Hobbyholic is built privacy-first. Here's exactly how your data is handled — in plain English.
Hobbyholic has no analytics and no third-party tracking SDKs. Your picks, your tracked hobbies, your mood entries and your answers stay on your device, and so do the journal entries you write — unless you choose to publish one.
Three things can leave your device, all optional and none on by default. A handle: signing in and choosing one publishes that handle and three summary numbers — sessions logged, current streak, achievements earned — so other people using the app can find and follow you. A photo: if you choose to share a picture of a session, it is checked by an automated service and then by a person if there is any doubt, and published where anyone who knows your handle can see it. A journal entry: if you choose to publish one, the words you wrote are checked the same way and published next to your handle. Nothing else about you is published, and none of it happens unless you ask for it.
Hobbyholic stores only what it needs to work, and it stores it locally on your device:
All of this lives on your device and is removed if you delete the app. The things that can leave it are the optional profile, a photo you choose to share, and the words of a journal entry you choose to publish — all described below. Apart from the moderation service that checks what is shared or published, we run no server of our own.
The kid-hobby feature is designed for a parent or guardian, not the child. It never asks for a name, a photo, a birthday, or anything that identifies your child. It only records the category answers you tap — an age band (for example "6–7") and broad interest categories — and it keeps those answers on your device to build suggestions.
Hobbyholic has an optional account. You never need one: every other feature works signed out, and nothing here happens until you choose a handle.
Signing in with Apple. The app asks Apple for no personal information at all — not your name, not your email address, not even a private relay address. Apple returns an identifier that is meaningless outside this app. It is kept in your device's Keychain and is never uploaded.
Choosing a handle. This is the moment data starts leaving your device. It creates a profile record in a public database hosted by Apple's CloudKit, in a container we control. That record holds your handle and nothing else about you.
What becomes visible. Once you have a handle, the app publishes three numbers as you use it: how many sessions you have logged in total, your current daily streak, and how many achievements you have earned. That is the complete list of what a handle publishes on its own. Sharing a photo is a separate choice that publishes more, and Photos below says exactly what.
Your mood entries, your missions, your check-ins and your kid-mode answers never leave your device, handle or no handle. Two things this policy once listed alongside them are now exceptions. Both are choices you make one item at a time, and neither is on by default:
We would rather say plainly that this policy changed than quietly reword a promise we used to make.
Who can see it. The database is public. Anyone using Hobbyholic can search a handle and see that handle and its three numbers — this is not limited to people who follow you. Treat your handle as a public name, and don't choose one you wouldn't want attached to the app.
Who can find you. Settings → Account → Who can find you has two settings, and new profiles start on Private. Private means you are found by your exact handle or by a link you send. Public means your handle can also be listed to someone browsing part of a handle. Be clear about what this is: it controls what the app lists, not what the database allows. The records are in a public database and stay readable either way. It is a listing choice, not a lock.
Following, reporting and blocking. Following someone stores a public record saying you follow them. Reporting a handle stores your profile id, theirs, their handle and the reason you chose; a person reads these and nothing is automated. Blocking someone is kept only on your own device — nothing about it is published, the person blocked is not told, and it does not follow you to a new phone.
Deleting it. Settings → Account → Delete my profile removes your handle, your three numbers and every record of who you follow, and frees the handle for someone else. It cannot remove records other people created, so if somebody follows you their record of that stays — it stops resolving once your profile is gone, and shows them nothing. Signing out instead just forgets your handle on that device. Deleting the app does not on its own remove a published profile: delete the profile first, or email us and we will remove it within 30 days.
Attaching a photo to a session and sharing it are two separate actions, and the first one publishes nothing.
Attaching. A photo you attach to a session is stored inside the app on your device. We never see it, and deleting the app removes it.
What happens before it is sent. If you choose to share it, the app re-encodes the picture at a smaller size. That re-encoding is what removes the metadata: the file that leaves your phone is built from the pixels alone, so where the photo was taken, the device that took it and when do not travel with it. Without that, a photo of a hobby done at home would carry your address into a public database.
Checking. The photo goes to a holding area only you and we can read, and is checked before anyone else can see it. Your phone may run Apple's own on-device check first — a courtesy that often does not run at all. The image is then sent to Sightengine, an automated moderation service, which classifies it. If that is clear, the photo is published; if it is uncertain, a person looks at it; if it is not clear, it is refused and never published.
The hobby tag. When you share a photo, the app offers to show it to anyone browsing the hobby you logged it against — "Also show this photo to anyone browsing Bread baking" — and the toggle starts on. If you leave it on, that hobby name is published with the photo and your handle appears in a "What others shared" list on that hobby's page. Turn it off and no hobby name is sent. There is no caption, title or free text of any kind on a photo — the tag is a hobby from the app's own list and nothing else.
One photo at a time. Sharing another replaces the one before it.
If a photo is refused, we store a small record: a reference to your profile, the word describing the outcome, and the time. Not the image, and not your handle. You are told in the app and can write to us if you think it was wrong.
Where a published photo can be seen. In the same public database as your handle — anyone who has your profile link or knows your handle can see it. It is not limited to followers, and Who can find you does not change that. Private means you are not listed to people browsing, not that a shared photo becomes unreadable. To make a photo unreadable, take it down.
Taking a photo down is under the session you shared it from. It is a request rather than an instant delete: a service of ours removes the published copy, usually within a few minutes. Deleting the photo, the session, or your profile does the same.
Writing an entry and publishing one are two separate actions, and the first one publishes nothing.
Writing. Everything you write in a hobby's journal is stored inside the app on your device. We never see it, and deleting the app removes it.
Nothing you wrote before this existed has been published. Publishing is per entry and off by default. Entries written before the option existed are private and stay private, with nothing for you to switch off.
Publishing one. If you choose to publish an entry, the words go to a holding area only you and we can read, and are checked before anyone else can see them. The text is sent to Sightengine, an automated moderation service, which classifies it. If that is clear, the entry is published; if it is uncertain, a person reads it; if it is not clear, it is refused and never published. We send the words and the hobby name the entry was written under — not your handle, not your profile id, nothing else identifying you.
A person may read what you wrote. This is worth saying plainly rather than leaving you to work it out: when the automated check is not confident, somebody at Pera Research reads the entry in order to decide. That is the same arrangement as for photos. Entries you never publish are never read by anyone.
Your photo does not go. A journal entry can have a photo attached. Publishing an entry publishes the words only — the photo stays on your phone, and there is no way to publish it.
Up to 1,000 characters. A published entry is capped at a thousand characters. What you write locally can be as long as you like; the cap is on what we carry, not on what you may write.
Editing or deleting. Editing a published entry takes the published copy down and returns the entry to private. We cannot update what other people are already reading, so we remove it rather than leave your old words up; publish again if you want the new version out there. Deleting an entry also takes the published copy down.
Where a published entry can be seen. In the same public database as your handle, next to that handle — anyone who has your profile link or knows your handle can read it. It is not limited to followers, and Who can find you does not change that.
Taking an entry down is on the entry itself. It is a request rather than an instant delete: a service of ours removes the published copy, usually within a few minutes. Deleting your profile takes down everything you have published.
The app has a tab showing photos other people have shared. This section says what puts you in it and what a row about you carries, because being listed and ranked by default is a different thing from being findable by someone who already knows your handle.
Only Public profiles appear. If Who can find you is set to Private — which is where every profile starts, and where every profile created before that setting existed remains — you are not in this tab at all, however many photos you have shared. Setting yourself Public is what puts you there.
What a row carries: your handle, the photo you shared, when you shared it, the hobby tag if you left one on, and a count of how many people have liked it. Nothing else. There is no caption and no free text on a photo.
Like counts are public; who liked is not. The number next to a photo is published. The record of which person cast a like is not readable by anybody — not by other users, and not by the person who was liked. We keep it only so that one account counts once.
Going private removes you. Switching Who can find you back to Private takes your row out, usually within a few minutes. So does taking the photo down, and so does deleting your profile.
Journal entries are not in this tab. A published entry is readable next to your handle, as Journal Entries above describes, but it is not listed here and is not ranked.
Before anything you make can be seen by people who don't already follow you, the app asks for your date of birth once. You need it to share a photo, to publish a journal entry, or to set Who can find you to Public.
It stays in your device's Keychain and is never uploaded. We do not receive it, cannot see it, and it is not written to the public database or anywhere else. It is stored as a date rather than a yes-or-no answer so the app can work it out again as you get older. Signing out removes it.
On iOS 26 and later the app may also ask Apple whether you are above or below 13, using Apple's own age-range feature. Apple answers with a range and nothing more precise; you can decline, and declining is treated as no answer rather than a pass. Nothing about that reaches us either.
If the answer is that you are under 13, sharing photos, publishing journal entries and being listed publicly are switched off, and anything already shared is taken down. Everything else carries on exactly as before.
A note on the App Store privacy label. We have declared your date of birth as not collected. We think that is the honest answer, because it never leaves your device and we have no way to see it. We state the reasoning here rather than leave it to be inferred, so that if you disagree you can see how it was reached.
Hobbyholic uses a small number of outside services. We don't share your saved data with them, but using these features does involve a request from your device to that provider:
Weather and nearby-places features are optional and only run when you use them. Their location handling is governed by Apple's privacy policy.
Your handle, your three numbers, your follow records, a published photo and a published journal entry stay until you remove them or delete your profile. The moderation service keeps a little more, all keyed to a profile id rather than a name:
We don't collect crash reports ourselves. If you opt in to sharing crash and diagnostic data with app developers through iOS Settings, Apple may pass along anonymised crash information — that flows through Apple under its terms, not through any Pera server, and you can turn it off in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements.
Apart from an optional handle and its three numbers, Hobbyholic keeps your information on your device and asks for no identifying details, so we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone, including children. Kid mode is a parent-facing tool and stores only non-identifying category answers on the device. The profile, following, photo and journal-publishing features are for the account holder, not for children: they need an Apple Account, a handle is public, and a shared photo or a published entry is readable by anyone who knows that handle. Please don't create one on a child's behalf.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last Updated" date below and, for significant changes, notify you via a notice in the app.
Questions about your privacy? We're here to help.
Hobbyholic is developed by Erdi Taspunar, an individual developer based in Finland.
Email us at: peraresearch1@gmail.com
Last updated: September 8, 2026 · © 2026 Pera. All rights reserved.