Last updated: 10 October 2026
This privacy policy explains how Bite Diary (“the App”) handles your information. The App is developed and operated by the developer of Bite Diary (“we”, “us”, or “our”). By installing and using the App you agree to the practices described here.
If you do not agree with this policy, please do not install or use the App.
Bite Diary stores the following information only on your own device:
Bite Diary does not collect:
Note on advertising: The App displays banner advertisements served by Google AdMob. Google may collect advertising identifiers and device information for the purpose of serving and measuring ads. See the “Advertising” section below for details. The App developer does not receive or store any of this data.
All data described above is stored locally on your device in an SQLite database and your device’s preferences storage. The App does not include account creation, cloud sync, or any backend service we operate. The exceptions are: (1) the barcode lookup feature, which sends only a barcode number to Open Food Facts; (2) the optional contribution and correction features, which send the product information you choose to share to Open Food Facts; and (3) banner advertisements served by Google AdMob, which involve Google’s own data collection as described below.
If you uninstall the App, all data stored by the App is deleted along with it. We have no copy. The one exception is a backup file you have chosen to save yourself, which is stored outside the App and is not removed when the App is uninstalled — see “Backing up and restoring your data” below.
The App requests permission to use your device’s camera for scanning product barcodes. The camera is activated only when you tap the “Scan a barcode” button. No photographs are stored; the camera feed is processed in real time to detect barcodes, and only the decoded barcode number is retained for the product lookup described below.
The App can save a backup of your diary to a file, and restore from a file you have saved. Both are started by you, from Settings → Backup and reset. Nothing about this feature involves any server, any account, or any data being sent to the App developer.
What a backup file contains. Your food entries, the foods in your library (including custom foods and foods retrieved from barcode scans), your recipes and their ingredients, and your weight history. It does not contain your height, your goal weight, your calorie goals, your app settings, or your advertising consent choice.
Where the file goes. When you save a backup, Android’s own file picker asks you where to put it. The App never chooses a location, never writes to a fixed path, and never scans your device’s storage for files. It hands the data to the location you picked and does not keep a copy or a record of where it went.
The file is not encrypted, and it is yours. A backup is a plain, readable data file. Once it is written, it is outside the App’s protection and under your control: the App’s own security settings — which keep your diary out of Android’s cloud backup and device-transfer features — do not apply to it. If you store the file in cloud storage, send it to someone, or copy it to another device, the information in it travels with it, including your weight history. Deleting the file is your responsibility; uninstalling the App does not remove it.
Restoring. When you restore, you choose a file and the App checks it before using it. A file that is damaged, incomplete, or not a Bite Diary backup is refused and nothing is changed. Restoring only adds data — it never deletes or overwrites anything already in your diary. While the App reads the file, Android places a temporary copy inside the App’s private storage; the App deletes that copy once the restore has finished, and again before the next one.
The App can show reminder notifications at times you choose, for meals you have not logged. Reminders are scheduled and delivered entirely on your device. No reminder, and no information about what you have or have not logged, is sent anywhere. You can turn reminders off at any time in Settings, or revoke the notification permission in your Android settings.
The App can scan product barcodes and look up their nutritional information from Open Food Facts (https://world.openfoodfacts.org), a free, open, crowd-sourced food database operated by the non-profit Open Food Facts association.
When you scan a barcode to look up a product, the App sends only the barcode number itself to Open Food Facts and receives back the product’s name and nutritional values. For these lookups, the App does not send any personal data, location data, photographs, or device identifiers to Open Food Facts. A custom User-Agent header identifying the App ("BiteDiary") is included with the request as required by Open Food Facts policy. (The optional contribution and correction features described below send additional information; see that paragraph.)
Open Food Facts may log incoming requests on their servers as part of standard web-server operation. Open Food Facts has its own privacy policy available at https://world.openfoodfacts.org/privacy. The App developer has no relationship with Open Food Facts beyond using their public API and is not responsible for their policies.
If you choose to contribute a new product, or to correct or complete an existing product’s data, using the App’s optional Open Food Facts features, the product information and nutritional values you provide are uploaded to Open Food Facts’ public database. To let Open Food Facts moderate contributions and prevent abuse, each upload also includes a random identifier that the App generates on your device. This identifier is not your name, email, device ID, or advertising ID; it is not linked to your identity and is not used to track you. By using these features you agree to Open Food Facts’ contribution terms. Contributing and correcting are always optional, and you control whether to send each change.
Open Food Facts’ database is published under the Open Database License (ODbL), an open licence that allows anyone — including commercial services — to reuse and redistribute the data. Contributions become part of that openly licensed database and cannot be withdrawn by you or by the App developer afterwards. What you contribute is nutritional information from a product label, not information about you.
The App displays banner advertisements on the home screen, served by Google AdMob (a Google LLC service). To serve and measure ads, Google may collect and process the following information from your device:
The App developer does not receive, store, or have access to any of the above data. All ad-related data collection is handled directly between the Google AdMob SDK on your device and Google’s servers. The App developer receives only aggregate, anonymized reporting (e.g., total ad impressions, total revenue) with no ability to identify individual users.
Google’s use of this data is governed by Google’s own privacy policy, available at https://policies.google.com/privacy. Google’s advertising-specific policies are at https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads.
You can limit personalized advertising by adjusting your Android advertising settings: Settings → Google → Ads → Opt out of Ads Personalization (or “Delete advertising ID” on Android 12+). Opting out does not remove ads — it means the ads you see will be less targeted to your interests.
Your consent (EU, EEA, UK, and Switzerland). If you are located in the European Union, European Economic Area, United Kingdom, or Switzerland, the App asks for your consent before showing personalised advertisements, using Google’s User Messaging Platform. On first launch you can choose to consent, to refuse, or to customise your choices. If you refuse, you will still see ads, but they will be non-personalised. You can change your choice at any time within the App under Settings → About → Privacy options. Users outside these regions are not shown this consent form, in line with applicable law.
The typefaces the App displays are included in the App itself. Since version 1.1.10 the App does not download fonts from the internet. Earlier versions downloaded them from Google Fonts, a Google LLC service, when they were first needed; each download gave Google your device’s IP address, and nothing from your diary.
The App requests the following Android permissions, each used only for the purpose listed:
Some of the libraries listed below declare further technical permissions of their own — for example network-state and advertising-identifier access used by Google AdMob. These appear in your device’s app info alongside the permissions above. None of them reads your food, weight, or personal information.
The App does not request location, contacts, microphone, calendar, SMS, or any other permission that reads personal information from your device.
The App uses the following third-party software libraries:
Apart from the barcode-lookup requests and the contributions you choose to share with Open Food Facts, and the advertising data collection by Google AdMob described above, none of these libraries transmit your personal data to any external service through the App.
The App is not specifically designed for or directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect any information from children under 13, because we do not collect information from anyone. If you are a parent or guardian and would like more information about how the App works on a child’s device, please contact us using the email below.
Bite Diary is a personal calorie and food tracking tool. It is not a medical device, and the information it provides — including nutritional values, calorie goals, and macronutrient breakdowns — is not medical or nutritional advice. The pre-loaded food database draws on publicly available USDA FoodData Central values and may contain inaccuracies. Nutritional values for pre-loaded foods are USDA averages and may differ from the specific product you have — values can vary by brand, region, growing conditions, and preparation method. Nutritional values you enter manually or that are retrieved from Open Food Facts via barcode lookup may be incomplete or wrong. Open Food Facts data is contributed by volunteers and is not authoritative.
Before making significant changes to your diet, especially if you have a medical condition, are pregnant or nursing, are under 18, or are at risk of an eating disorder, consult a qualified healthcare professional. Do not rely on the App as your sole source of nutritional information.
You can stop the App from accessing the camera at any time by revoking that permission in your Android settings. Doing so will disable barcode scanning but will not delete any data you have already saved.
You can turn meal reminders off at any time in the App’s settings, or revoke the notification permission in your Android settings.
You can limit personalized advertising by adjusting your device’s ad settings as described in the “Advertising” section above. If you are in the EU, EEA, UK, or Switzerland, you can also change your advertising consent at any time within the App under Settings → About → Privacy options.
You can delete all data stored by the App at any time from within the App under Settings → Backup and reset → Clear all data, or by uninstalling the App from your device. Backup files you have saved yourself are not affected by either, and must be deleted by you wherever you stored them.
We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Updates will be posted at the same URL where you found this document, and the “Last updated” date at the top will be revised. If you continue to use the App after a change, you are accepting the updated policy. Material changes will be communicated within the App when reasonably possible.
If you have questions about this privacy policy or about the App, contact: