Privacy
Short version: your family's information lives in your own iCloud account, your calendars are only ever read, children never have accounts, and the AI features send nothing until you allow them.
Last updated 25 September 2026.
Where your family's information lives
Children's names, chores, dinners, lists and the events you type in are stored on your device and synced through your own iCloud account using Apple's CloudKit. We don't run a database of your family and we can't see any of it.
If a device is signed out of iCloud, or signed in to a different Apple Account from the one the family was set up under, Fridgeside keeps the family in a file on that device only — not in iCloud and not in device backups — until iCloud is back or you choose to keep the new account.
If you share the household with another parent, that sharing happens through iCloud between the two of you.
Your calendars are read, never written
With your permission, Fridgeside reads the calendars set up on the device so the board can show them. It never creates, edits or deletes anything in your calendars, and calendar events are not copied off the device.
You can withdraw that permission at any time in Settings, and the rest of the board carries on working.
The AI features, and who receives what they send
Five features in Fridgeside use an AI model: Google's Gemini. None of them sends anything until you allow AI features on that phone, and you can turn them off again at any time in Family → What leaves this iPad. Everything they produce can be typed in by hand instead.
Every request goes to our own relay first — a small service we run on Cloudflare at ai.fridgeside.com — which passes it to Google's Gemini API and returns the answer. The relay holds the credentials so the app doesn't have to. It does not store what you send. Google processes each request to produce a result, under the Gemini API terms, and may keep it for a limited time for abuse monitoring as those terms describe.
1. Setting up from a description
You write a short description of your family — "Ada is 8 and Sam is 5, they take turns with the trash" — and get a draft week back. What you write is sent, including any names, ages and allergies you include.
2. Reading a flyer photo
You can photograph a school flyer or a game schedule, or share one from another app, and have the dates read off it. The photo is sent to be read, resized first. Only the photo you choose is sent — Fridgeside has no access to the rest of your photo library. Nothing goes on your calendar until you've looked at what was found and agreed to it.
3. Dinner ideas
When you ask for meal ideas, the dietary notes you've recorded are sent along so the suggestions take them into account — including the first name of the child a note belongs to, such as "Sam: doesn't eat fish".
4. Recipe links
When you paste or share a recipe link, the link is sent. The relay fetches that page and reads the recipe out of it.
5. Sorting your shopping list
Once AI features are allowed, items you add to a shopping list that the app can't place in an aisle itself are sent, as text, to be sorted. This one runs on its own after you add items rather than when you tap a button, which is why it only happens after you've allowed AI features.
About dietary information
Fridgeside deliberately asks about food restrictions and allergies, and stores them — a suggestion that ignores an allergy is worse than no suggestion. They're kept in your household data like everything else (in your iCloud, see above), and sent to the AI service when you ask for meal ideas.
The allergy warnings are an assist, not a safety system. Fridgeside checks suggestions against what you've told it and flags obvious conflicts, but it can miss things — a dish whose name doesn't mention the ingredient, for instance. Always check a meal yourself before cooking it.
Identifiers and limits
Each installation of Fridgeside creates a random identifier. It is sent with AI and weather requests so the relay can apply daily and monthly limits, and the relay keeps a count against it for up to 60 days. It isn't linked to your name, your Apple Account or anything else about you. The relay also uses the connecting IP address briefly, to stop floods of requests; it is not stored.
Weather
If you type a city for the board's weather, the app works out that city's coordinates on your phone, rounded to about a kilometer, and sends those through the relay to Apple's WeatherKit. The relay keeps the forecast for those rounded coordinates for 30 minutes so nearby boards share one lookup. The iPad never asks for its location, and there's no weather at all until you pick a place.
Voice
When someone taps the microphone to add to a list, speech is turned into text by Apple's speech recognition — on the device when it supports it, otherwise by Apple's servers, the same way Siri works. Fridgeside never receives the audio, and Apple's handling is covered by Apple's own privacy policy.
Crash reports and app health
Fridgeside uses Sentry to learn when the app crashes or freezes. Reports are technical — names and personal details are stripped — and each launch is counted under a random identifier Sentry creates, so we can see how stable the app is. Sentry works out a rough, city-level location from the connection; it describes your household's internet, not a person. No screenshots of the app are ever sent.
Children
Children don't have accounts, don't sign in, and aren't asked for anything. Their profiles are records a parent creates and edits, and tapping a chore on the wall doesn't identify anyone to us. If a parent includes a child's name, age or allergies in an AI feature, it is sent to Google as described above, only after AI features have been allowed, and we don't keep it. We don't knowingly collect personal information directly from children.
Who we work with
- Apple — iCloud and CloudKit for your household data, WeatherKit, speech recognition, and purchases.
- Google — the Gemini AI model behind the five AI features.
- Cloudflare — hosts our relay and this website.
- Sentry — crash and app-health reports.
What we don't do
- No advertising, and no advertising identifiers.
- No selling or sharing of personal information for advertising.
- No tracking you across other apps or websites.
- No account with us — there's nothing to sign up for.
Purchases are handled by Apple. We receive the anonymous, aggregated sales reporting Apple provides, which doesn't identify you.
Deleting everything
Deleting the app removes its data from the device. To remove the synced copy, turn Fridgeside off in Settings → your name → iCloud, or delete the app's iCloud data from the same place. Because it's your iCloud account, you're in control of it without asking us. The relay's usage counts expire on their own within 60 days, and turning off AI features stops any further requests.
Getting in touch
Questions about any of this: support.