YouCai Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 28, 2026 · Applies to YouCai for iOS (version 1.0.0 onward)

YouCai is a fridge vegetable tracker. We follow data minimization: we collect only what is needed to run the app. No ads, no profiling, no selling or sharing your data with data brokers. This policy fully discloses every third-party service we integrate and how data flows.

1. What we collect

• Account: your email (for sign-in and sync). We do not collect phone numbers, real names, or government IDs
• Vegetables & profile: the vegetables you manually enter or recognize via camera (quantity, storage location, purchase date, shelf life), plus the nickname and avatar you set
• Consumption logs: the "cooked it / tossed it" events you log in-app
• Subscription status: whether you are a YouCai Pro subscriber (derived from anonymous receipt data via Apple and RevenueCat). We never store your payment credentials
• Product usage data: the features you tap and screens you view, plus an anonymous identifier used to distinguish devices. Used to understand feature usage and improve the experience (via PostHog, enabled only after you accept this privacy policy)
• Crash & diagnostic data: error stack traces, device model, and OS version when the app crashes or errors, used to locate and fix problems (via Sentry, enabled only after you accept this privacy policy)
• Push identifier: a push token used to deliver notifications to your device. See section 6

2. What we do not collect

• No phone number
• No location data
• No contacts or microphone access
• No IDFA or IMEI; no device identifier is used for ad targeting or attribution (the push SDK described in section 5 uses identifiers such as OAID solely to generate a push device ID, never for advertising)
• No advertising SDKs; no cross-app or cross-site tracking (we never share your identity with third parties for advertising). The product analytics and crash diagnostics above are used by us to improve YouCai itself — never shared with data brokers, never used for ad targeting

3. AI fridge recognition (important)

When you use the "Snap a photo" feature, your photo is compressed to 1024px on-device, then forwarded once through our server to an AI gateway for visual recognition. Depending on your region:

• Mainland China: forwarded through our self-operated server (recipe.tucao.art) to the OpenRouter AI gateway. See OpenRouter Privacy Policy
• Other countries / regions: forwarded through our Supabase Edge Function to Google Gemini for recognition
• We do not retain photos: our server holds image data only during the request and discards it immediately after the response. No disk write, no log, no database
• The recognized result (vegetable names, quantity estimates) is only written to our database after you confirm it
• Free tier is limited to 5 AI recognitions per day; we only keep a call counter in our ai_quota table for rate limiting

4. Where your data lives

YouCai determines your data region at first launch based on your App Store country/region, and keeps it stable thereafter:

• Mainland China users: account and vegetable records are stored on our self-hosted Supabase instance (api.maaker.cn, in a mainland China data center we operate ourselves)
• Users in other countries / regions: data is stored on Supabase Cloud (hosted abroad, US region)

In either region, row-level security (RLS) policies ensure each user can only read and write their own data.

5. Third-party services

• RevenueCat: manages subscriptions. It only sees anonymous subscriber identifiers and Apple's receipt — not your email or vegetable data. See RevenueCat Privacy Policy
• Apple App Store: processes all in-app purchases. We never touch your credit card or Apple ID password
• OpenRouter / Google Gemini: passively invoked only during AI recognition (see section 3)
• PostHog: product usage analytics. Collects anonymous usage events and a device identifier to improve the product — no ads, no cross-app tracking, no data resale. Enabled only after you accept this privacy policy. See PostHog Privacy Policy
• Sentry: crash and performance diagnostics. Collects error stack traces, device model, and OS version to fix problems. Enabled only after you accept this privacy policy. See Sentry Privacy Policy
• Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google): delivers push notifications to devices outside mainland China (see section 6). See Firebase Privacy
• Alibaba Cloud EMAS Push: delivers push notifications to devices in mainland China (see section 6). On initialization the SDK collects device identifiers (Android ID / OAID), network status, and sensor data (accelerometer) to generate a push device ID, ensure reliable delivery, and guard against abuse. It is initialized only after you accept this privacy policy. See Alibaba Cloud Privacy Policy
• WeChat Pay SDK (Tencent): invoked only when you actively start a WeChat payment. The SDK is not registered at app launch. See Tencent Privacy Policy
• Alipay SDK (Ant Group): invoked only when you actively start an Alipay payment. For transaction security and fraud prevention it collects device information and sensor data (accelerometer). See Alipay Privacy Policy

6. Notifications

Enabled only after you grant notification permission. We send two kinds of reminders:

• Expiry reminders: at 3 days / 1 day / day-of before a vegetable expires
• Morning market reminder: optional daily 7:00 AM reminder

So that reminders arrive on time even when the app is closed, these are delivered via remote push services: Alibaba Cloud EMAS for mainland China users, and Firebase Cloud Messaging → Apple APNs for users elsewhere. To deliver them, we register a device push token on our server after you sign in. You can turn notifications off anytime in system Settings or in-app.

7. Permissions and device information

• Camera: to take photos of your fridge for AI recognition
• Photo Library: to pick existing photos for AI recognition
• Notifications: expiry and morning reminders (toggleable in Settings)

Device information and sensors

• YouCai's own features do not read sensor data, and we never use sensors for profiling or behavioral analysis
• The push SDK (Alibaba Cloud EMAS) and payment SDK (Alipay) described in section 5 access the accelerometer to generate a device identifier and for payment fraud prevention
• When you take a photo, the system camera component uses device orientation (derived from the accelerometer) to correct the photo's rotation
• All of the above happens only after you accept this privacy policy — we initialize none of these third-party SDKs before you do

8. Data export and deletion

• Export: Profile > Export Data gives you a JSON file with every vegetable, consumption log, and stat under your account
• Account deletion: email support@maaker.cn with your deletion request. We fully purge your account, vegetables, consumption logs, quota records, and push token within 7 days
• Subscription records on Apple / RevenueCat side expire on their own schedule; we keep only an anonymous "was a subscriber" counter locally

9. Children

YouCai is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

10. Changes to this policy

If a future version changes how we handle data, we will notify you in-app and update this page. Material changes will prompt re-consent on next launch.

11. Contact

For questions or to exercise your data rights (access / correction / deletion):

• Email: support@maaker.cn

12. Support

Found a bug? Have a feature request? Email support@maaker.cn — we read every message weekly.