Simmer & Sear

Privacy Policy

Effective July 19, 2026

The short version: Simmer & Sear collects no personal data. Your recipes, grocery lists, pantry, and meal plans live on your iPhone and — if you use iCloud — in your own private iCloud database. We run no servers, we have no accounts, and we cannot see your data. Simmer & Sear's App Store privacy label reads “Data Not Collected” because none is.

What Simmer & Sear does not do

No accounts or sign-in — we never ask who you are.
No analytics, telemetry, or usage tracking of any kind.
No advertising and no advertising identifiers.
No third-party SDKs — Simmer & Sear contains no code from data brokers, ad networks, or analytics companies.
No selling, sharing, or processing of personal information — we never receive any to begin with.

Where your data lives

Everything you create in Simmer & Sear is stored on your device. If your iPhone is signed into iCloud, Simmer & Sear additionally syncs your library through your private CloudKit database — Apple infrastructure tied to your Apple Account, encrypted in transit and at rest, and readable only by your own devices. The developer has no access to it. Simmer & Sear works fully offline; iCloud is optional.

You can export your entire library as a JSON file at any time from Settings — your collection is never locked in.

Network connections Simmer & Sear makes

Simmer & Sear talks to the network in exactly two situations:

iCloud sync, as described above, handled entirely by Apple's CloudKit service.
Saving a recipe from the web. When you paste a link, your device fetches that page (and its recipe images) directly — just as a web browser would. The website you're importing from will see a standard web request from your device, governed by that site's own privacy policy. Simmer & Sear requests only the addresses you explicitly provide, keeps the source attribution with the saved recipe, and never crawls, prefetches, or phones home.

Permissions

Photos: adding a photo uses Apple's out-of-process photo picker — Simmer & Sear receives only the images you select and has no access to your photo library.
Notifications: if you allow them, Simmer & Sear schedules local notifications so cooking timers can alert you. These are created and delivered on your device.
Files: importing a recipe archive (for example a Paprika export) reads only the file you choose, which is copied into Simmer & Sear's own storage and never leaves your device.

Deleting your data

Deleted recipes are kept in Simmer & Sear's trash for 30 days, then removed permanently — or immediately, if you delete them from the trash yourself. Deleting data in Simmer & Sear also removes it from your private iCloud database on your other devices. Deleting the app removes all local data; any synced data can be managed through your device's iCloud settings.

Children

Simmer & Sear collects no personal information from anyone, including children.

Changes to this policy

If Simmer & Sear's privacy practices ever change, this page will be updated and the effective date revised. Given the app's design — no servers, no accounts, no collection — we expect changes to be rare.

Contact

Questions about privacy in Simmer & Sear? Reach us through the Simmer & Sear support page or email support@simmerandsear.com.