Privacy
Privacy Policy
Last updated · October 15, 2026
Canopy AI is a garden-planning app. It needs a small amount of information about you and your garden to do its job, and nothing more. This page says exactly what that is, in plain words. It covers the Canopy AI Android app and this website.
The short version: we collect what you give us to run your garden, we use your location only to fetch weather for your garden, we never sell anything, we show no ads, and you can delete everything from inside the app at any time.
1. Who we are
Canopy AI is built and operated by an independent developer based in Minnesota. For anything about your data, write to support@getcanopyai.com.
2. What we collect and why
Your account
- Email address and password. Required to create an account. Your password is stored only as a one-way hash by our authentication provider; we never see it. Your email is used to sign you in, to send account emails (confirmation, password reset), and to answer you when you write to us.
- Display name. Optional. Shown to you inside the app. Nothing else reads it.
Your subscription
Pro is sold as a subscription through Google Play. Google takes the payment; we never see your card or bank details. Google tells our subscription service, RevenueCat, that a purchase, renewal, cancellation or refund happened, and RevenueCat tells our server. What we keep is the state of the subscription: which plan, whether it is a trial, when it renews or ends, and the account it belongs to. That record is what opens Pro on every device signed in to your account. It is kept with your account and deleted with it.
Your garden
Everything you enter to plan and run your garden is stored against your account so it survives a new phone and syncs between your devices: beds and their layouts, the plants and varieties you grow, planting and watering plans, your log entries and notes, your seed and supply inventory, soil test results, hardening-off schedules, feed and watering schedules, custom plants you add to the library, and your settings. This is the whole point of the app, and it is all yours. We read it only to run the service, to fix problems you report, and for the one purpose below.
Plants you add that our catalogue does not have
When you add a plant that Canopy’s catalogue does not hold, its name and the growing details Canopy researched for it may be reviewed, without your name, email or anything else that identifies you, to decide whether to add that plant to the shared catalogue for everyone. We look at how many gardeners added a plant, not who. Your plantings, notes, logs and anything else you wrote are never part of that review.
Your garden’s location
The app plans around your weather, so it needs to know roughly where the garden is. You choose how to tell it:
- type a postcode, town, or address;
- pick a point on a map; or
- use your phone’s location, if you grant the permission.
The result is stored as a pair of coordinates and, if you typed one, the postcode or address. Location is read only while the app is open and only when you ask for it. The app never tracks you in the background and never records where you go. The coordinates are sent to the weather service named below to fetch forecasts and rainfall for that spot. You can replace the location with a less precise one, or clear it, in Settings at any time; the app then falls back to the hardiness zone you enter.
Photos
- Plant photos for diagnosis. When you point the camera at a plant and ask for a diagnosis, that photo is sent through our server to an AI model provider to identify the plant and look for pests, disease, and deficiencies. We do not keep a copy of these photos.
- Photos of a plan or sketch. If you import a drawing of a bed, the picture is sent the same way so the app can read the layout. We do not keep a copy.
- Photos in your garden log. Photos you attach to a log entry are stored in your account’s private cloud storage so they sync and survive a new phone. They are deleted with your account.
The camera permission is optional. Without it the app works; it just cannot take pictures.
What you ask the AI
Some features (planning help, plant facts, the photo diagnosis above) send a request through our server to an AI model provider. A request carries the question and the garden details it needs, such as the plants involved, your hardiness zone, and the dates in play. We record that a request happened (your account id, whether it was text or a photo, and the time) so we can apply fair-use limits, and we keep a cache of text answers, keyed by the question alone and not by your account, for up to 30 days so the same question costs nothing to ask twice. We use the provider’s commercial API, under whose terms it does not use requests to train its models; its own handling of requests is described in its policy.
Crash reports
If the app crashes or hits an unexpected error, a report goes to our error-monitoring service so we can fix it. A report contains the technical details of the failure, the app version, the phone’s model and operating-system version, and a random installation identifier that groups reports from the same install. It does not contain your email, your garden data, or your location. We do not run performance tracing or usage analytics.
What we do not collect
- No advertising identifiers, no ad networks, no ads.
- No analytics or behavioural tracking, in the app or on this website.
- No contacts, messages, call logs, or files outside what you choose to attach.
- No background location.
- No card or bank details. Google Play handles payment; we receive only the subscription’s state.
3. Permissions the Android app asks for
| Permission | Why | Optional? |
|---|---|---|
| Internet | Sync, weather, plant photos from the library, AI requests. | Needed |
| Location (precise and approximate) | Set the garden’s position for weather, if you prefer that to typing a postcode. | Yes |
| Camera | Diagnose a plant, import a sketch, attach a photo to a log entry. | Yes |
| Notifications | Reminders you set, scheduled on the phone itself. No push server is involved. | Yes |
| NFC | Read and write plant labels on NFC tags. Tag ids stay on your phone. | Yes |
| Vibrate | Haptic feedback when a scan succeeds. | Needed (harmless) |
4. Services that process data for us
We do not sell or rent your data, and we do not share it with anyone for their own use. These companies process it on our behalf, each for one job, each under its own privacy terms:
| Service | Job | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Accounts, database, photo storage, and the server functions the app calls. | Everything in section 2 except crash reports. |
| Open-Meteo | Weather forecasts and rainfall history. | Your garden’s coordinates. No account identifier. |
| Anthropic | The AI model behind diagnosis, plant facts, and planning help. | The request text and, for a diagnosis, the photo. No account identifier. |
| Sentry | Crash and error reports. | The crash report described above. |
| Wikimedia Commons | Reference photos of plants in the library. | Ordinary image requests from your phone, like any web page. |
| Google Play services | Reads the phone’s location when you tap “use my location”. | Handled on the phone by Android. |
| Google Play Billing | Sells and renews the Pro subscription. | Your payment, under Google’s own terms. We receive the purchase receipt, never the payment details. |
| RevenueCat | Checks the purchase receipt with Google and keeps the subscription’s state current. | The receipt, your account identifier, and the phone’s app-install identifier. No email, no garden data. |
| Vercel | Hosts this website. | Standard web-server request logs for visits to the site. |
Integrations you switch on yourself
A few features connect to services under your accounts, using keys or links you paste in. They are off until you set them up, and you can clear them in Settings:
- Mapbox (your own access token): geocodes the address you type and draws a satellite backdrop under your beds. Mapbox receives the address or coordinates.
- Ambient Weather (your own API keys): reads your personal weather station instead of the public forecast.
- Google Sheets and Drive (your own Apps Script link and sheet or folder id): exports your records to your own Google account. Google receives whatever you choose to export.
Those keys and links are stored in your settings so they follow you to a new phone, and are deleted with your account.
5. Where your data lives and how it is protected
Data moves between your phone and our servers over encrypted connections (TLS). In the database, every row is tagged with your account id and protected by row-level rules so only your signed-in session can read or write it. Your garden data also lives in a local database on your phone so the app works offline; uninstalling the app removes that local copy.
Our providers run in data centres that may be in the United States or other countries. By using the app you agree to your data being processed there.
6. How long we keep it
- Your account and garden data: until you delete your account.
- AI request records (that a request happened): kept with your account, deleted with it.
- Your subscription’s state: kept with your account, deleted with it. Google and RevenueCat keep their own purchase records under their own terms.
- Cached AI text answers: up to 30 days, and not linked to you.
- Crash reports: kept by the error-monitoring service for a limited time, then dropped. They cannot be linked back to your account.
- Website waitlist emails (the waitlist closed in October 2026): until launch, when we write to you once, or until you ask to be removed.
7. Deleting your data
Open the app, go to Settings, tap Delete account (it sits under your name, beside Log out), and confirm. This removes your garden data, your photos, your settings, your AI request records, and the account itself from our servers, immediately and permanently. The app then signs you out and clears the copy on your phone.
If you can no longer sign in, email support@getcanopyai.com from the address on the account and we will do it for you within 30 days. Full steps are on the account deletion page.
8. Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us what we hold about you, ask for a copy, correct it, or have it deleted. Most of this you can do yourself inside the app; for the rest, email us. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or a state with a privacy law such as California, you have those rights by statute as well, including the right to complain to your local data-protection authority. We do not discriminate against anyone for exercising them.
9. Children
Canopy AI is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will delete it.
10. This website
This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics. It no longer collects email addresses. If you joined its waitlist before it closed in October 2026, your address is kept only so we can tell you when the app launches. Write to us at any time to be removed.
11. Changes
If we change what we collect or how we use it, we will update this page, change the date at the top, and, for anything significant, tell you inside the app before it takes effect.