Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2 November 2026

Mother is built to be private by default. It has no accounts, no advertising, and no third-party tracking of any kind. This policy explains exactly what leaves your device, where it goes, and why.

Who we are

Mother is made by Nathan Mallon, a sole trader in New South Wales, Australia (ABN 88 425 254 362). In this policy, "we" and "us" mean that. Contact: [email protected].

What stays on your device

Your weather-station credentials are stored on your device in the iOS Keychain and are used only to fetch your own station's data. They are never transmitted to us or stored on our servers.

Mother has no user accounts. You never give us a name, an email address or a password to use the app.

Location

When you use your current location, your coordinates are sent to the weather providers listed below so they can return a forecast for that place. We don't log or retain your location on our own servers, with one exception described under Notifications. You can revoke location access at any time in iOS Settings; Mother still works using places you've saved manually.

Notifications

If you turn on rain alerts or the daily briefing, the push has to be prepared on a server rather than your device, so a small record is registered with our Cloudflare Worker:

• Your device's Apple Push Notification token — an identifier issued by Apple for your installation of Mother. It isn't your Apple Account and doesn't identify you by name.
• A coarse geographic cell, not your precise coordinates. It is deliberately rounded so it describes an area rather than an address.
• Your notification settings — delivery time, time zone, quiet hours, units and tone.

This is used solely to decide when to send you a notification and what it should say. It is not sold, shared or used for any other purpose. Turning the feature off in Settings unregisters the record, and deleting the app invalidates the token.

AI summaries (Mother+)

Mother+ writes its one-line summaries in the cloud. Forecast figures — temperatures, conditions, rainfall and the place name — are sent to our summary service, which passes them to Anthropic's Claude API. No identifiers, no device token and no account details are included, because there aren't any. Turn the feature off in Settings and nothing is sent; Mother falls back to a summary written on your device.

iCloud sync

Your saved places, station setup and app preferences sync between your own devices through Apple's iCloud, using your personal iCloud account. This data goes to Apple, not to us — we can't see it and have no access to it. It's governed by Apple's privacy policy, and you can turn it off in iOS Settings under your Apple Account.

Weather data providers

Mother requests forecasts, radar and warnings from third parties. A request necessarily tells them the area it's about. The current providers are:

• Apple WeatherKit — the primary forecast source.
• Open-Meteo — fallback forecasts, historical records and marine data.
• RainViewer and OpenWeatherMap — radar and map tile layers.
• Australian Bureau of Meteorology — Australian warnings and radar.
• Your station's own provider (such as Ecowitt) if you connect a personal weather station, contacted with the credentials held on your device.

Each has its own privacy practices, and we don't control them.

Subscriptions

Mother+ purchases are handled entirely by Apple. We receive only the entitlement information needed to unlock paid features. We never see your payment details, card number or billing address.

Analytics

Mother contains no analytics SDK, no crash-reporting SDK and no third-party code libraries of any kind. We don't track you across apps or websites, and the app has no advertising identifier. Apple provides us aggregate, anonymised App Store statistics — downloads and territories — which we cannot link to any individual, and which you can opt out of in iOS Settings under Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements.

This website

If you join the beta here, we store the email address you enter, along with the date and referring page, solely to send you a TestFlight invitation and occasional notes about the beta. We never sell or share it, and we delete it when the beta ends or whenever you ask. Beta distribution runs through Apple TestFlight, under Apple's own terms.

How long we keep things

Notification records live only while the feature is on, and are deleted when you turn it off or remove the app. Forecast figures sent for a summary aren't retained after the summary is written. Beta signup emails are deleted at the end of the beta or on request.

Your rights

Under the Australian Privacy Act, and under the GDPR if you are in the UK or EU, you may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to how it's used. Email [email protected] and we'll respond within 30 days. In practice we hold very little: without an account, the only things tied to you at all are a push token and a beta signup email, if you've opted into either.

Australian users may also complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner; users in the UK or EU may complain to their local data protection authority.

What we don't do

We don't sell your data. We don't build advertising profiles. We don't require an account. We don't track you across other apps or websites.

Children

Mother isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has provided us information, email us and we'll delete it.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, we'll update the date above and note the change in the app's release notes.

Contact

Privacy questions? Email [email protected].