Draft awaiting review: this text may still change before launch.
Privacy policy
Last updated: 15 October 2026
This policy says what data Merryl processes, why, with whom, for how long, and how to exercise your rights. It complements the terms of use.
1. Who is responsible
The data controller is Merryl's publisher: JumpBeyondStars, that is Jean-Baptiste Schmidt, a French sole trader (entrepreneur individuel, EI), SIREN 923 577 613. For any question about your data, write to support@merryl.app.
2. What Merryl collects, and why
Your account
Email address, password (only its hash, and only if you choose one), Google or Apple identifier, handle, display name, bio, avatar.
Why: create your account, sign you in, send you the account's emails (sign-in, change of address, deletion).
Legal basis: performance of the contract.
Your tastes and constraints
Diets, allergies and intolerances, priorities (for example "low salt"), cuisines and ingredients you like or avoid, cooking time, servings, calorie targets, goal (lose, keep or gain weight) and activity level.
Why: tailor recipes, ideas of the day and menus.
Legal basis: your explicit consent for allergies, intolerances, diets and goals, which may say something about your health: you give them if you want, and you can remove them from your profile at any time. Performance of the contract for the rest.
Your learned preferences
A score per ingredient and per cuisine, which changes with the ratings you give and the recipes you generate.
Why: suggest recipes that suit you.
Legal basis: the legitimate interest of useful suggestions. You can object (part 7).
What you do in Merryl
Recipes (written, imported, dictated, generated, remixed), photos, weekly menus, shopping lists, favourites, history of recipes viewed and cooked, ratings and reviews, meal diary.
Why: run the service.
Legal basis: performance of the contract.
What you share
Public or unlisted recipes, cooked dishes, comments, likes, follows, reports, blocks.
Why: sharing between members, and moderation.
Legal basis: performance of the contract, and the legitimate interest of a safe space.
Your dictations
The sound is sent to be transcribed, then kept nowhere; only the recipe you save is. Recordings stay in the app's cache on your phone.
Why: write or edit a recipe by voice.
Legal basis: performance of the contract.
Your subscription
Plan, status, dates, the store's purchase identifier. Never your card, which only the store sees.
Why: manage Merryl+.
Legal basis: performance of the contract.
Your notifications
Your phone's notification token, its language, and the notifications you chose.
Why: send you the notifications you turned on.
Legal basis: your consent, which you withdraw in Settings or on your phone.
Usage statistics
The screens opened and the actions taken, with an installation identifier and your account's identifier. Never what you write.
Why: understand what is useful, and improve Merryl.
Legal basis: your consent. You are asked once, when you first enter the app: nothing is sent before your "Yes". What you do before answering stays on your phone, sent if you say yes, erased if you refuse. You change your mind in Settings ("Help improve Merryl").
Error and bug reports
Technical trace, phone model and system, app version, language, screen; your description and the steps you tick when you report a bug.
Why: find and fix errors.
Legal basis: the legitimate interest of an app that works.
Technical logs
Address called, response, your account's identifier, app or browser used.
Why: the security and proper running of the service.
Legal basis: legitimate interest.
Connected apps (ChatGPT, Claude)
When you allow an assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude to add recipes to your notebook, Merryl keeps that authorization (the assistant, the date, what it may do) and a hash of the tokens it receives. The assistant sends Merryl the recipe you ask it to save: its title, ingredients, steps, times and servings. If you ask it to add a photo to a recipe, it also sends the image, whether it created it or you gave it: Merryl keeps it as the recipe's photo, like a photo sent from the app. Merryl never receives your conversation.
In return, Merryl sends the assistant what concerns the recipe it has just saved, or the recipe in your notebook it adds a photo to, and that recipe alone: a short confirmation sentence, the recipe's link and identifier, its title, description, visibility, servings, preparation and cooking times, difficulty, category, number of ingredients and steps, the address of its photo if it has one, and its language. ChatGPT uses them to show the recipe as a card in the conversation. When a request fails, Merryl sends back an error message, which may name the title of the recipe concerned. Merryl sends back nothing else from your account: not your other recipes, not your profile, not your email address.
To sign you in, the Merryl page the assistant opens receives your email address, and your password or a code sent by email, or your Google identifier. The assistant itself only receives access tokens, which give it neither your email address nor your password.
Why: save in your notebook the recipes you ask the assistant to put there, privately, and their photos.
Legal basis: performance of the contract, at your request. Your conversation with the assistant is processed by its publisher (OpenAI for ChatGPT, Anthropic for Claude), under its own policy.
Without an account
A random identifier, kept on your phone.
Why: count your free tries.
Legal basis: the legitimate interest of preventing abuse.
Merryl collects neither your location, nor your contacts, nor your advertising identifier, nor your weight, height or date of birth. Merryl shows no advertising and does not sell your data.
3. What others see
- Signed-in members see your profile: handle, display name, bio, avatar, counts (recipes, followers, following), year you joined, level and badges.
- A public recipe is visible to members, and on a web page open to everyone that search engines may index, with your handle. An unlisted recipe can be read with its link, without being indexed. A private recipe is visible to you only.
- Your comments, dishes and reviews are visible with your handle or your name.
- On a shared shopping list, the other participants see your name and what you ticked. A list's share link opens a page for whoever has it.
- A member you block no longer sees what you publish.
4. Merryl and artificial intelligence
To write recipes, read a link, a screenshot or a video, transcribe a dictation, translate and moderate, Merryl sends artificial intelligence services what they need: your constraints and tastes (including your allergies, to avoid them), and the text, image, video or sound to read. Your email address and your name are not sent to them. These services process this data on the publisher's behalf, under their business terms [check for each contract that the data is not used to train their models, and how long it is kept].
Generated recipes you do not keep are erased after one day.
Merryl asks for your agreement before the first action that would send your data to these services: generating recipes, importing a link, a screenshot or a video, dictating a recipe, editing a recipe by voice or in writing, publishing a recipe, a dish or a comment, a review or a photo on a recipe, or changing what others see of your profile (name, handle, bio, photo). You answer once, for the version of the question you see: "Not now" or "Yes, I agree". Your answer covers your whole account, on all your phones.
Without that agreement, you cannot start these actions. The following stay open: your notebook, writing your recipes by hand, cooking mode, shopping lists, reading the feed, and recipes already generated.
You can change your mind at any time in Settings, Privacy. Withdrawing your agreement counts as a refusal: the next actions are refused. What has already been sent is not taken back; each provider's retention period is given above. If the list of providers or of the data sent changes, Merryl asks you the question again.
This version of the section is dated 15 October 2026.
5. Service providers
| Provider | What it does | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Fly.io | Hosts the API and the database. | Servers in Paris; US company. |
| Microsoft Azure | Stores photos, avatars and encrypted backups. | Netherlands (West Europe). |
| GitHub (Microsoft) | Runs the database backups, encrypted before they are stored. | United States. |
| OpenAI | Writes and translates recipes, transcribes sound, moderates what is published. | United States. |
| Anthropic | Reads recipes from pages, screenshots and dictations; makes suggestions. | United States. |
| Google (Gemini) | Writes recipes as a fallback, reads videos, creates recipe images. | United States. |
| Expo (650 Industries) | Routes notifications and delivers app updates. | United States. |
| Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) | Delivers notifications on Android. | United States. |
| RevenueCat | Manages the Merryl+ subscription, with your account's identifier. | United States. |
| Google Play, Apple | Take the subscription's payment; let you sign in with Google or Apple. | Under their own policies. |
| Grafana Labs | Keeps technical logs and metrics. | [United States today; to move to the European Union before launch] |
| [Sentry, to confirm] | Receives the app's error reports. | [European Union (Germany), to confirm] |
| [email delivery provider: Brevo or Google] | Sends the account's emails. | [to complete] |
| Vercel | Hosts the Merryl team's console. | Servers in Paris; US company. |
When data leaves the European Union, the transfer relies on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses [to check for each provider].
Photos of catalogue recipes and thumbnails of imported videos are shown from their original site (TheMealDB, Spoonacular, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube), which then sees your phone's IP address.
6. How long
- As long as your account exists, your data is kept to run the service.
- When you delete your account (Settings, "Delete my account", or without the app on the Delete your account page, then the link sent by email), it is erased within 72 hours, with everything attached to it: profile, preferences, recipes (private ones too), photos, menus, lists, comments, dishes, likes, follows, blocks, reports and statistics. Remixes other members made of your recipes keep their text, without a link to yours. Deleting the account does not cancel the subscription: cancel it in the store.
- What remains after deletion:
- the cost of artificial intelligence calls, without your identifier;
- the log of the team's decisions (moderation, suspension), with your account's technical identifier, for [period to set], to meet legal obligations and defend our rights;
- the subscription's billing records (the stores' notifications), 13 months;
- database backups, which erase themselves after six months at most;
- technical logs, erased after 14 days;
- deleted files, which the storage keeps for 30 days before erasing them.
- Generated recipes you do not keep: one day.
- Connected apps: until you disconnect them (Settings, "Connected apps") or delete your account. Tokens no longer in use are erased 14 days later. The session of an assistant's sign-in page: 30 minutes.
- Accounts without sign-up: erased with their recipes after 90 days without opening the app.
- Links sent by email (sign-in, change of address, account deletion): 7 days after they expire.
- Usage statistics: 13 months. The cost of artificial intelligence calls loses your identifier after 13 months.
- Error reports: 90 days; bug reports you send: one year.
- Notification receipts: 30 days; ideas of the day: 90 days.
7. Your rights
You have the right to access your data, correct it, erase it, receive it in a readable format, object to its processing or ask for it to be restricted, and withdraw your consent at any time.
- Correct: edit your profile and preferences in the app.
- Erase: Settings, "Delete my account". Without the app: the page merryl.app/account/delete, which sends the same confirmation link to your account's address.
- Withdraw your consent: statistics in Settings ("Help improve Merryl"), notifications in Settings, and your allergies, diets and goals in your profile.
- Take an assistant's access away: Settings, "Connected apps", "Disconnect".
- Receive a copy: "Export my data" in Settings. You receive by e-mail the link to a ZIP archive with all your account's data and your photos, to download within 7 days; you can also open it from the app. Or write to us.
- For anything else, write to support@merryl.app. We answer within one month.
If you believe your rights are not respected, you can complain to the CNIL, the French data protection authority (cnil.fr), or to the authority of the country where you live.
8. Age
Merryl is for people aged [15] and over.
9. Security
Exchanges with Merryl are encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords and the links sent by email are only kept as hashes. Private photos open only through addresses that cannot be guessed. Backups are encrypted. The team's access to data is limited, and its decisions are logged.
10. Cookies and trackers
The app contains no advertising tracker. Merryl's web pages (public recipes, shared lists, these pages) set no cookie. Only the sign-in page an assistant (ChatGPT, Claude) opens sets one, needed to sign you in: it is valid on that page only and expires after 30 minutes. Usage statistics are only sent if you accept them.
11. Changes
This policy may change. You are told in the app about an important change before it applies.