What happens to what you say.

PlantRant is a private place to talk things out. This page says plainly what is kept, where, who processes it, and the controls you have.

Last updated October 6, 2026

The short version

Your moments live on your iPhone first. PlantRant works fully without an account: talking, saving, your plants, your Garden, every moment and literal Search stay on the device.
Nothing leaves your iPhone until you choose to sign in and turn on cloud processing.
Burn recordings are never saved and never uploaded. Private moments grow your plant but are never read for patterns, people, questions or Ask.
No ads. We never sell your recordings, transcripts or anything derived from them. Analytics never include what you said.
You can export synced account data, delete any moment, delete everything on the device, or delete your account. Local-only and unsynced Private content is not included in account export.

What stays on your iPhone

Every Normal and Private recording is saved on your iPhone, in protected app storage, before anything else happens. So is your Garden: your plants, chapters, names, pots and arrangement. PlantRant can read your Normal moments on the iPhone itself, using Apple’s on-device language tools, to notice what keeps coming up in a chapter. That reading, the corrections you make to it, and any question your plant holds for you stay on the iPhone and are deleted with everything else. Device backups made by Apple include PlantRant’s data like any other app, except recordings in Burn, which are excluded while they exist and deleted when you stop.

Signing in is optional. It lets your moments and Garden sync to your private PlantRant account and lets PlantRant transcribe and understand moments in the cloud, answer Ask questions, and keep things across devices.

Recordings and transcripts

With PlantRant Pro, your Garden’s structure uploads and syncs to your account when you sign in: your chapters, plants, names, pots and arrangement, and for each kept moment only its id, time, length and whether it was Normal or Private — never its words or audio. Any signed-in plan can restore an existing account copy to a new iPhone. Uploading new Garden structure and keeping it in sync across devices are part of PlantRant Pro. If Pro ends, nothing on your iPhone is removed.

Only after you turn on cloud processing are Normal recordings uploaded to private object storage under your account, never a public bucket, using short-lived signed links scoped to your account. A Private recording is uploaded only if you separately allow Private transcription or keep a synced audio backup; with both off its words and audio stay on your iPhone. We store transcripts in versions (the machine transcript, your corrections and a readable view) and information derived from Normal moments only: a title, people and subjects you mention, and the answers built from them. Derived information is your data, like the recording.

Your Garden

When you sync, your plants’ species, chapters, which moments belong to them, names, pots and arrangement are stored with your account so a new iPhone restores your Garden as it was. No transcript text is copied into the Garden record.

Account

We store an internal account identifier linked to your sign-in, your preferences (including when you allowed cloud processing), subscription status and monthly usage counts. Your email and sign-in method (Sign in with Apple or an email code) are held by our authentication provider, Clerk, which also processes the technical session and security information needed to protect accounts, such as IP address, device characteristics and approximate location derived from IP.

Who processes your content

OpenAI

Only with cloud processing on: Normal recordings are sent to the OpenAI API to be transcribed and understood, and a bounded set of relevant excerpts from your Normal moments is sent when you ask a question with Ask — never your whole history. Private moments reach OpenAI only for transcription, and only when you separately allow Private transcription; nothing else is done with their words. Requests set store: false, and OpenAI does not use API data to train its models by default. OpenAI may retain API inputs and outputs for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring, as described in its API data usage policies.

Infrastructure

Your account database and private audio storage run on Neon in the United States (AWS US East). Sign-in is handled by Clerk. This website is hosted by Vercel. Subscriptions are purchased through Apple’s App Store; we receive Apple-signed transaction and subscription status, never your payment details.

Support

Support form messages and your contact email are stored on Neon. When delivery is configured, Resend sends your message to our monitored support inbox with your email as Reply-To. No recording, transcript or Garden data is attached automatically. Avoid including sensitive recordings in support requests.

Normal, Private and Burn

Normal moments grow your plant and can become evidence for what a chapter heard, what recurs across your Garden, a question from your plant, and Ask.
Private moments grow your plant and are kept as your record, but are never read for patterns, people, subjects, plant questions, Ask or resurfacing. Making a moment Private removes it from all of these at once.
Burn recordings are deleted when you stop. They are never saved, never uploaded and never used for anything.

Your controls

Cloud processing is off until you allow it, and can be turned off at any time.
Private transcription is off until you separately allow it. Synced audio backup is a separate setting that defaults on, but no audio uploads until you allow cloud processing and sign in. With backup on, Private audio is kept in your account without being used for understanding or sent to OpenAI unless you also allow Private transcription. You can turn backup off in Privacy & cloud.
Delete a moment: its audio, transcript and everything that cited it are removed, here and in your account.
Account export includes synced moments, transcripts, corrections and Garden structure from Settings. It requires sign-in and excludes local-only/unsynced Private content and local audio. Do not upload Private content merely to export it.
Delete your account from Settings. It removes your recordings, transcripts, derived data, Garden record and sign-in account, retried until complete. Deleting an account does not cancel an App Store subscription; manage that in iPhone Settings.
Signing out keeps everything recorded on this iPhone; copies that exist only in your account are removed from the device until you sign in again.

Analytics and logs

PlantRant’s product analytics are content-free event names such as “moment saved” or “chapter completed”, with coarse properties such as a duration range. They never include recordings, transcripts, search words, questions, answers, names, subjects or plant questions. Operational logs record identifiers, timing and error categories, not what you said. There is no advertising, cross-site tracking or session replay.

Notifications

Notifications are off unless you turn them on. They never contain your words, people, subjects or questions.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit, every request is checked against your verified sign-in, storage is private and scoped to your account, and server credentials never ship in the app. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting your data we will notify you as required by law.

Not a medical service

PlantRant is not therapy and does not diagnose anything. It shows what you have actually said, with the moments behind it.

Children

PlantRant is not directed to children under 13.

Your rights and changes

Every control above is available to everyone, wherever you live. If the law where you live gives you additional rights, contact us through Support and we will handle the request under that law. If we materially change how your content is handled, we will update this page and tell you in the app before the change applies.