Privacy Policy

Tugboat is made and run by Justin Hobbs, an individual developer. Questions about this policy or your data can go to jjhobbs89@gmail.com.

Your account: your name, email address, and a password (kept only as a one-way hash, so nobody, including us, can read it). We use your email address to sign you in and to send a one-time link that confirms the address is yours. We do not send marketing email.

Your household: the household name and time zone, invite codes, and what your family adds: profiles (names, colors, birthdays, and optional photos), birthdays and anniversaries, chores, routines and when each step was done and by whom, snacks, meals and recipes (including recipes you import from a web address or a Crouton file), grocery items (unless you use Reminders), notes, and nap and sleep logs. Parents may enter details about children, such as a name, a birthday, and sleep times.

Photos: you choose a photo with the system photo picker, so Tugboat sees only the photos you pick. Photos for profiles, the family, and recipes are stored with our storage provider. Each has a long web address that cannot be guessed, but anyone who has the exact address can open it, so do not add photos you would not want shared.

Technical data: a session that keeps you signed in (stored in the iOS Keychain on your device), and basic request details, including your IP address, used briefly for security and to limit repeated attempts. Our hosting provider also keeps ordinary server logs.

Calendars: Tugboat reads events from the calendars on your iPhone or iPad after you allow access. They are shown on your device and are not sent to our servers. We never receive your Apple, Google, or other calendar sign-in details.

Reminders: if you allow access and choose a list, grocery items you add are written to that list in the Reminders app on your device (and shared by Apple if the list is shared), not stored on our servers. Without Reminders access, items are kept in Tugboat's own grocery list on our servers.

Notifications: reminders for routines, chores, naps, and birthdays are scheduled on your device. Tugboat does not use a push notification server.

A saved copy: so the app opens without a connection, it keeps a protected copy of your household information on the device. It is left out of device backups.

If you allow location access, Tugboat uses your device's approximate location to ask Apple Weather for local conditions. The location goes to Apple for that request; it is not sent to our servers and we do not store it. Weather is provided by Apple Weather; see Apple's data sources.

We use a few providers to run the service, and each handles only what its job needs: Vercel hosts the app and stores photos, Turso hosts the database, Resend delivers the confirmation emails, and Apple provides weather. We do not sell personal information, do not show advertising, and do not track you across other apps or websites. There are no analytics or advertising tools in Tugboat.

Everyone in a household can see that household's information. Parents and owners can change it and manage members; guests can view it and log activity such as naps and check-offs. Invite codes control who can join, so keep them private. Your household's information is never shown to other households.

Your information is kept while you use Tugboat. You can delete recipes, meals, chores, routines, notes, and profiles in the app, and a photo is removed from storage when you replace it, remove it, or delete what it belongs to. Owners and parents can save a copy of their household information from Settings.

You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Account in the app. If you are the only member of a household, this permanently deletes the household and everything in it, including its photos. If others share the household, you leave it and your profile is removed; the household's only owner must first make another member an owner.

Tugboat is for parents and guardians. Children appear only as profiles that a parent creates and do not have accounts. We do not knowingly collect information directly from children. A parent can delete a child's profile and logs at any time, or ask us to at the address below.

If we change what we collect or how we use it, we will update this page and its date.

Write to jjhobbs89@gmail.com with any question about your information or to ask us to delete it.