Effective September 25, 2026 · Updated October 9, 2026 for moving your progress
KnowKi is an iPhone app and a web app (knowki.app) made by Garrett Craig. It has no accounts, no advertising or analytics SDKs, and no tracking. This policy explains exactly what the app and its lesson service handle.
Your progress stays on your device: which species you've practiced, your answers and review schedule, your Fieldbook, your settings, and your chosen place. You can delete it any time in Settings → Delete local progress, or by deleting the app. iOS device backups may include it, following your iOS settings.
To build a lesson, the app sends the following to the KnowKi lesson service at api.garrettgcraig.com:
Your daily scores and shared results stay on your phone. Sharing a result uses the iOS share sheet; nothing is posted for you.
None of this includes your name, an account, a device or advertising identifier, or your precise location. The service does not log IP addresses, answers or locations.
To improve lessons, the service keeps anonymous daily totals: how many lessons were started and finished in each group, how many answers reached each question and how many were correct, how long finished lessons took (only in ranges such as 2–3 minutes), how often photos were swapped, and for the daily game how many were opened and how many answers in each round were right, wrong or out of time. To count roughly how many people play each day, the app marks its own first play of the day (and its first play ever) on one request, and the service adds one to that day's total for iPhone or web; nothing identifies the device. These totals contain no identifier, place or individual answer, so they cannot be traced to you. The timing for a single lesson is deleted with the lesson after 24 hours. To limit abuse it keeps short-lived request counts in memory under a one-way hashed form of your network address; these are never written to disk. Lesson questions and area snapshots are deleted after 24 hours.
An iNaturalist username, what you type while searching for one, and what that account has observed are used only to answer that request: the service never keeps, stores or logs them. KnowKi reads only public observations and never signs in or posts for you. Your username and finds are also stored on your phone; Settings → iNaturalist → Disconnect removes them.
To answer a lesson request, the service asks iNaturalist for species recorded in the rounded area or park. Those requests come from the service, not your phone, and contain no information about you.
The service runs on Fly.io, which carries its network traffic under its own privacy policy.
The web app works like the iPhone app and sends the lesson service the same kinds of information listed above. The differences:
Settings → Move your progress copies your progress to another phone or browser without an account. It carries your Fieldbook (each species, one photo of it and how well you know it), your practice trail, your favorites and your lesson count. Your device encrypts all of this before sending it, with a key made from the last eight characters of a one-time code, and those characters never leave your devices. The lesson service stores only the encrypted copy, under the code's first four characters, so it cannot read what you sent. The copy is deleted as soon as your other device picks it up, or after 24 hours if it never does. Nothing that identifies you is attached.
If you use Send feedback in Settings, KnowKi sends what you type, your email address if you choose to add one, and the app or browser and its version to the lesson service. The service files it as an issue in the developer's private GitHub repository, where only the developer can read it, and keeps no other copy. GitHub stores it under its own privacy policy. To have feedback deleted, email the developer.
Location is optional. The app asks for it only when you tap Use approximate location. It rounds the result to a coarse center and discards the precise fix, and it never tracks you in the background. You can always choose a place by name instead.
Searching for a place sends what you type to the lesson service, which looks it up with Photon (an OpenStreetMap search run by komoot) and iNaturalist's place search, as on the web. Those services see the search text from the lesson service, not from you, and the service caches results by search text for up to 30 days, with nothing that identifies you. If the service finds nothing or can't be reached, the app sends the search to Apple Maps instead. The app asks Apple for the nearest town name for the coarse center of your place, and for the state of places saved by earlier versions. Choosing a trip (a country, national park or Best Place) shows Apple Maps satellite imagery zooming in to it. Photo details show the area where the observation was made, rounded to about 1 km, and species pages show a sample of where the species is recorded, rounded to about 10 km. Map imagery loads from Apple, which sees only the area being shown, not you or your place. Apple handles these under its own privacy policy.
Quiz photos load through the lesson service. Opening a photo full screen requests a larger copy the same way. Your phone keeps recently viewed photos in its cache for up to a day, so they open quickly. Credit and source links open iNaturalist, Wikipedia or Creative Commons in your browser.
The app contains no store or affiliate links. This website has a separate field guides page whose book links are Bookshop.org affiliate links: Bookshop.org credits purchases to KnowKi's Nature Books shop, and KnowKi earns a commission. Bookshop.org handles your visit under its own privacy policy.
The iOS app has no donation or payment links. The web app at knowki.app shows an optional Buy me a coffee link in its sidebar and Settings. It opens Buy Me a Coffee in your browser, which handles any payment under its own privacy policy. KnowKi never learns whether or how much you give, and giving unlocks nothing.
After your first lesson you can turn on a daily reminder. It is scheduled on your phone; KnowKi has no push notification server.
KnowKi is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from them. It has no accounts and collects no names or contact details from anyone.
If this policy changes, the effective date above will change, and significant changes will be noted in the app's release notes.
Garrett Craig · garrettgcraig@gmail.com · KnowKi support