Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Best Before helps you track when the things you own expire. This policy explains what data the app handles, where it goes, and what you can control.

1. Your items: on your device and in your iCloud

The items you add — names, expiry dates, period-after-opening (PAO) information and notes — are stored on your device. If iCloud is turned on for your Apple Account, Best Before also keeps them in your private iCloud database (Apple’s CloudKit), so the same list appears on every device signed in to that account. That database belongs to your Apple Account, not to us: we cannot read it, and nothing in it reaches our servers. Apple’s iCloud terms apply to it. There is no Best Before account and no sign-up. Adding an item sends nothing to us.

You control syncing in iOS Settings: turn iCloud off for Best Before under your Apple Account → iCloud, and the app keeps working with the copy on your device. Deleting an item in the app removes it from your iCloud too.

Backups are yours. If you export a backup, the app creates a .bestbefore file (JSON inside) and hands it to you. Where it goes next — another app, a cloud drive, a message — is your choice. Opening a .bestbefore file on another device offers to import it, and nothing is imported until you confirm. We never receive it. Nothing in the export identifies you.

2. Camera frames sent for product recognition

When you use the camera to recognise a product, a single photo (a JPEG frame) is sent to our recognition server. The server returns a suggested product name. This is the only time an image leaves your device. It happens only when you point the camera at a product to recognise it.

How that server works:

  • The image is never written to disk and never stored. It stays in memory for the duration of the request. Once the name is returned, it is discarded.
  • The request does not identify you. The server keeps a short technical log per request: a request identifier, HTTP status, timing, token counts, cost and the prompt version. That log contains no product names and no images.
  • The recognised name fills in the item’s name field. The server does not keep it.

Expiry dates are always read on your device by the app’s own date parser. The recognition server only helps with the product name.

3. Analytics and crash reporting

To see how the app is used and to fix crashes, Best Before uses two services. Both are hosted in the European Union:

  • PostHog (EU) — product-usage events. For example: opening the app, adding or deleting an item, finishing a scan, changing a setting.
  • Sentry (EU) — crash and diagnostic reports.

You can turn this off. Settings has an Analytics toggle. It is on by default. Switching it off stops analytics and crash reporting.

What these events contain, and what they never contain. Analytics events carry only simple values and fixed choices. For example: whether an item was added manually or by scan, whether it had PAO information, how many days before or after expiry it was deleted, or which setting was changed. They never include your item names, notes, dates or any text recognised from the camera. A scan event records only the outcome of name recognition (filled, empty, failed or not requested). Never the name itself.

In Apple’s App Privacy terms this is Usage Data (Product Interaction and Other Usage Data) for PostHog and Diagnostics (Crash, Performance and Diagnostic data) for Sentry. This data is not linked to your identity and is not used to track you across other companies’ apps or websites.

4. Notifications

Reminders are scheduled and delivered on your device. Scheduling a reminder sends your item data nowhere.

5. Children

Best Before is a general-audience utility. It is not directed at children.

6. Data retention and jurisdiction

Analytics and crash data are processed on EU-based infrastructure. Product-usage events in PostHog are kept for 12 months. Crash and diagnostic reports in Sentry are kept for 3 months. After that they are deleted.

Items synced to iCloud are stored by Apple under your Apple Account for as long as you keep them there. We hold no copy and set no retention period of our own.

7. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the new version is posted at the same address with a new “Last updated” date.

8. Contact

Questions about privacy: support@bestb4.app.