Privacy policy

HuntFix Journal · Last updated 26 September 2026

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The short version

HuntFix Journal keeps your record on your phone and, unless you turn it off, mirrors it to your own iCloud — the private storage of the Apple Account already signed in on your phone. I have no account for you and no way to read a single outing of it. The one exception to "no server of mine" is the Claude option, and it is described exactly below.

These are the words the app is built to, and they are not widened anywhere else on this site:

Five things involve the network, and every one of them is named below: your iCloud backup, the day's weather from Apple, the map Apple draws, the LINZ Topo map if you add your own key, and Claude, when you choose it in the Ask tab.

This is a different app from HuntFix, with a different privacy policy. HuntFix is at huntfix.app/privacy. If you own both, read both — the record HuntFix Journal keeps is far larger, and it is the one with an AI option attached to it.

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Who this is from

HuntFix Journal is made by one person, in New Zealand. I hunt and fish the South Island, I keep this record of my own seasons, and the app exists because I wanted the book kept properly.

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What HuntFix Journal records

Only what you log, and what the phone can work out from it:

• Outings — the date, the start and finish times, the activity, where you started, who you were with, and your note
• Entries — the species, whether it was taken or seen, how many, the time, the position and how accurate it was, and for fish the length, weight, method and bait
• Photographs you take or pick, up to six per entry, kept with the entry
• A reference to a video, if you attach one — the clip itself stays in your Photos library
• Spots and areas you name, and the people you name as companions
• Conditions the phone works out from the time and the place: sunrise, sunset, twilight, light phase, moon phase and illumination
• The day's weather, if there was signal — the high and low, one word for the sky, and the wind
• Anything else you type: notes, and the optional licence or permit note

A value that was not recorded is left empty and shown as "—". The app never fills in a number it does not have, and a blank day is a real record with nothing in the bag, not a gap.

Where it is stored

In a database inside the app on your phone. Photographs are part of that database rather than your photo library, and are deleted with the entry they belong to. HuntFix Journal never writes anything to your photo library.

The iCloud backup

Unless you turn it off, that database is also mirrored to your iCloud, so losing or replacing a phone does not lose your seasons.

• It is your iCloud, not a service of mine. The copy lives in the private database of your own Apple Account, held by Apple, counting against your own iCloud storage, under Apple's privacy policy. There is no account to create and no server of mine involved at any point.
• I cannot read it. Not the outings, not the photographs, not the coordinates, not a count of them. A developer can see the shape of the data in Apple's console — the names of the fields — and none of its contents.
• Everything in the record goes: outings, entries, photographs, spots, areas, companions, species and conditions.
• Your settings do not go. Region, units, appearance and the backup switch itself stay on the phone that set them.
• You can turn it off in Settings. It takes effect the next time the app opens, and the screen says so rather than pretending it happened at once.
• Settings tells you what actually happened, not what was asked for — whether the store really is mirroring, and why not if it is not. There is deliberately no "last backed up" time, because iOS does not give the app a real one and I would rather show a dash than a plausible guess.
• Nothing ever waits for it. Starting an outing, logging an entry and finishing never wait for iCloud, for the network, or for anything.

The backup file, which is a different thing

You can also write the whole journal to a single file — Settings → Export — and put it wherever you like. It holds every outing, entry, spot, companion and photograph, and it is what restores a season onto a phone that has never seen it. The app never makes one for you and never sends one anywhere.

It is still worth having with iCloud on. iCloud covers the phone going in a river. The file covers what sync cannot: a copy that lives outside Apple, a season handed to somebody else, and getting back an outing you deleted months ago — a deletion syncs too.

What leaves your phone

There is no account to sign in to, and no analytics, no crash reporting and no third-party code of any kind. The app has exactly one piece of networking code of its own, and it is the Claude option below — which is also the only time anything passes through a server of mine.

Five things involve the network. Three of them end at Apple.

Your iCloud backup, described above.

The weather. When an outing starts and when it finishes, the app asks Apple for that day's weather at the outing's position. What goes is a coordinate and a date; what comes back is a high and a low, one word for the sky, and the wind. That is Apple's WeatherKit, under Apple's privacy policy. If there is no signal the outing shows "—" and is complete without it.

The map. The Map tab draws an Apple map, and drawing it tells Apple which part of the world is on screen. HuntFix Journal adds nothing to that request. It is also the only screen that needs a connection — logging, conditions, Insights and the on-device model all work in aeroplane mode.

Topo maps, if you add your own LINZ key. The Map tab can show New Zealand's Topo50 map from LINZ, and save areas of it for use with no signal. Nothing is asked of LINZ until you enter your own free LINZ Basemaps key. After that, each map tile the app fetches tells LINZ which small square of the country it is — so, roughly, which part of New Zealand you are looking at or saving — along with your key and your phone's internet address, as any request does. Nothing from your record goes with it. Saved areas stay on the phone and are not backed up or exported. LINZ's own terms apply to those requests.

The Claude option, which you choose in the Ask tab, and which is described in full in its own section below.

Export and share

Three formats, from Settings → Export, and all three are things you do, one tap at a time:

• JSON backup — everything, photographs included. The most complete thing the app can hand over. Treat the file accordingly.
• CSV — one row per entry, plus a row for every outing that produced nothing, with the conditions flattened. Coordinates are in it.
• GPX — your spots and entries as waypoints, for any mapping app. Coordinates are the point of it.

Nothing is uploaded, there is no default destination, and none of the three is ever locked, whatever you have or have not paid for.

The Ask tab, and the Claude option

The Ask tab lets you ask questions about your own record. There are two ways it can answer, and they are very different in privacy terms. The app tells you which one you are using, on the screen, every time.

On this phone — the default

Apple's on-device model, running on your iPhone. Nothing leaves the phone. The model is given a summary of your record and a set of tools that query the record in memory, and the answer is composed locally. If your iPhone cannot run it, or Apple Intelligence is turned off, the tab says so plainly and offers you the other two options rather than hiding.

Claude — only when you choose it

You can instead have Anthropic's Claude answer — in the free week, and with the subscription. There is no key to find and no account to create: it comes with the app, and I pay Anthropic for it. This is a real feature rather than a loophole, and it is the one place in the app where your data leaves your phone for somewhere other than Apple, so it is worth being exact about it.

• Nothing is sent until you pick Claude in the Ask tab and ask a question. The screen shows which of the two is answering, every time.
• The request goes through a relay of mine, then to Anthropic. The relay is a small server that holds my Anthropic key, so that the key is never inside the app where anyone could take it. It does three things: it checks Apple's signed record that your subscription is active — or, in the free week, that your copy of the app came from the App Store — it counts your questions against the weekly limit, and it passes the request to Anthropic and the answer back to you. Apple's signed record goes with each question so that the relay can check it; it is checked and not kept.
• The relay keeps none of it. It does not store or log your question, the answer, or any part of your record. The only thing it writes down is when you asked. With the subscription, that is the times of your last seven days' questions, kept against the anonymous number Apple gives your subscription and deleted after eight days. In the free week, it is the times of your free questions, kept against the anonymous number Apple gives your download of the app and deleted after about thirteen months — so that deleting and reinstalling the app does not hand them out again. Its logs hold an outcome, a count and a time — never content. It does pass through a server of mine, and I would rather say that plainly than have you find it out.
• Five Claude questions a week. With the subscription that is five in any seven days; the free week comes with five. It keeps the subscription at its price. Apple's on-device model has no limit.
• What is sent, always: the fact sheet. That is the summary of your record — totals by species and year, your rates as counts, hours and outings by spot, area, month, light phase and moon phase, what was seen kept separate from what was taken, your companion totals, your last ten outings one line each, and your region and units.
• What is sent only if you turn on a second switch: the full log. Every outing you have logged, one line each: the date, the activity, the spot, the hours, what you took, what you saw, who was with you, the light and the moon. It is off by default and you turn it on knowing what it does.
• Spot names and companion names are in both. They are what make a question about your own record answerable. If you do not want a place or a person named to Anthropic, do not name them in the app, or do not use this option.
• Coordinates are never sent. Photographs are never sent. Not in the fact sheet, not in the full log, not with the switch on. A spot name carries everything a model needs to reason with and none of the risk a latitude carries.
• Your question, and the earlier questions and answers in the same conversation, go with it, as they would in any chat.
• At Anthropic it is handled under Anthropic's commercial terms for businesses using its API. Their privacy policy is at anthropic.com/legal/privacy.

Switch the Ask tab back to Apple's on-device model and nothing is sent again.

What either answer is allowed to say

Not a privacy matter, but it belongs beside the rest of it: both models are given the same instructions, and both are checked afterwards by the app before the answer reaches you. The app looks for the things it is not allowed to say — "best", "you should", a prediction, or a figure that came from nowhere in your record — and shows you what it found rather than hiding it. An answer the app itself does not trust says so.

Permissions

Location, while using the app. Used to record where an outing and an entry happened, and to suggest which of your spots you are standing in. HuntFix Journal never asks for background location and cannot see where you are while it is closed. A fix older than thirty seconds is treated as no fix at all — the entry stores nothing rather than where you were twenty minutes ago.

Camera. For photographing what you shot or caught, from the entry form. Photographs are never added to your photo library.

Photo library. Only so you can pick a photograph when you are writing up an outing at home, and so a video you attach can be found again. The app reads; it never adds, changes or deletes anything. iOS calls this level of access "read and write" because there is no read-only level — that is Apple's naming, not what the app does.

You can withdraw any of them at any time in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security. Without location, entries are logged without a position and shown as "—"; everything else still works.

What is deliberately not in the app

• No account, no sign-up, no profile, no sharing to anybody else. There is no server to put a leaderboard on and there is not going to be one.
• No analytics. Not a count, not an event, not anonymised. Nothing.
• No seasons, bag limits, licence rules or permit reminders. The app records what you did; it never says what you may do. That is a deliberate exclusion, not an oversight — see the terms.
• No tides, no barometric pressure, no water temperature. Left out on purpose.

Purchase

If you subscribe, Apple handles the entire transaction. I never see your card details, your billing address or your Apple Account. Apple gives me anonymised sales totals — numbers, not people — and nothing in that reporting is connected to anything you record in the app.

The app is free for your first 7 days and then a paid app; the free week is the app's own clock, not an App Store trial. When the free week or the subscription ends, the app stops starting new outings until you subscribe again. It never locks, hides or deletes a single thing you have logged: the record stays readable, export keeps working forever, and the iCloud backup keeps running.

Children

HuntFix Journal is a tool for hunters and anglers and is not designed for or directed at children. It holds photographs of dead animals, because that is what a hunting record is.

Your data is yours

Because I hold none of it, there is nothing for me to hand over, correct or delete on your behalf, and no request you need to make. That stays true with the iCloud backup running: the copy is in your Apple Account, not mine, and with the Claude option: the relay passes your question on and keeps nothing but the times you asked.

Everything is in places you control. On the phone: read it, export it, or remove it by deleting the app. In your iCloud: turn the backup off in Settings. If you have used the Claude option, stop by switching the Ask tab back to Apple's on-device model; anything already sent was handled by Anthropic under its own policy.

If you are in New Zealand, the Privacy Act 2020 applies to me as a New Zealand developer. If you are in Australia, the Privacy Act 1988 applies. In the United Kingdom or the European Union, the UK GDPR and GDPR apply. Under all of them the position is the same: I am not collecting, processing or storing your personal information. The iCloud backup does not change that — the data moves between your phone and your own Apple Account, and I am not a party to it. The Claude option is the one place I am a party: your request passes through my relay for the moment it takes to answer, and Anthropic processes it on my behalf. Nothing from it is kept by me beyond the times you asked.

Changes to this policy

If the app ever changes what it does with data, this page changes with it, before the change ships. The date at the top says when it was last revised.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about anything to do with your data: [email protected]

Anything else — problems, suggestions, or a question about how the app works: [email protected]

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HuntFix Journal keeps the record you give it and shows you the arithmetic. It does not know what is in the next valley, it does not tell you where to hunt, and it does not know the law where you are. Those are yours.