Frostline Privacy Policy

Last updated: 1 September 2026

Frostline collects nothing. There are no Frostline accounts, no Frostline servers, no analytics, no advertising and no third-party SDKs. What you enter stays on your device and, if you are signed in to iCloud, in your own private iCloud storage — which we cannot see. The rest of this page is the detail behind that sentence.

Who this is from

Frostline is made by Patrick Hisni Brataas, an independent developer in Norway.

What Frostline collects about you

Nothing.

Frostline has no account system and no sign-up. There is no Frostline backend server. There is no analytics SDK, no crash-reporting SDK, no advertising SDK and no third-party code in the app that could collect or transmit information about you.

That means there is no data for us to sell, share, profile, or hand to anyone else, because none of it ever reaches us in the first place.

The one place your data does travel is iCloud, and it travels to your iCloud account, not to ours. That is described in the next section.

What is stored, and where

Frostline stores what you put into it so it can do its job:

  • Your garden's location and the frost dates derived from it
  • The crops, plantings and beds you add
  • The generated sowing and transplanting schedule, and any edits you make to it
  • Whether you have marked a task done, skipped or snoozed
  • Journal entries, notes and harvest logs
  • Photos you attach to journal entries
  • Your settings, such as measurement units and reminder times

All of it is stored on your device. Deleting the app removes the local copy.

iCloud sync

If your device is signed in to iCloud, Frostline also mirrors the records above to the private database of your own iCloud account, so your garden appears on your other devices. This is handled by Apple's CloudKit, and it happens automatically — there is no separate Frostline account to create.

What this means in practice:

  • The data goes to your iCloud account. The developer has no access to it, no credentials for it, and no way to read it. It is not a Frostline server.
  • Apple stores and transmits it under Apple's Privacy Policy and the iCloud terms you have already agreed to with Apple.
  • It is never shared with other users. Nothing in Frostline is public, social, or shared, and there is no way to publish a garden.
  • If you are not signed in to iCloud, nothing is uploaded. Frostline works fully offline and keeps everything on the device. Settings shows the current state ("iCloud sync on", "Not signed in to iCloud", and so on).
  • To turn sync off, turn Frostline off under iCloud in the Settings app, or sign out of iCloud. Frostline keeps working; it just stops mirroring.
  • Erase all data in Frostline's Settings deletes your records from iCloud as well as from every device signed in to your Apple Account — not just this one.

Because CloudKit needs to know when another device has changed something, the app receives silent background notifications from Apple. These carry no content of yours and are not used for messaging or marketing.

Everything else still works with no network at all: the place search, the frost normals, and the whole planning engine run offline against data bundled inside the app.

Location

Frostline does not use your device's location and never asks for location permission.

You choose your garden's location by searching for a city or ZIP code. That search runs entirely offline against a list of places bundled inside the app. Your frost dates come from a table of NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals that also ships inside the app. Neither lookup contacts a server, and neither one involves your device's actual position.

The garden location you pick is part of your garden, so it syncs to your own iCloud account along with the rest of it.

Photos

Photos are added through Apple's system photo picker. Frostline does not request access to your photo library and cannot browse it — only the specific images you pick are copied into the app.

Photos you attach to journal entries sync to your private iCloud database with the rest of your records, and are covered by everything in the iCloud sync section above.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, Frostline schedules reminders for sowing, transplanting and harvest tasks. These are local notifications, calculated and scheduled on your device from your own plan. Nothing about your schedule is sent to us, and no one sends you notifications but your own device.

Separately, Apple sends the app silent background notifications when your iCloud data changes on another device. Those are part of sync, contain none of your content, and are never shown to you.

Purchases

Frostline Unlimited is sold through the App Store using Apple's StoreKit. Apple processes the payment — Frostline never sees your payment details, name or billing address. The app only asks Apple whether an active purchase exists for the Apple Account signed in on the device.

Apple's handling of purchase information is covered by Apple's Privacy Policy.

Data you choose to export

You can export your records as JSON, CSV or PDF. Exports are generated on your device and go only where you send them. "Export everything" as JSON is free for every user, including users who never subscribe and users whose subscription has lapsed — your records are yours to take with you.

Children

Frostline is not directed at children and is not published in the Kids Category. It collects no information from anyone, of any age.

Your rights

Privacy law in the EU/EEA, the UK, California and elsewhere gives you rights to access, correct, export and delete the personal data a company holds about you. Frostline holds none, so there is nothing for us to look up or erase on your behalf. Your iCloud data is held in your own Apple Account, under your control, not ours.

You remain in full control of the data:

  • Export it at any time from Settings → Export
  • Delete all of it, on this device and in iCloud, from Settings → Erase all data
  • Stop syncing by turning Frostline off under iCloud in the Settings app
  • Delete everything including the app's local storage by deleting the app

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it.

An earlier version of this page said iCloud sync was not enabled and promised this page would say so plainly before a version that syncs shipped. This is that update: Frostline 1.0 syncs to your own private iCloud account, as described above, and still sends nothing to the developer.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about privacy in Frostline: