Privacy policy
What Umma keeps, what it never keeps, and who else sees your data.
The short version
- Umma has two tiers. On Free, your voice is handled on your iPhone and no server AI is used. On Paid, your voice and AI requests are processed on our servers.
- On Paid, audio is sent only while you’re speaking, is processed in memory, and is never stored.
- Photos of your pantry, and photos you take while cooking, are analysed in memory and never stored.
- Your account, pantry, recipes, cooking sessions and creator videos are kept until you delete them.
- AI features use Google Gemini on a paid plan, which doesn’t use your data to train its models.
- We don’t sell your data or use it for advertising.
Free and Paid
Free
Voice on your iPhone- Apple’s speech recognition turns your speech into text on your iPhone. You see the text before it’s sent.
- Steps and answers are read aloud by your phone’s own voice.
- No audio, photo or question goes to an AI model.
Paid
Voice and AI on our servers- Your iPhone removes the coach’s own voice from the microphone signal (echo cancellation), then sends audio to our server only while it detects you speaking.
- Our server turns the audio into text and replies with a spoken voice. Audio is processed in memory and never written to storage. The text of each turn is kept with your cooking session, as on Free.
- Coach answers, Look, pantry photo scan and recipe drafting from video are sent to Google Gemini (see below).
- You can switch voice to your iPhone in Settings and keep the rest of Paid.
During the beta, every tester is on Paid at no cost. Server voice arrives with voice mode, which is still in development; until it ships, voice in the beta stays on your iPhone on both tiers. Before server voice is switched on, we’ll update this policy to name the speech provider that processes the audio on our behalf.
Signing in
You sign in with Apple. Apple shares a stable account identifier with us and, if you allow it, your email address. Apple lets you hide your real address behind a private relay address. We never see your Apple password.
What we store
These are stored on our servers so the app works across launches, and kept until you delete them:
- Your account: the Apple identifier, your email if you shared it, the display name you choose, and your tier.
- Your pantry: the ingredients you confirm, plus any allergies and preferences you enter.
- Recipes: recipes you save, and recipes you write. A recipe you publish is public, shown with your display name.
- Cooking sessions: which recipe version you cooked, your current step, the swaps you approved, timers, notes, and the questions you typed or spoke (as text).
- Creator videos and clips: a cooking video you upload, and the step clips made from it, are kept until you delete them. You can delete a video from its recipe at any time.
What we don’t store
- Voice audio. On Free it never leaves your iPhone. On Paid it’s processed in memory and discarded.
- Pantry and cooking photos. When you take a photo to add ingredients or to ask about a step, it’s sent over an encrypted connection, held in memory while it’s analysed, then discarded. It isn’t written to our storage or database.
- Background recording. The camera and microphone only run when you start them, and the app shows when they’re on.
AI processing by Google Gemini
On Paid, to suggest ingredients from a photo, answer cooking questions, and draft recipes from creator videos, Umma sends the relevant photo, text or video to the Google Gemini API, together with the recipe step it’s about. We use Gemini’s paid tier, under which Google does not use your prompts or responses to improve its models. Google may keep requests for a limited time to detect abuse, as described in the Gemini API terms.
AI answers are suggestions. Umma never decides from a photo whether food is cooked or safe to eat.
Where your data lives
Our servers run on Fly.io, with the database on Neon and media files in Tigris object storage. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and media is only reachable through short-lived signed links. Our operational logs record technical details such as request times and error codes. They never contain photos, audio or the content of your requests.
Who else sees your data
- Other people see only what you publish: your recipes, their clips, and your display name.
- The service providers above process data on our behalf to run Umma.
- Apple’s TestFlight may send us crash reports and any feedback you choose to submit, under Apple’s own terms.
We don’t sell personal data, share it with advertisers, or use third-party advertising or tracking tools.
Deleting your data
- Your whole account: open Profile in the app and delete your account. This deletes your account, pantry, saved and authored recipes, cooking sessions, videos and clips, and disconnects Sign in with Apple.
- One video: delete it from the creator screen of its recipe.
- Pantry items: edit or remove them in Pantry at any time.
If you can’t reach the app, email us and we’ll delete your account for you.
Children
Umma isn’t directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their data. If you think a child has an account, email us and we’ll delete it.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, we’ll update this page and its effective date. Significant changes will also be announced in the app.
Contact
Privacy questions and deletion requests: