Last Updated: 22 September 2026

Privacy policy — Thought Garden

Thought Garden does not collect anything. What you write stays on your phone. There is no account and no server.

Nothing leaves your device unless you send it yourself. You can share a thought with a therapist or a friend, or save a copy of the whole garden, but only by choosing to, every time. The app never sends anything on its own.

What the app stores, and where

Everything you create — your thoughts, the ways you plan to tend them, your compost bin, your proud moments, any pictures you attach, and the name you give the garden helper — is stored on your device only, by the app itself. So are your settings, and the dates of the days this week you did something in your garden, which Settings shows as a row of circles. Only dates are kept, never times, and never more than two weeks of them.

None of it is transmitted. There is no server holding a copy, because there is no server.

Face ID and your passcode

If you turn on Lock the garden in Settings, the app asks your phone to check it is you, with Face ID or your phone passcode, before the garden opens. The check is done by your phone's operating system. The app only learns whether it succeeded. It never sees your face data or your passcode, and neither do we.

The lock is off unless you turn it on.

What we collect about you

Nothing. We do not collect your name, your email address, your location, your contacts, any identifier for you or your device, or any analytics about how you use the app. There is no advertising and no tracking of any kind.

We cannot read what you write, because it never reaches us.

Sharing, when you choose to

Nothing is sent anywhere without your permission and an explicit action from you. There is no background sync, no automatic upload, and no way for the app to share anything by itself.

You may well want to share something, and the app supports it:

• One thought, to a therapist or a friend. A thought can be handed to your phone's own share sheet, to take to an appointment, send in a message, or email to yourself. You pick where it goes, and nothing is sent until you do.

• A copy of the whole garden. In Settings you can export everything as text and keep it wherever you like, or move it to a new phone.

In both cases the words go only where you send them. They do not pass through us on the way, because there is nowhere of ours for them to pass through.

Deleting

Removing a thought removes it, along with any picture attached to it. Settings has a Start fresh option that removes everything on the device.

Because nothing is stored anywhere but your phone, there is nothing left elsewhere to delete, and no request you need to make of us. Deleting the app also removes everything it holds.

Links out of the app

The app links to findahelpline.com, an independent directory of crisis helplines, so that you can reach real support if you want it. Opening that link opens your browser and is subject to that site's own privacy policy. Nothing about you is passed to it by this app.

Children

The app is not directed at children and collects nothing from anyone.

Crash reports and updates

The app checks for updates to itself when it starts. That check tells the update service which version of the app is running so it can reply with the right one. It does not include anything you have written.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about the app: thoughtgardenapp@gmail.com