Last updated: 20 August 2026
Chirps identifies birds by their calls. That identification happens entirely on your phone — your recordings are never uploaded to us, 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 are never sent to us and never shared with anyone else. This is not a setting; there is no code path that uploads them to us, 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.
The watch app is part of Chirps Plus. It does two things, and both stay between your own devices.
As a remote, it shows what your iPhone is hearing and lets you take a catch from your wrist. Your phone is doing the listening and the identifying; the watch is only displaying it.
As a recorder, it uses the watch's own microphone when your phone is out of reach. That recording is sent to your paired iPhone over Apple's direct link between your two devices, and your iPhone identifies it there — the same way it identifies anything you record on the phone itself. It does not pass through us and it is not uploaded anywhere. The watch also notes which country you were in when you started recording, so your iPhone can file the recording correctly; that is a country, not a place, and it travels no further than your phone.
This is the one case where a recording leaves the device that made it. It goes to the other device in your pocket, and it stops there.
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.
Your level. The number beside your name, and a note in your friends' feeds each time you reach a new one. The experience you earn is counted on your phone; only the level itself is stored.
If you subscribe to Chirps Plus: whether the subscription is currently active, when it was last confirmed, and an identifier Apple uses for it, so that the badge on your profile is something we have checked rather than something the app claimed. Apple also tells our server directly when a subscription renews, lapses or is refunded — that is the only way to know a subscription ended, since your phone is not running at the time.
Apple handles the payment and we never see it. No card number, no billing address, no purchase amount, and no other App Store purchase of yours reaches us.
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.
Chirps Plus includes an optional backup, so your collection survives a lost or replaced phone.
It goes to your own iCloud, not to us. Your chirps, their dates, their coordinates, your species collection and your XP are copied into the private area of your Apple Account, using Apple's CloudKit. We have no access to it and no way to read it. It is not our storage and we never receive a copy.
Audio recordings are not included. They live outside the database, so a restored phone gets the record of every chirp, not the sound files.
If you are not a Chirps Plus subscriber, nothing is copied to iCloud by Chirps at all. Turning the subscription off stops any further copying; what is already in your iCloud stays there, under your control, and you can remove it from iOS Settings like any other app's iCloud data.
The Android counterpart of iCloud backup, and the same idea: your collection survives a lost or replaced phone, in storage that is yours.
It goes to your own Google Drive, not to us. Your chirps, their dates, their coordinates, your Heard list, your XP and your collection settings are saved into a hidden, app-only folder in your Google Drive. Google shows that folder in your Drive storage settings but not among your files; only Chirps can read it. We have no access to it and no way to read it. It is not our storage and we never receive a copy.
Audio recordings are not included, exactly as with iCloud: a restored phone gets the record of every chirp, not the sound files.
It is a backup, not a sync. Chirps saves a snapshot about once a day, over Wi-Fi, and keeps the last three. Restoring replaces what is on the phone with the latest snapshot. Two phones do not share a live collection.
Backup is off until you turn it on, and turning it on asks Google for your permission to use that folder — a separate permission from signing in. If you are not a Chirps Plus subscriber, nothing is copied to Google Drive by Chirps at all. Turning backup or the subscription off stops any further copying; what is already in your Drive stays there, under your control, and you can remove it from your Google account's settings under connected apps, like any other app's data.
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.
OpenFreeMap supplies the background map imagery in the Android app's Pips view. Drawing a map means asking a tile server for pictures of the area on screen, so those requests necessarily tell OpenFreeMap which map areas you looked at — as with any web map — along with the internet address they came from. They carry no account information and no identifier, and your recordings, your saved locations and your chirps are never part of them: the map asks for scenery, not for anything of yours.
Apple provides the App Store, and — for Chirps Plus subscribers who use it — the iCloud storage the backup above writes to, via CloudKit.
Google provides Google Play, Sign in with Google on Android, and — for Chirps Plus subscribers who turn it on — the Google Drive storage the Android backup above writes to. When you subscribe on Android, Google tells our server whether the subscription is real and until when; that is how the Plus badge is set, and it is the only thing about the purchase we hold. Apple also provides Sign in with Apple, which is currently the only way 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. On iOS, the Pips map is drawn by Apple Maps, which works the same way as any web map: it asks Apple's servers for pictures of the area on screen, so those requests tell Apple which map areas you looked at — never your chirps, your recordings, or your saved locations. 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 support@chirps.app 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 works fully without an account, at any age. Recording, identifying birds, your Chirps, Blips, Pips and everything on your phone need no sign-in and never have. Only the social features — the feed, friends and the leaderboard — require an account.
We never ask anyone their date of birth. We deliberately don't, because asking would mean collecting and storing a piece of sensitive information about a young person in order to protect them, which makes the problem worse rather than better. The only information an account holds is a handle you choose, an avatar you build from preset shapes and colours, and the progress you make.
Age of an account holder. Chirps is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly let under-13s create an account or knowingly collect their information. Where you live may set a higher age at which you can agree to this yourself — it is 13 in some countries and up to 16 in others across the EU and UK. If you are below that age where you live, please ask a parent or guardian before creating an account.
If a child has an account. Contact us at support@chirps.app and we will delete the account and everything attached to it, without needing to prove anything beyond a plausible request. A parent or guardian can also delete it directly in the app: Settings → Profile → Delete Account. Deletion is immediate and complete.
What we do to make the social side safer for everyone. These apply to every account, not only younger ones:
Data we hold about a young person. The same short list as for anyone else — see What is stored on our server. We keep it only for as long as the account exists, and we do not use it for advertising, profiling or analytics, because we do none of those things for anyone.
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.