Privacy Policy
houseOS (“we”, “us”) is built for shared homes. This policy explains what information the app uses, why, and how it stays under your control.
Information we process
Depending on how you use houseOS, we may process:
- Account & identity. Your iCloud account’s CloudKit user identifier and the display name you choose when you join a house.
- House content. House name and address, member list, post-its, rotas, bills, payment details you enter, and photos or depth maps you attach to your house.
- Presence (optional). If you turn on presence sharing, approximate location is used only to show whether you appear “in” at the house. You can turn this off anytime in Settings.
- Weather. Weather for the house address is fetched via Apple WeatherKit for the home screen.
Where data lives
House data is stored in iCloud via CloudKit in a private database zone shared with your housemates. We do not operate a separate application server that stores your house content.
What we don’t do
We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your house content for advertising. We do not track you across other companies’ apps or websites.
Permissions
houseOS may request access to location (for optional presence and directions home), camera and photos (for your house image), and notifications (for reminders you enable). Denying a permission limits only the related feature.
Data recipients & protection
Your house content is stored and processed by Apple (iCloud / CloudKit) and, for weather, Apple WeatherKit. Apple acts under its own privacy commitments and provides protection for your data equivalent to this policy, including encryption in transit and at rest. See Apple’s Privacy Policy and Apple Platform Security. We do not share your data with any other third parties.
Deleting your account & data
You can delete your account at any time inside the app: open Settings → Delete Account and confirm. This immediately and permanently deletes your profile, your presence data, and your contributions (post-its, rota assignments, bill records and uploaded files) from the house. If you own the house, the entire house and all of its shared content are deleted for every member. Deletion takes effect immediately in the app; iCloud completes removal from its servers and backups within the timeframes described in Apple’s iCloud terms (typically up to 30 days). Locally cached data is removed from your device when the account is deleted or the app is uninstalled.
Retention
We keep house content only for as long as you keep it in the app. Content you delete (a post-it, bill, file, or your whole account) is removed from CloudKit right away and is not retained by us anywhere else — we operate no separate servers or analytics stores. If you simply leave a house, content you previously shared may remain visible to the remaining members until they delete it; deleting your account removes your contributions as described above.
Withdrawing consent
Wherever processing is based on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time: turn off presence sharing in Settings, revoke location, camera, photo, or notification permissions in iOS Settings, leave a house to stop sharing with that group, or delete your account to end all processing. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing before the withdrawal. You can also contact us via support to exercise any data-protection rights available to you (access, correction, deletion, objection).
Sharing within your house
Content you add to a house is visible to other members of that house through iCloud sharing. Leave a house or ask an admin to remove you to stop further access from that group.
Children
houseOS is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
Changes
We may update this policy as the product evolves. The “Last updated” date at the top will change when we do. Continued use after an update means you accept the revised policy.
Contact
Questions about privacy: house-os.app/support.