Privacy Policy

Last updated September 4, 2026

The short version. YardTime has no servers. We collect nothing, store nothing, and see nothing. Everything you enter lives in your own iCloud account and is shared only with the neighbors in your group, using Apple's CloudKit. The app contains no analytics, no advertising and no third-party tracking of any kind, and nothing is ever sold. This website counts page views, with no cookies and nothing that identifies you — the details are below.

Who "we" are

YardTime is a small app made by an independent developer. Throughout this policy, "we" means that developer and "the app" means YardTime for iPhone and Apple Watch.

What the app stores, and where

YardTime keeps two kinds of information. Neither one is sent to us, because we do not operate a server.

In your iCloud, shared with your group

When you create or join a yard group, the following is written to a shared area of your own iCloud account using Apple's CloudKit, where the other members of that group can read it:

• The group's name (for example, "The Yard Crew")
• Your display name and the names of the people in your household
• Your dogs' names
• An optional household photo, if you choose to add one
• Your yard status — whether your dogs are in or out, when they went out, when they're due back, and who set it
• Your upcoming yard time, if you plan one ahead — when it starts, how long it's for, and who made the plan
• The time your household's entry was last updated
• A short recent activity feed — the last few comings and goings in your group (who let dogs out, when the yard cleared), so every member sees the same history

That is the complete list. There is no address, no location data, no phone number, no email address, and no contact list. YardTime never asks for your location and does not use GPS.

On your device only

Some things stay on your iPhone or Apple Watch and are never uploaded anywhere:

• Your app settings, such as your default timer duration
• The longer tail of the activity log — only the most recent handful of entries is shared with your group; older ones stay local
• Cached copies of household photos your group has shared, so they display without re-downloading

Who can see your information

• The members of your yard group. That is the entire point of the app — a shared status is only useful if your neighbors can see it. Membership is by invitation link, controlled by whoever created the group.
• Apple. Your data passes through and is stored in Apple's iCloud/CloudKit infrastructure, under your own Apple Account, subject to Apple's Privacy Policy. Apple also delivers the app's push notifications.
• Not us. We have no server, no database, no admin panel, and no credentials that would let us read your group's data. We could not look at your yard status if we wanted to.
• Nobody else. Your information is never sold, rented, licensed, shared with advertisers or data brokers, or used to train anything.

Notifications

YardTime sends notifications — a heads-up when a neighbor's dog goes out or when the yard is clear, a nudge when your own timer runs out, and a reminder when a yard time you planned is about to start. These are generated by the app itself or delivered through Apple's push notification service as part of CloudKit. Their content is limited to the status information described above. The neighbor and yard-clear alerts can be switched off, or silenced overnight, in the app's settings, and all of them can be turned off at any time in Settings → Notifications → YardTime.

What YardTime does not do

• No analytics. The app contains no analytics or telemetry SDK. We do not know how many people use YardTime, which screens they open, or whether they open it at all.
• No advertising. No ad networks, no ad identifiers, no IDFA.
• No tracking. YardTime does not track you across apps or websites, and does not combine your information with data from other sources.
• No third-party SDKs. The app uses only Apple's own frameworks.
• No accounts. There is no YardTime login, no password, and no email sign-up. Access is tied to the Apple Account already on your device.

This website

The app collects nothing. This website — the page you're reading — counts visits, and we want to be straight about the difference.

This site is served through Cloudflare, and two things follow from that.

Delivering the page. Like any web server, Cloudflare receives the ordinary details of your request — your IP address, the page you asked for, the site that linked you (if any), and your browser and operating system. It uses them to send you the page, to block attacks and bots, and to produce the aggregate traffic counts we see. Cloudflare handles this as our service provider, under Cloudflare's privacy policy.

Counting visits. Cloudflare Web Analytics is switched on, which adds a small measurement script to the page. It reports the page viewed, the referring site, browser and device type, country, and how quickly the page loaded.

What neither of them does:

• No cookies. Nothing is stored on your device — no cookies, no localStorage, no anything. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to.
• No identifier for you. You are not assigned an ID, and your device is not fingerprinted to recognise you. Two visits from you are not knowingly linked.
• No tracking across sites. It cannot see anything you do anywhere else, and nothing is shared with advertisers, sold, or combined with any other source.

We look at it for one reason: to know whether anybody is finding the app. What we see are aggregate counts — we cannot pick you out of them.

None of this touches the app. YardTime on your iPhone and Apple Watch still contains no analytics of any kind, and your yard data never passes through this website.

Children

YardTime is rated 4+ and is suitable for all ages. Because the app collects no personal information at all — from anyone, of any age — there is nothing for us to knowingly or unknowingly collect from a child. Information a family enters stays in that family's iCloud account.

Your control over your information

Because your data lives in your own iCloud account rather than on our servers, you control it directly:

• Edit or remove details — change your display name, your household members, your dogs' names, or your photo at any time in the app's settings.
• Leave a group — Leave group in Settings is a genuine deletion, not just a sign-out. It removes your household's record — your name, your dogs' names, your photo and your status — from the shared iCloud data, ends your access to the group, and erases everything YardTime stored on your device, including the activity log and any cached photos. Entries that mention your household may linger briefly in the group's short shared activity feed until newer activity pushes them out.
• Delete the group entirely — if you created the group, the same control reads Delete group, because you own the shared storage it lives in. Using it deletes the group's data for everyone in it, not just for you.
• Delete everything from iCloud — you can also go to Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage → YardTime on your iPhone and delete the app's iCloud data directly.
• Delete the app — removing YardTime deletes everything held on that device.

If you would like help removing your information, email us at the address below and we will walk you through it.

Data retention

We retain nothing, because we receive nothing. Information stays in your iCloud account until you or another member of your group deletes it, or until you delete the app's iCloud data as described above. Apple's own retention practices are governed by Apple's privacy policy.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights under laws such as the GDPR or the CCPA to access, correct, export, or delete personal information a company holds about you. We hold none — there is no company-side copy of your data to request, correct, or delete. The controls listed above give you direct access to everything the app stores. If you have a question about this, please write to us.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted on this page with a new date at the top. Material changes will also be noted in the app's release notes. This policy applies to YardTime version 1.0 and later.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or about anything else in the app:

[email protected]

We read every message.