Mealkin

Privacy Policy

Document	Privacy Policy
Provider	Galix Studios Pty Ltd (ABN 22 703 560 141)
Application	Mealkin mobile application
Version	1.2
Last updated	8 November 2026
Status	Current

Key points

Mealkin keeps the information you enter, including allergies and other health information, on your device. We do not run accounts or servers that hold it, and we cannot see it.
We do not use advertising, analytics or tracking, and we do not sell or share personal information.
Information leaves your device only when you ask: a barcode number goes to Open Food Facts when you look up a product, and a web page is downloaded when you import a recipe from it.
You can view, change, export or delete your information at any time in the App.

1.About this Policy
2.Definitions
3.Information stored on your Device
4.Information that leaves your Device
5.Information we may receive
6.Device permissions
7.Cookies, analytics, advertising and tracking
8.Automated checks
9.Children
10.Security and retention
11.Access, correction and deletion
12.Overseas disclosure
13.Your rights outside Australia
14.Complaints
15.Changes to this Policy
16.Contact us

1.About this Policy

1.1

This Privacy Policy explains how Galix Studios Pty Ltd, ABN 22 703 560 141, a company based in Queensland, Australia (“we”, “us”, “our”) handles personal information in connection with the Mealkin mobile application and its related web pages (the “App”).

1.2

We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). Where they apply to you, we also respect the requirements of other privacy laws, including the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulations and the privacy laws of New Zealand and the United States.

1.3

The App is designed so that the information you enter stays on your device. This Policy explains that design, the limited ways information can leave your device, what we may receive, and your choices.

2.Definitions

2.1

In this Policy:

“Device” means the phone or tablet on which you use the App.

“Household Data” means the information you enter into or create in the App, as described in clause 3.1.

“Open Food Facts” means the open food-product database at openfoodfacts.org, operated by Open Food Facts, a non-profit association based in France.

“Privacy Act” means the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

2.2

The expressions personal information, sensitive information and health information have the meanings given in the Privacy Act.

3.Information stored on your Device

3.1

The App stores the following Household Data in the App’s private storage on your Device:

(a)
the names, and any picture or colour you choose, of the people you plan for, including children;
(b)
their allergies, intolerances, diets, foods they dislike, portion sizes and related settings;
(c)
foods they love, and how much they eat (usual, eating more or eating less, and any daily energy figure you set for them). These are kept only on your Device, and travel in backups and household updates in the same way as the rest of your household’s details. The App never asks for anyone’s weight, height or age;
(d)
guests you add to a meal, and guests you save to use again: a name and any allergies, intolerances and diets you enter for them. This is stored only on your Device, and travels in backups and household updates in the same way as your household’s own details. Only record a guest’s details with their agreement;
(e)
your meal plans, the recipes you keep, import or write, shopping lists, the prices you enter and the shops you choose for items, any weekly food budget you set, pantry items with their amounts and use-by dates;
(f)
the products you have checked;
(g)
your settings; and
(h)
a record of the version of our Terms you agreed to, and when.

3.2

Some of this is sensitive information. Allergies, intolerances and coeliac disease are health information, and some diets, such as halal or kosher-style, may indicate religious beliefs. This information is used only on your Device, to check meals and products for the people you plan for.

3.3

Household Data stays in the App’s private storage on your Device. It is not sent to us, and we have no way to see, recover or delete it.

3.4

If your Device is backed up (for example to iCloud or another backup service), the backup may include Household Data. Backups are controlled by you and your backup provider.

3.5

Home-screen widgets: if you add a Mealkin widget, the App copies the names of the coming week’s meals and the first items on your shopping list into storage on your Device that the widget can read, and they show on your home screen or lock screen, where anyone holding your Device may see them. Widgets show no names of people, allergies or notes. Remove the widget to stop this.

4.Information that leaves your Device

4.1

Information leaves your Device only when you take one of these actions:

(a)
Product lookups: when you scan or type a barcode, the App sends that barcode number, with the App’s name and version and our contact email (which Open Food Facts asks every app to send), to Open Food Facts in France to retrieve the product’s details and photograph. No Household Data is sent. Like any website, Open Food Facts receives your Device’s IP address; its privacy policy says it keeps server logs, which include IP addresses, for three years for security, technical analysis and measuring popularity (openfoodfacts.org/privacy). The App explains this before your first lookup.
(b)
Recipe import: when you import a recipe from a web address, your Device downloads that page from the website concerned, which receives your IP address as with any visit.
(c)
Sharing, printing, backups and household updates: when you share, copy, print or save as a PDF a meal plan, list, food card or recipe, or share a backup or household update (which brings another phone in your household up to date), it goes only where you send it, for example by message, AirDrop or to a printer you choose. The printed page is made on your Device. Backups and household updates contain Household Data, including the people you plan for (and any guests on your meals) and their allergies, as plain text. No Mealkin server is involved: we never receive them.
(d)
Links and supermarket searches: links to other websites, and the supermarket searches you open from your shopping list (which carry only the item’s name, such as “basmati rice”), open in your browser or the supermarket’s app, where their own terms and privacy policies apply.
(e)
Purchases: if you buy a paid feature, the purchase is processed by Apple or another app store under its own privacy policy. We do not receive your payment card details.

4.2

We do not sell, rent or trade personal information, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not use it to make decisions about you.

4.3

Because Open Food Facts keeps its server logs, we describe product lookups in the Apple App Store privacy label and the Google Play Data safety form as “search history”: not linked to you, not used for tracking or advertising, and used only to find the product you asked about. We do not receive or keep these lookups ourselves. You can check a product without a lookup by pasting its ingredient list.

5.Information we may receive

5.1

Correspondence: if you email us, we receive your email address, any name you include and your message. We use them only to reply and deal with any follow-up, and we delete them within 12 months after the matter is closed, unless the law requires us to keep them longer. Please do not include health or religious details, or backup files, unless they are needed. If you choose to include them, we use them only to reply to you and then delete them. Our email service provider may store messages on servers outside Australia, including in the United States.

5.2

App store statistics: Apple provides developers with aggregated, de-identified statistics, such as numbers of downloads and, from people who have chosen in their device settings to share analytics with app developers, crash reports and usage statistics. These do not identify you.

5.3

Other than as described in this clause 5, we do not collect personal information.

6.Device permissions

6.1

Camera: the App uses the camera only while the scanner is open, to read a product barcode, or when you tap Take a photo, to read the words of a recipe. No video is recorded. A recipe photo is read on your Device and then deleted: it is not uploaded, sent or kept. You can turn off camera access at any time in your Device settings and still type a barcode, paste a label or type a recipe.

6.2

Photos: when you tap Choose a photo, your Device’s photo picker lets the App open only the one photo you pick. The App reads the recipe’s words in it on your Device, using your Device’s own text recognition, and then deletes its copy. The photo is not uploaded, sent or kept, and the App does not ask for access to your photo library.

6.3

Face ID: only if you turn on the optional lock in Settings, the App asks your Device to check that it is you, with Face ID, your fingerprint or your Device passcode. Your Device does the check and tells the App only whether it passed. Mealkin never receives or keeps any face or fingerprint data. If the lock is off, the App never asks for Face ID.

6.4

Notifications: the App asks your Device to allow notifications only when you start a cooking timer for the first time, or turn on thaw reminders in Settings, and it explains why first. They are local notifications made and scheduled on your Device: nothing is sent to us or to anyone else, the App does not use push notifications and never asks your Device for a push token. The words never name a person or an allergy, because a notification can be read on a locked screen: a timer says only “Timer done: step 3”, and a thaw reminder (off unless you turn it on) says only what to take out, such as “Take the chicken out to thaw for tomorrow’s dinner”. You can turn notifications off at any time in your Device settings, and the App works the same without them.

6.5

Sample family: if you choose “Look around with a sample family”, the App makes four invented people (each named “Sample: ...”) and a planned week on your Device so you can see how it works. They are labelled wherever they show, they are not anyone’s real details, the App will not send them in a backup or a household update, and “Start my own household” removes them.

6.6

Reviews: after you have used the App for a while, it may rarely ask your Device to show its own rating dialog (at most a few times, and never after a problem). Any review is between you and the app store. The App keeps a few counters on your Device (meals marked cooked, weeks planned, when the dialog was last offered) only to decide when to offer it, and they are not in backups.

6.7

The App does not ask for access to your location, contacts, photo library, microphone or calendar.

7.Cookies, analytics, advertising and tracking

7.1

The App does not use cookies, advertising identifiers, third-party analytics, crash-reporting or session-recording services or any other tracking technology, it contains no third-party software development kit that collects data, and it does not show advertising.

7.2

The web pages on which we publish this Policy do not set cookies or use tracking.

8.Automated checks

8.1

The App checks recipes and products against the foods you record, on your Device, and shows the results to you. These checks help you make your own choices: they are not decisions about you, and we do not see them. They can be wrong, as explained in our Health and Allergy Notice.

9.Children

9.1

The App is intended for adults who plan meals for a household, and for people aged 13 to 17 whose parent or guardian has agreed to the Terms of Use for them. It is not directed at children under 13. A parent or guardian may record a child’s details, such as a name, allergies and portion size, so that meals can be checked for the child. Those details stay on the parent’s or guardian’s Device as described in clause 3.

9.2

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children, including children under 13. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

10.Security and retention

10.1

Household Data is held in the App’s private storage on your Device and is protected by your Device’s security, including your passcode. Please keep your Device secure and up to date.

10.2

Backups you create are plain text. Store and share them with care.

10.3

So that a damaged save cannot lose your plans, the App also keeps an automatic copy of your Household Data in its private storage on your Device, at most once a day, for the last three days. These copies never leave your Device, and deleting all your data removes them. If you set a household code (six words) to sign updates between your household’s phones, it stays on your Device, is not included in backups or updates, and is used only to check that an update came from a phone that knows the same code.

10.4

Household Data stays on your Device until you delete it under clause 11 or delete the App. We keep correspondence only as described in clause 5.1.

10.5

If a data breach affects personal information we hold, we will tell the people affected and the relevant regulators where the law requires.

11.Access, correction and deletion

11.1

You can view, correct and export all Household Data in the App, and delete all of it at any time with Settings > Delete all my data, or by deleting the App. Deletion cannot be undone.

11.2

Because we do not hold Household Data, we cannot access, correct or delete it for you. You can ask us for access to, correction of or deletion of any personal information we do hold about you, such as correspondence. We will respond within 30 days and will not charge you for making a request.

12.Overseas disclosure

12.1

We do not disclose personal information to anyone overseas. When you use features that contact Open Food Facts (France), a website you import from or an app store, your Device communicates with them directly and their privacy policies apply. Our email service provider may store correspondence outside Australia, as noted in clause 5.1.

13.Your rights outside Australia

13.1

United Kingdom and European Union: we are the controller of the limited personal information described in clause 5. We handle correspondence on the basis of our legitimate interest in responding to you, and any health details you choose to include on the basis of your explicit consent, which you can withdraw at any time. You have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and data portability. You can complain to us (we will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days) and to the data protection authority where you live; in the United Kingdom, that is the Information Commission (ico.org.uk). We do not process Household Data, which stays on your Device.

13.2

New Zealand: our privacy officer is Galix Studios Pty Ltd. You can ask for access to and correction of personal information we hold about you, and you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (privacy.org.nz).

13.3

Canada: you can ask for access to personal information we hold about you, and you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca).

13.4

United States: we do not sell or share personal information, use it for targeted advertising or use it to train artificial intelligence models, as those terms are used in US state privacy laws. Because the App does not track you across apps or websites, it does not respond differently to “Do Not Track” or Global Privacy Control signals.

13.5

If you live in Washington State, Nevada or another place with consumer health data laws, please also read our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy.

13.6

If we decline a request you make under this clause, you can appeal by replying to our decision. We will respond to an appeal within 60 days. If you are in the United States and remain unsatisfied, you can contact the Attorney General of your state.

14.Complaints

14.1

If you have a concern about how we handle personal information, please contact us first. We will investigate and respond within 30 days.

14.2

If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au, 1300 363 992, GPO Box 5288, Sydney NSW 2001) or, if you live outside Australia, to the privacy regulator where you live.

15.Changes to this Policy

15.1

We may update this Policy to reflect changes to the App or the law. We will publish the updated Policy in the App with a new version number and date. If a change materially affects how personal information is handled, we will tell you in the App before it takes effect.

16.Contact us

16.1

Privacy officer: Galix Studios Pty Ltd, ABN 22 703 560 141, Queensland, Australia. Email: [email protected].

16.2

Please do not send health details by email unless they are needed to deal with your request.