Chirps identifies birds by their calls. That identification happens entirely on your phone — your recordings are never uploaded, and neither is your exact location. If you choose to create an account, a much smaller set of information about which species you found is stored on our server so your friends can see it. You can delete your account, and everything attached to it, from inside the app at any time.
Recording, identification, your Chirps logbook, Blips, Pips (the map) and Highlights all work with no account at all. If you never sign in, nothing about you is sent to any server we operate. There is nothing for us to hold, because we never receive it.
The following never leave your device. This is not a setting; there is no code path that uploads them, and the database has no columns to receive them:
If you delete a chirp, or use "Clear All Chirps", these are removed from your phone.
Signing in is optional and gates only the social features: Feed, Friends and the Leaderboard.
To create and hold your account:
Robin#FQ2X, assigned automatically when your account is created. Permanent, and the only way another person can find you.For each bird you choose to share:
Your friendships: who you have sent a friend request to, who has sent one to you, and whether it was accepted. And your Highlights — the species you pinned to your profile.
If you block someone: a record that you blocked them, and when. Only you can see it — the person you blocked is never told.
If you report someone: your handle, their handle, the reason you chose, anything you typed in the box, and the date. This is kept so a person can look into it, and is not visible to you or to them afterwards.
That is the complete list. There is no audio, no image, no coordinate, no address, no device identifier, no advertising identifier and no analytics event in it.
Every account is given a friend code when it is created — something like Robin#FQ2X. It is random, permanent, and the only way somebody who is not already your friend can find you.
There is no search. Typing someone's username will not find them, and neither will a partial match. Usernames are not unique — two people can both be "robin" — because it is the friend code, not the name, that identifies an account.
Your username stays private until a friendship is accepted, and that runs both ways. Someone who looks you up by your friend code sees only the code until you accept them; you see only their code until then. This is enforced on our server, not merely hidden in the app.
Blocking. If you block someone, any friendship between you ends immediately, neither of you can send the other a friend request, neither of you can find the other by friend code, and neither can see the other's sightings. This is enforced on our server too. You can lift a block in Profile Settings → Blocked Accounts; that makes you findable to each other again but does not restore the friendship.
People who are not your friends cannot see your profile or your activity. People who are your friends can see: your username, your avatar, the species you have shared, their tiers and rarities, the country code and the date — the same list as above. They cannot see where you were, and they cannot hear your recordings, because we do not have either.
Supabase, Inc. hosts our database and handles sign-in. They process this data on our behalf and under contract, and hold nothing beyond what is listed above. Data is stored in the European Union — Stockholm, Sweden.
Wikimedia Commons / Wikipedia supplies the reference photograph shown on each species page. When the app needs a photo it asks Wikimedia for that species by its scientific name. The request contains no account information, no identifier and nothing about you; Wikimedia will see the request and the internet address it came from, as any website does, and handles that under their own privacy policy. Photos are cached on your phone so each species is only requested once.
Apple provides the App Store and, if you enable it, iCloud device backup. Apple also provides Sign in with Apple, which is one of the two ways to sign in. If you use it, Apple tells us an identifier for your account and an email address — and if you choose "Hide My Email", that address is one of Apple's relay addresses rather than your real one, which is entirely your choice to make and works fine here. We never see your Apple password, and Sign in with Apple creates no password with us either. Anything Apple receives is governed by Apple's privacy policy, not ours.
Your account and everything attached to it are kept until you delete them. There is no background archive: deletion is deletion.
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or erase the information we hold, to object to or restrict its processing, and to complain to a data protection authority. Because the amount we hold is small and you can see nearly all of it in the app, the fastest route for most requests is the app itself — your handle and avatar are editable in Profile Settings, and account deletion is immediate and complete.
For anything the app can't do, contact us at the address on our support page and we will respond within 30 days.
Withdrawing consent: you can stop sharing at any time by deleting your account. The app keeps working without one. You can also revoke microphone or location access at any time in iOS Settings — location can be denied outright and the app still identifies birds; it just won't tag them or bias species by region.
Chirps 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, contact us and we will delete it.
If this policy changes materially we will update this page and the "last updated" date above, and note the change in the app's release notes.