Privacy

Effective July 16, 2026

Forecast Friends is built to know as little about you as possible. Here is everything it stores and how it's used.

What we store

• Your email address — this is your account; there is no separate username or password. Signing in is passwordless: we email you a one-time 6-digit code, and entering it starts a session. We store only hashed versions of those codes and session ids — never the raw values, which live only in your email and on your device — so a database leak can't be used to sign in as you. A session cookie keeps you signed in for about 90 days.
• The people you add — the name you type, the location you type, and the coordinates and timezone that location resolves to. Names are just labels; they don't need to be real names.
• Your current-location card — this card belongs to the device you're reading this on, and its location is stored in that device's own browser storage, not on our server. This website never asks your browser where you are unless you press Use my current location in the location dialog — never in the background, and never on page load. When the card is drawn we send its place (or coordinate) along to look up the forecast, and we forget it as soon as the page is served. The iPhone app follows its own location when you have that turned on; the two never overwrite each other. The website has no push notifications, so it never needs to keep your location — weather alerts for this card are simply shown on it when you open the page. (Pushed alerts that follow you are an app feature: the app shares this device's location only when you switch on current-location alerts or rain alerts, and only then — on iPhone via low-power background updates, on Android only while the app is open.)
• Display settings — units, time format, theme, and view toggles like tides.
• Subscription status — if you subscribe to Premium, Apple handles the entire payment; we never see your payment details. We store only your plan, when it runs out, and an Apple transaction identifier so renewals reach the right account. On the free plan we also count how many cartoons and maps you view each day, to apply the free limits.
• Weather alerts — which cards you've turned alerts on for, how severe a warning has to be before we send it, and your quiet hours.
• Generated cartoons — cached temporarily (hours, not weeks) so they don't need to be redrawn on every view.
• The launch waitlist — if you put your email into the homepage's Notify me form, we store that address for one purpose: emailing you when the apps launch. It isn't shared, isn't used for anything else, and joining the waitlist doesn't create an account. Want off it? Write to hello@ffweather.com.

All of this is stored with Cloudflare, which hosts the site. Your browser also keeps a local copy of the dashboard, your settings, and your current-location card so the app opens instantly. Signing out clears all three.

What we don't do

• No advertising, no trackers, no analytics scripts.
• No selling or sharing of your data with anyone.
• No passwords — signing in is a one-time code emailed to you, so there's nothing to remember or leak.
• No background location tracking — your location is only ever used while you have this site or the app open, and this site only ever asks for it when you press the button.

Third-party services

• Cloudflare hosts the site and stores its data. Like any web host it handles your IP address in order to deliver each request. We don't store it, and we don't use it for analytics.
• Apple Weather provides forecasts. Only coordinates are sent — never names.
• Google provides the air quality and pollen readings (Maps Platform's Air Quality and Pollen APIs). Only coordinates are sent — never names.
• U.S. National Weather Service (weather.gov) provides the government warnings behind severe-weather alerts. We request alerts by coordinate — never names — and no other personal data is sent. Its data is public.
• U.S. Naval Observatory provides moonrise and moonset times. Only coordinates are sent — never names. Its data is public.
• NOAA (tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov) provides tide predictions for coastal locations. We request them by tide station — chosen from NOAA's public station list on our own server — so NOAA never receives your coordinates, let alone names. Its data is public.
• Xweather (Vaisala) supplies the radar, satellite, and other layers on the map view. Map tiles are fetched through our server by map coordinates derived from a location — never names.
• Apple Maps resolves the location text you type into coordinates, and turns your current-location card's coordinates back into a place name (reverse geocoding). Zippopotam and Open-Meteo are used only as fallbacks.
• Google (Gemini API) generates the forecast cartoons. It receives only a description of the weather, the place, and the cartoon animal starring in it — never your email or anyone's name. Generated images are not used to train anything by us.
• Pushover delivers operational alerts to the site owner only — for example, a heads-up when someone signs in for the first time. Those owner notifications may include the email address that just signed in. This is not used to message you.
• Apple Push Notification service delivers weather alerts to the iPhone app. So they can reach your phone, the app registers an anonymous push token with our server; it's removed when you sign out or delete your account. The website has no push notifications.
• Cloudflare Turnstile protects the app from bots. It runs invisibly for almost everyone, may set a cookie, and evaluates device signals under Cloudflare's privacy policy. We also set one cookie of our own after verification so you aren't re-checked for a couple of hours.

Deleting your data

You can permanently delete your whole account yourself — no email required. Open Settings and choose Delete account, then type your email to confirm. This immediately and irreversibly removes everything tied to your account: every friend you added, your settings, your weather-alert preferences, any current-location coordinates saved before that card moved onto your devices, the iPhone app's push token, your subscription record and free-usage history, your place on the launch list, and all of your active sign-in sessions across every device. It also clears the local copy — including this device's current-location card — from the browser you delete it in. Already-drawn cartoon images sit in a short-lived cache that isn't tied to your account; they are not linked back to you and expire on their own within hours.

Deleting your account does not cancel a paid subscription. Subscriptions are billed by Apple, not by us, so we can remove our record of yours but we cannot stop the charges — cancel it in your Apple account, under your name in Settings, before or after deleting. If you subscribe again or sign up with the same email later, the App Store restores the subscription you already paid for automatically.

Smaller steps, if that's all you need: removing a friend deletes their entry; signing out ends the session on that device, clears its cached dashboard and current-location card, and — on the iPhone app — removes its push token and stops sharing this device's location for alerts. For anything else, email hello@ffweather.com.

Changes

If Forecast Friends adds new services or changes how your data is handled, this page will be updated before those changes take effect.