HelmLife holds some of the most personal things in your life: your money, your health, your goals. We treat that with care. We collect as little as we can, keep it locked down, and never sell it. This page explains exactly what we collect, why, who else handles it, and how you stay in control.
Our promises
We never sell, rent or trade your personal information.
No ads, no ad networks, no tracking pixels, no cross-site tracking.
We don’t use your data to train AI models.
Your health information is never used for marketing, and never shared without your say-so.
You can see, change and delete your data, and delete your whole account yourself, at any time.
1. What We Collect
Only what the Service needs to work, and nearly all of it is what you choose to add:
Account: your email address, your password (stored only as a secure hash, so we can’t see it), your display name, your plan, and your settings: which tabs you use, your companion and its name, and whether you’ve seen the welcome.
Finance: your lists, expenses, income, budgets and notes, plus receipt photos and their line items if you save them.
Health: what you log, such as meals and calories, food photos you choose to take, workouts, body weight, blood pressure, lab results, and fitness challenge points. See section 2.
Horizon, Tide and Beacon: your goals and lists, your focus breaks and reminders, and the details and images on your business card.
Helms: your balance and a history of what you earned and spent, the days you were active (for streaks), and, if you joined with a friend’s invite link, who invited you.
People you share with: when you share a list with someone, their display name and email are saved to your contacts so you can share with them again. You can remove a contact at any time.
Messages you send us through Send feedback or by email.
Notifications: if you turn them on, a notification address for your browser or a device token for your iPhone, so reminders reach you.
sent with every request, such as IP address, browser or device type, and time. It appears in our hosting providers’ short-lived logs, which are used for security and to keep things running, and isn’t used to build a profile of you.
Basic technical information
We don’t collect your location, your phone’s contacts, microphone audio, biometrics, advertising identifiers, or what you do in other apps or on other websites. The camera is only used when you choose to take a photo.
2. Your Health Information
Health information is sensitive, and we treat it that way:
We save it only after you agree, the first time you open the Health tab.
We use it only to show you your logs, trends and the features you ask for.
Sharing is a separate choice, off until you turn it on. With it on, the people in your competitions see your display name, points and daily calorie totals, and the global fitness leaderboard shows your display name and points. Your meals, photos, blood pressure and lab results are never shared.
People on a leaderboard with you can tap your name to meet your companion: its name, animal, look, level and mood. Its level and mood grow from how much you log across HelmLife, but none of what you logged, or how much, is shown. You can keep it off the global leaderboard with Hide companion.
We never sell it, never use it for advertising, and never share it with data brokers or insurers.
You can withdraw your consent, turn sharing off, or delete all your health data at any time from Health data & consent in your account menu.
HelmLife isn’t a healthcare provider, so health privacy laws for doctors and insurers (like HIPAA in the U.S.) don’t apply to us. We protect your health information to a high standard anyway. Where consumer health data laws apply, such as Washington’s My Health My Data Act, you have the rights described there, including to see, delete and withdraw consent for your consumer health data. Ask us at privacy@helmlife.app.
3. How We Use It
To run HelmLife: showing you your lists, logs, insights, companion and shared spaces.
To sign you in and keep your account secure.
To send the notifications and account emails you need, such as confirming your email address, password resets and list invites.
To apply plan limits, Pro features and Helms.
To answer your messages and fix problems.
To prevent abuse and fraud, and to meet legal obligations.
We don’t build advertising profiles, we don’t send marketing emails, and we don’t make decisions about you with legal or similarly significant effects based on automated processing.
4. AI Features
Some features use Google’s Gemini AI. They run only when you ask:
Reading a receipt photo into its items and totals;
Estimating calories from a food photo;
Estimating a workout from what you type, together with your body weight;
Designing a business card from a short prompt.
For each request, only that photo or text goes to Google. Your account, name, email and other data don’t. Google sends back the result, and we keep only what you save. Food photos sent for an estimate aren’t stored by us at all. A receipt photo is kept only if you save it with the expense.
Google handles what it receives under its Gemini API terms. It may keep requests for a limited time to detect abuse and, depending on the plan the request is made under, may use them to improve its products, which can include review by people. So please don’t include anything in a photo or prompt you wouldn’t want seen, such as card numbers, account numbers or other people’s faces. If you’d rather not use AI, everything still works without it: basic receipt reading runs on your own device, and you can always type entries yourself.
We don’t use your data to train AI models, ours or anyone else’s.
5. Who Else Sees Your Data
People you choose. Members of a list, health list or competition you share see what’s on it. Anyone with a share link you create can open what it shows, and anyone with an invite link can see the list’s name, who invited them and how many members it has, and join it until the link expires or reaches its limit. Only send links to people you trust.
Service providers. We use a small number of providers to run HelmLife. Each one only gets what it needs for its job and has to protect it:
Supabase: database, sign-in and file storage.
Resend: delivering account emails, such as sign-up confirmations and password resets.
Vercel: hosting the app and its short-lived request logs.
Google sign-in: if you choose Continue with Google, Google confirms who you are and shares your name, email address and profile picture with us. We use the name and email for your account; we don’t use the picture. We get no access to your Google account or its data.
Sign in with Apple: if you choose Continue with Apple, Apple confirms who you are and shares your name and email address with us. If you choose Hide My Email, we only see a private Apple address that forwards to your inbox. We get no access to your Apple account or its data. In the iPhone app we also keep a token from Apple so that deleting your account disconnects HelmLife from your Apple ID.
Google (Gemini): the AI features in section 4, only when you use them.
Apple and browser push services: delivering the notifications you turn on, and the App Store for the iPhone app and any purchases made there.
When the law requires it. We share information only when we receive a valid legal request, or when it’s needed to protect someone from serious harm. We share as little as possible and tell you when we’re allowed to.
If HelmLife changes hands. If HelmLife is merged, sold or reorganized, your information stays protected by this policy. We’ll tell you beforehand, and you can delete your account first.
That’s everyone. We don’t sell your personal information, and we don’t "share" it for cross-context behavioral advertising, as California law defines those terms.
6. How We Keep It Safe
Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS), and our database and file storage are encrypted at rest.
Access rules in the database itself make sure each account can read only its own data and what’s been shared with it. Photos are kept in private storage.
Passwords are stored only as secure hashes. Our own access to data is limited to what’s needed to run and fix the Service.
Secret keys, including the one for AI features, stay on our servers and never reach your browser.
A Private note on a Horizon Collection item is encrypted on your device, with a passphrase you choose for that list, before it’s sent to us. We store only the scrambled text: we can’t read it, and we can’t recover it if the passphrase is forgotten. Anyone you give the passphrase to can read the list’s private notes.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we’ll tell you, and the authorities where required, as quickly as the law requires, and explain what happened and what we’re doing about it.
7. How Long We Keep It
Your data is kept while your account is open, so the app keeps working for you.
When you delete something, it’s removed. When you delete your account, your personal data is permanently removed: private lists, entries, logs, photos, Helms and settings. Shared lists you own pass to the longest-standing other member, so the group’s history isn’t lost. Your email is released.
Copies in our providers’ backups roll off on their normal schedule, within about 30 days.
Hosting request logs are kept for a short time, usually days.
8. Cookies and Storage on Your Device
We use only what the app needs. No analytics, advertising or third-party cookies.
Sign-in cookies keep you signed in. They’re sent only over HTTPS and end when you sign out.
Small preferences stored on your device, such as a view you picked or a draft you haven’t sent. These stay on your device.
The app may keep a copy of its own files on your device so it loads quickly and can show a page when you’re offline.
You can clear these in your browser or device settings. Clearing them just signs you out and resets those preferences. Because nothing here is used for advertising or tracking, there’s no cookie banner: there’s nothing to consent to beyond keeping you signed in.
9. Your Rights and Choices
Wherever you live, you can:
See your data: everything we hold about you is shown in the app, with no hidden profile.
Correct it: edit your entries, display name, email and password.
Delete it: delete entries, or your whole account from the profile menu.
Get a copy of your data, or ask any question about it, by contacting us (section 13).
Control sharing: remove people from lists, remove contacts, hide yourself from the leaderboard, and turn notifications off.
Depending on where you live (for example California and other U.S. states, the EU, the UK or Canada), the law gives you further rights, such as to object to or restrict processing, to withdraw consent, and to appeal our decision on a request. We honor these rights, and we won’t treat you differently for using them. We answer requests within 30 days. We may need to confirm it’s really you first. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.
For people in the EU and UK: we process your information to provide the Service you signed up for (contract), to keep it secure and improve it (legitimate interests), with your consent for health information and optional features like notifications and AI, and to meet legal obligations.
10. Where Your Data Is Processed
HelmLife and its providers may process your information in the United States and other countries. Where the law requires, transfers are protected by appropriate safeguards, such as standard contractual clauses.
11. Children
HelmLife is for people aged 16 and over (see the Terms). We don’t knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we’ll delete it.
12. Changes to This Policy
We’ll update this page when HelmLife changes, and the date at the top always shows the latest version. For a significant change, we’ll tell you in the app before it takes effect. We won’t start using your information in a materially new way without telling you first and, where the law requires, asking you.
13. Contact
Questions, requests, or a concern about your privacy: email privacy@helmlife.app, or use Send feedback in the app’s profile menu. Both come straight to us. You don’t need an account to email us. To delete your account right away, use Delete account in the profile menu.