Privacy policy

Effective October 19, 2026

Household is an app for running a home together. The people in a household share tasks, projects, meals, groceries, expenses, vendors and a schedule. This policy explains what information Household collects, how it is used and shared, how long it is kept, and the choices you have.

In this policy, "Household", "we" and "us" mean the operator of the Household app and of tryhousehold.com. It covers the website, the web app (in a browser or added to a phone's home screen) and the Windows desktop app. Using Household is also subject to our terms of service.

1. Information you give us

Your account

Your email address and your name, as you entered it or as the owner who invited you entered it.
If you use a password, it is stored only in hashed form by our sign-in provider. We cannot read it.
If you sign in with Google, the information described in section 3.

What your household adds

Tasks and their schedules, projects and the options you compare (with their links, prices, photos and notes).
Meals, recipes and their ingredients, and grocery items.
Expenses: the amount, what it was for, how it was paid, receipts and whether it has been paid back.
Vendors, including the contact details you enter for the people and businesses who work on your home.
Comments and reactions, day notes, day tags (such as Away or Guest), approval requests and decisions.
Photos and files you attach, such as receipts and PDFs.
Household settings, such as the household's name and time zone, approval rules, aisle order and meal types.

Some of this can be about other people, such as a vendor's phone number. Please add information about someone else only if you are allowed to share it with your household.

Invitations

When an owner invites someone, we store the name, email address and role the owner enters. Household does not send email. The owner sends the invite link themselves, for example in a text message. Each invitation works only for the email address it was made for, and expires if it is not used.

Your preferences

Your notification choices, quiet hours, and when you would like the weekly summary.

Support requests

If you write to us, we keep your message and our reply so we can help you.

2. Information collected as you use Household

The activity record. Household records who added, changed, completed or deleted what, and when, including the values before and after each edit. Your household sees this as Activity and history, and it is how Undo and Restore work.
What you have seen. When you open an item, Household records when you last saw it, to show what is new for you. Other members of your household can see when you last saw an item.
Notifications. If you turn on notifications on a device, we store that device's push subscription (an address at your browser's push service, with encryption keys) and your browser's user agent, the text that names the browser and operating system. We use them only to send notifications to that device. We also keep the notifications we send, with their title and text.
Desktop app updates. The Windows desktop app checks for new versions by sending its version number and Windows platform to our update service.
Technical information. Like any website, our hosting providers receive technical information such as your IP address, the address requested and the time, and keep it in their logs as needed to deliver and protect the service. Our server functions log errors to help us fix them.
Photos. When you add a photo, the app usually shrinks it on your device before uploading it, which also removes details stored inside the photo, such as where it was taken. If a photo cannot be shrunk, the original file is uploaded as it is. On a phone, the photo picker may offer the camera. The app receives only the photo you choose.

What we do not collect

We do not use analytics services, advertising networks, tracking pixels or third-party cookies.
Household does not record who is online or which screen anyone is on.
Household does not ask for your location. The Sunset to sunrise theme works out sunrise and sunset on your device from its time zone.
Household does not read your email, contacts or photo library.

Household's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Continue with Google

If you sign in with Google, Household asks Google only for your basic profile, with the scopes openid, email and profile. Google shares your name, your email address and your profile photo. We use your email address to sign you in to the account with that address. Your Google profile photo is shown as your picture to the members of your household, wherever your name appears. Members' devices load it directly from Google's image servers, so Google may see their IP address, but not which page they are on. Signing in with Google never gives Household access to your calendar.

Connecting Google Calendar

Connecting Google Calendar is optional, and only a household owner can do it. Household asks for these scopes:

openid and email, to know which Google account was connected.
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.events, to see the events on your calendars and to add, change and delete events when someone in your household does that in the app.
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.calendarlist.readonly, to see the list of your calendars so you can choose how each one is used.

Household never asks for full control of your calendars, so it cannot create or delete calendars or change who they are shared with.

What is read. The list of your calendars (each one's name, time zone and your access to it), and on the calendars you choose, each event's title, start and end, whether it repeats, whether it has other guests, its status and type, and its link in Google Calendar. The guest list is read only to tell whether an event has other guests. It is not stored. Household never reads event descriptions, locations, attachments or video call details. It reads events from about 90 days ago to about 400 days ahead.

What is stored and who sees it. For each calendar, an owner chooses how it is used:

Show and edit and Show only: its events are stored with the details above and shown to everyone in your household, owners and managers alike.
Tags only: only the days its events mark, such as Away, are stored, with Google's identifier for each event. Event titles and details are not.
Off: its events are not read.

The connected Google account's email address and its status are shown to the household's owners only.

What is written. Household changes your Google Calendar only on calendars an owner has set to Show and edit, and only when someone in your household adds, changes, deletes or restores an event in the app. It writes the event's title and time, and nothing else. Repeating events and events with other guests cannot be changed from Household, and Household never emails guests about a change.

Staying in sync. Google tells our servers when your calendars change, and our servers also check every 15 minutes.

Your Google tokens. When you connect, Google gives us a token that lets our servers keep your calendars in sync. It is stored encrypted on our servers and used only by our server functions. It is never sent to any browser, phone or desktop app, including yours. The short-lived access tokens made from it are never stored.

Disconnecting. An owner can disconnect a Google account at any time in Settings. Household then stops syncing it, revokes its access at Google (unless the same Google account is still connected to another household), deletes its stored token, and removes that account's calendars, their events and the day tags they made from the app. They are permanently erased from our database 30 days later. Nothing is deleted from your Google Calendar. You can also remove Household's access at any time in your Google Account, at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

Limits on how Google data is used

We use Google user data only to sign you in and to show and update your household's schedule in Household.
We do not sell it, and we do not use it or transfer it for advertising, including personalized or retargeted ads.
We do not use it to decide whether someone is creditworthy or to lend money.
We do not use it to train or improve artificial intelligence or machine learning models. Household does not use artificial intelligence at all.
We transfer it only to the service providers that host Household, as needed to run it, or when the law requires it.
No person at Household reads it, unless you ask us to for support, it is needed for security (such as investigating abuse), or the law requires it.

4. How we use information

To run Household for your household: keeping every member's lists, schedule and changes in step across phones and computers, right away and when a device comes back online.
To send the notifications you choose, such as new items, comments, approval requests and decisions, and the weekly summary for owners.
To apply your household's approval rules.
To keep households separate and secure, prevent abuse, and enforce our terms.
To answer your questions and support requests.
To find and fix problems and keep Household reliable.

We do not sell your information. We do not use it for advertising, and we do not build profiles of you for anyone else.

5. Who can see your information

The members of your household

Household is built for sharing. Everything added to a household is visible to all of its members, owners and managers alike: its lists, schedule, expenses, photos, files, comments and activity, along with each member's name and picture. Nothing in a household is private to one person.

Owners manage the household: its settings, its people and invitations, calendar connections and approval rules. Owners decide approvals and can permanently delete items early. Owners also see the name, email address and role on each invitation.
Managers, such as a house manager, nanny or sitter, see and work with the same lists and schedule, and can ask for approval before spending.
Your notification settings and devices are yours alone.

People in other households cannot see anything in yours. This is enforced by our database on every request, not only by the app's screens.

Service providers

We use a small number of providers to run Household. They process information on our behalf, only to provide their service:

Supabase stores the household's data and files, runs sign-in, our server functions and live updates.
Netlify hosts the website and the app.
Google, if you choose to sign in with Google or connect Google Calendar, as described in section 3.
Your browser's push service delivers notifications to your device, if you turn them on: Google for Chrome and Android, Apple for Safari, Mozilla for Firefox, or Microsoft for Windows. Notification text is encrypted on its way, so the push service cannot read it.

Websites you import recipes from

When you import a recipe, our server visits the web address you gave, so that website sees a request from our server, not from your device. We keep the recipe details you save, such as its name, ingredients and the page's address.

Legal reasons and business changes

We may share information if the law requires it, or if it is needed to protect the safety, rights or property of our users, the public or Household. If Household is ever part of a merger, acquisition or sale, information may be transferred as part of it. We will tell you before that happens, and this policy will keep applying to it.

6. Information kept on your device

Household keeps some information on your device so it opens quickly and works without a signal. It uses your browser's own storage for this, and does not set cookies.

A copy of your household's data, and any changes made while offline that are waiting to be sent.
Recently viewed photos, so they show again without downloading.
Your sign-in session. In the Windows desktop app, it is kept in Windows Credential Manager instead.
This device's settings, such as light or dark appearance. For the Sunset to sunrise theme, the device keeps the approximate coordinates of its time zone, not your location.
Drafts of what you are typing, until the tab or app closes.

The Windows desktop app also remembers its window size and position, and its own settings. It opens at login unless you turn that off in Settings.

When you sign out, Household ends your session on that device and deletes the household's data, photos and drafts from it. If your session ended by itself while changes made offline were still waiting to be sent, they stay on the device until you sign in again, so they are not lost. Settings that belong to the device, such as its appearance, stay.

7. How long information is kept

Deleted items. Nothing is erased the moment it is deleted. A deleted item moves to Deleted, in Activity, where anyone in the household can restore it for 30 days. After that it is permanently erased, with its photos and files. An owner can erase an item sooner.
Unused uploads. A photo or file that was uploaded but never saved with anything is erased after a day.
Your account and household. Your account, your membership, the household's settings, its activity record, its invitations and its notifications are kept for as long as the household exists, or until you ask us to delete them.
Removed members. When an owner removes someone from a household, their access ends right away. What they added stays with the household.
Google Calendar. See "Disconnecting" in section 3.
Logs. Technical logs are kept by our providers for a limited time, then deleted.

8. Deleting your account or household

To delete your account, or a whole household and everything in it, email support@tryhousehold.com from the email address on the account. If you are an owner, tell us whether to delete only your account or the whole household. We will confirm the request with you and then delete the information from our systems within 30 days. Copies in our providers' backups, if any, are erased as those backups expire.

Deleting a household does not delete anything from your Google Calendar.

9. Security

All information travels encrypted between your device and our servers, and our providers encrypt stored data.
Every household is kept apart in the database itself. Each request is checked against the household you belong to and your role.
Photos and files are kept in private storage and shown only through links that expire within an hour.
Passwords are stored only in hashed form, and Google tokens are encrypted and never leave our servers.

No system is perfectly secure. If you think someone has gotten into your account, email support@tryhousehold.com right away.

10. Your choices and rights

You can change most of what your household has added at any time in the app, and restore deleted items for 30 days.
You can turn notifications on or off for each device, choose which ones you receive, and set quiet hours.
An owner can disconnect Google Calendar at any time, and you can remove Household's access to your Google Account in your Google Account settings.
You can ask us for a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete it, by emailing support@tryhousehold.com.

Depending on where you live, you may have more rights under the law, such as the right to know what we hold about you, to object to some uses of it, or to complain to a data protection authority. We will honor these rights as the law requires, and we will not treat you differently for using them. We do not sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising.

11. Children

Household is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, email support@tryhousehold.com and we will delete it.

12. Where information is processed

Our service providers may store and process information in countries other than the one you live in, including the United States. Wherever it is processed, it is protected as this policy describes.

13. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will post the new version on this page with a new effective date. If a change significantly affects how we use your information, we will give notice before it takes effect, on this site or in the app.

14. Contact us

Questions, requests or concerns about privacy: support@tryhousehold.com.