Privacy

The short version

SowSage is designed to work offline, on your phone. Your garden, your plants, your photos, and your journal entries all live in a local database on your device. We don't operate a cloud account system, we don't sync your garden to a server, and we don't sell or share your data.

What the app stores on your device

The mobile app keeps your garden data — beds, plants, tasks, completed-task history, journal entries, and photos — in a local SQLite database and the device's photo storage. This data stays on your phone unless you choose to back it up yourself through your device's normal backup system (e.g. Google Drive or iCloud), which is outside SowSage's control.

Permissions the app may request

Location

Used to fetch local weather and frost-date information so SowSage can skip a watering reminder after rain or warn you before a frost. Your location is sent to a weather provider to retrieve the forecast and is not retained by SowSage beyond the duration of the lookup.

Camera

Used when you choose to capture a photo for a journal entry. Photos are saved into your device's photo storage and referenced by your local journal — they are not uploaded anywhere by SowSage.

Photo library

Used when you choose to attach an existing photo to a journal entry. SowSage only reads the photos you explicitly pick.

Microphone

Declared so that future video journal entries can include sound. The current build does not actively record audio.

What this website collects

If you submit your email address to the launch waitlist on this site, that email is stored with Resend (our email provider) so we can send you one notification when SowSage is available on the Play Store. We do not add you to any newsletter. You can ask to be removed at any time by emailing hello@sowsage.com.

The site does not currently run any client-side analytics or tracking scripts. Standard server access logs are retained briefly by AWS Amplify Hosting for diagnostics.

The almanac and blog pages display advertisements served by Google AdSense. Google and its partners may use cookies (or similar device identifiers) to serve ads based on your prior visits to this site or other sites. You can opt out of personalized advertising at any time at google.com/settings/ads, and you can read more about how Google uses information from sites that use its services at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. SowSage does not receive any of the personal data Google may collect through these ads.

The almanac page uses your IP address to look up an approximate location (city / ZIP) so the page can show frost forecasts, day length, and your USDA hardiness zone tailored to your area. The lookup is performed server-side by a third-party IP geolocation service (ipapi.co) per request. Your IP is not stored by SowSage. You can override the auto-detected location at any time using the ZIP-code form at the bottom of the almanac page.

Third parties

SowSage uses a third-party weather API (Open-Meteo) to retrieve forecasts based on the coordinates the app or site has for you. The site uses Resend for email, ipapi.co for IP-based geolocation on the almanac page, phzmapi.org for USDA hardiness zone lookup, Google AdSense for advertising on the almanac and blog pages, and AWS Amplify for hosting. Those providers may process the data described above as described in their own privacy policies.

Changes

If we change how SowSage handles data, we'll update this page and the "Last updated" date above. Material changes will be announced in the app.

Contact

Questions? Email hello@sowsage.com.