change replaces it), never with your account.
• Place names. A readable place name (for example "California, United States") worked out from a post's coordinates.

We do not collect your contacts, and we do not use analytics, advertising identifiers or tracking cookies.

2. Location

Location is optional, but some features need it:

• Adding a location to a post. You can use your device's current location, which the app asks your permission for, or pick a point on the map. Nothing is read until you tap "Use my current location", or, for a photo you've just taken with the app's camera, until you choose "Add location now", which then uses your current location without asking again. Only then does the app read your device's location, look up its place name and save it to the post, rounded as described below.
• Publishing from the Map tab. To stop fake pins, a post made from the Map tab needs evidence of where the photo was taken. That's either GPS data stored inside the photo file, which your device reads, or your device's location at the moment you took the photo. The map point must be within 5 km of that evidence. This check doesn't apply when you add a location to an existing post.
• Outdoor weather. The strip under the app's header can show the outdoor temperature and humidity where you are. Nothing is read until you tap "Show outdoor weather" once; after that, the app reads your device's location when it opens (at most every 3 hours), as long as your device allows it. Your location is rounded to about 10 km on your device and sent to Open-Meteo, our weather provider (see section 5), at most every 30 minutes. It's never sent to Plantagram and is kept only on your device. To stop it, turn off location for Plantagram in your device or browser settings.

Photos you post are re-saved by the app before upload, which removes the GPS and camera data stored inside the image file. Videos you post as reels are uploaded as recorded, unless you trim them in the app or the app makes a large video smaller on your device (which also removes most information stored inside the file). Videos may therefore contain information your phone stored in the video file.

When you post a reel, the app also records technical details about the upload: the video's file size, length, resolution and format before and after any resizing, whether it came from the app's camera or your gallery, how long resizing took, and whether your device is an iPhone, an Android phone or something else. Only Plantagram moderators can see these details. We use them to keep videos small and quick to load.

To show a place name, coordinates rounded to about 1 km are sent to BigDataCloud, our reverse-geocoding provider (see section 5). That includes your current location, but only after you've chosen to use it.

3. What other people can see

• Anyone, even without an account: your username, display name, profile picture and bio, and whether your account is private; your posts, approved reels, captions, comments, Plant Nursery posts and field notes; post locations and map pins, including how the location was added; who liked a post or reel and who upvoted a Plant Nursery post; species suggestions; and who you follow and who follows you (accepted follows only).
• Your followers: the posts you've saved. For a public account, anyone who taps Follow becomes a follower. For a private account, only people you approve do.
• Only the people in the conversation: your direct messages.
• Only you: your email address, notifications, Learn favorites, push notification settings, reports you've filed, and account details such as when you joined.
• Plantagram moderators: reels waiting for approval, reports, and account details such as when an account was created and whether it's a moderator account or suspended. They can remove posts and reels that break the rules, and suspend accounts.

A private account only controls who can follow you. It does not hide your posts. If you block someone, the app stops showing each of you the other's posts, reels and profile in feeds and search, and neither of you can message the other. Because posts are public, blocking isn't a way to make your posts secret. The app doesn't show anyone who has blocked them, but a block is recorded for both people: the blocked person's app receives it so it can hide your content from them too.

4. How we use information

• To run Plantagram: your account, feed, map, reels, messages, notifications and search.
• To identify plants from your photos and to suggest plant videos and music.
• To keep the community safe: automatically checking text you post (captions, text on videos, comments, messages, names and bios) for blocked language and rejecting it, reviewing reels before they're public, handling reports, enforcing blocks, suspending accounts that break the rules, and preventing fake map locations. We also record when you agreed to our Terms of Use.
• To answer you when you contact us.

If you're in the European Economic Area, the UK or a similar jurisdiction, we rely on these legal bases:

• Contract: to provide the service you signed up for.
• Consent: for camera, microphone, location and push notifications, which you can withdraw at any time in your device or browser settings.
• Legitimate interests: for safety, moderation, abuse prevention and keeping the service working.

We do not sell or rent personal information, share it for advertising, or use it to train AI models for others.

5. Services we rely on

We use the following providers to run Plantagram. Each receives only what it needs, and handles it under its own privacy policy.

Our quick "is this a plant?" check runs on your device using an open-source model. The check itself doesn't upload your photo, but the species identification described above does. We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect people's safety or the service.

6. YouTube

Plantagram uses YouTube API Services to find and show plant and nature videos. By watching YouTube videos in Plantagram, you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service. Google's handling of data is described in the Google Privacy Policy.

We do not connect to your YouTube or Google account through the YouTube API, and we don't access any of your YouTube data. Videos play in YouTube's privacy-enhanced embedded player (youtube-nocookie.com). The app loads YouTube's player script from youtube.com a few seconds after you open the app while signed in (so videos start quickly), and once a week briefly opens an empty, silent YouTube player out of sight so its player code is ready on your device. Video thumbnails come from YouTube's image servers when they're shown. Players load as videos scroll into view, so Google receives your IP address and browser details even if you don't press play.

When you star a video in the Learn tab, we save its YouTube video ID, title, channel name and thumbnail link to your account so you can find it again on any device. We don't download or store the video itself.

Learn searches first look through our own library of plant videos. When the library doesn't have enough, or a search isn't about plants, we keep the search text with a count and the date, so we can see which plant topics to add. We don't store who searched it or link it to your account, and we delete these entries after 90 days.

To speed up searches, we store search terms and YouTube's results with no link to who searched. Results are reused for up to 7 days, and entries older than 28 days are deleted daily.

7. Storage on your device

We don't use cookies of our own. The app stores a few things in your browser's local storage:

• Your sign-in session, so you stay logged in, and a copy of your own profile so the app still knows who you are when the connection is poor. It's removed when you sign out.
• Small preferences and timestamps, such as whether you dismissed the "install app" prompt and when your video feed last refreshed.
• Learn history: the last 10 videos you watched in the Learn tab, your recent Learn searches, and which videos you have already watched, so we can show you fresh ones. This list stays on your device. (The searches themselves are handled as described under YouTube above.)
• A list of public YouTube channels the Reels feed draws videos from (channel IDs and names only, the same for everyone), so it doesn't have to be downloaded every time you open Reels.
• A copy of your notifications, your garden, your message inbox, the newest messages of your 10 most recent chats, and the last 3 other people's gardens you opened, so these open instantly. They're updated each time you open them, and removed when you sign out or when another person signs in on the same device.
• Growth tracker. The plants you track and their progress photos (with the dates they were taken) are kept on your device and backed up privately to your account in Plantagram's storage (Supabase), so you get them back on a new phone. Only you can see them: they aren't shown to anyone else, in the Feed, on your profile or in albums. A new device downloads each photo only when it's first shown. They're deleted from your device and from the backup when you delete them, and with your account when you delete it. To name a newly tracked plant, its first photo is identified once, the same way as on the Identify page: our own plant identifier looks at it first, and it is sent to Pl@ntNet only if ours isn't sure (see section 5); it isn't saved to your account. Progress photos can only be taken with the app's camera. If you choose "Share timelapse", the app makes a short video from them on your device; only that video is uploaded, and only when you post it, as a normal video post (see section 1). When you post it, the photos (made smaller) are also sent once to our own plant identifier to check they show the same plant: the last photo is identified (and sent to Pl@ntNet if ours isn't sure). Our identifier keeps only a numeric fingerprint of each photo, not the photo, with no account attached, to learn from: right away if the last photo shows the same plant, otherwise only after a Plantagram reviewer has looked at the posted video and approved it. Deleting that post doesn't delete your progress photos.

It also keeps an offline copy of the app itself so it opens quickly. Clearing your browser's site data removes all of this.

8. How long we keep information

• Your account and content are kept until you delete them or delete your account.
• When you delete a post, reel or Plant Nursery post, or change your profile picture, the old photo or video file is deleted automatically. This usually happens right away, and otherwise within about a day.
• Technical details about a reel upload are deleted with the reel, and automatically after 12 months.
• Direct messages are deleted automatically 12 months after they're sent. The record that a conversation exists between two people, with its last activity time, is deleted once it has no messages left and no activity for 12 months, or sooner if one of them deletes their account. Only the two people in it can see it.
• Cached plant identification results and place names are kept with no link to you.
• Plant fingerprints are kept after the related post is deleted, with no link to you or the post. Fingerprints from the Identify page are never linked to you or to a post.
• Reports other people filed about you are kept after your account is deleted, so moderators can finish reviewing them. They're no longer linked to your account, although a report about you as a person still contains your former account ID.
• Our providers may keep limited logs, such as server request logs, for a short time under their own policies.

9. Deleting your account

To delete your account: open the app, tap the account button at the top of the screen, and choose Delete my account at the bottom. This permanently deletes:

• Your account, profile, posts, reels and Plant Nursery posts.
• Your comments, likes, follows, saved posts, Learn favorites, notifications and push subscriptions.
• All your uploaded photos and videos.
• Your direct message conversations, for both people in them.

It can't be undone. Section 8 lists the few things that remain. You can also delete individual posts, reels and comments at any time. Section 8 explains what happens to their files.

If you can't access the app, email Plantagram.app@gmail.com from the address on your account, and we'll delete it for you within 30 days. See Delete your account.

10. Your rights

Wherever you live, you can:

• See and edit your profile in the app.
• Delete your content and your account in the app.
• Ask us for a copy of your data.

Depending on where you live, you may also have legal rights to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to processing of your information, to receive it in a portable format, and to withdraw consent. These laws include the EU and UK GDPR, Israel's Privacy Protection Law, and US state laws such as California's.

To use these rights, email Plantagram.app@gmail.com. We'll respond within 30 days, and we may need to confirm the request comes from the account holder. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority. In Israel, that's the Privacy Protection Authority.

11. International transfers

Our providers may process information in countries other than yours, including the United States and the European Union. Where the law requires it, these transfers rely on appropriate safeguards, such as the providers' standard contractual clauses.

12. Security

Connections to Plantagram are encrypted. Access to data is enforced by database security rules, so each person can only change their own content and only read what's meant to be visible to them. Service keys stay on our servers and never reach the app. No system is perfectly secure, though, so please don't share things you'd want to keep secret, and remember that posts are public.

13. Children

Plantagram is not for children under 13, and you must be at least 13 to create an account. If you're under the age required by the law where you live to agree to data processing yourself, you need a parent or guardian's permission. If we learn that a child under 13 has an account, we'll delete it. If you think this has happened, contact us.

14. Changes to this policy

We'll update this page when the app changes how it handles information, and change the date at the top. If a change is significant, we'll let you know in the app before it takes effect.

15. Contact

For privacy questions or requests, email Plantagram.app@gmail.com.