MyVillage Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 2026

MyVillage is a collector’s companion app for miniature Christmas and Halloween villages. This policy explains, in plain language, what happens to your information when you use it. The short version: we collect as little as we can — an email address if you create an account, the collection and layouts you choose to back up, a photo only when you ask us to identify it, and whatever you choose to post in the community. Nothing is sold, nothing is used for advertising, and the app contains no analytics trackers.

Using MyVillage without an account

You don’t need an account to use MyVillage. Browsing the catalog, keeping a collection, planning layouts, identifying pieces with on-device Photo ID, and reading the community all work without one — and in that mode the app collects nothing about you:

• Your collection — the pieces you mark as owned.
• Your layouts — the village plans you arrange in the planner.
• Your photos — when you use Photo ID and confirm a piece, the photo you took or picked is kept with that piece so you can see your own piece, not just a catalog picture.

All of that is stored in the app’s private storage on your phone. If you delete the app, it is deleted with it.

Accounts and backup

If you create a free account — with Sign in with Apple, or with an email address and a one-time sign-in code — we store:

• Your email address (with Sign in with Apple, this may be an Apple private-relay address) and an account ID, so you can sign in.
• Your collection and your layouts — the pieces you own and the village plans you arrange — synced to our database so they are backed up and waiting for you when you sign in on a new device.
• Your display name — the name you pick for yourself in the community. It can be your real name, a nickname, or anything you like; it does not have to be your real name.

Account, database, and hosting services are provided by Supabase. Your synced collection is stored under your account only and is not visible to other users. The photos you attach to pieces in your collection are not uploaded — they stay on your device even when your collection is backed up.

Photo ID

MyVillage identifies pieces two ways:

• On your device: the app compares your photo against catalog photos stored in the app and shows you the closest matches. This happens entirely on your phone. Your photo is never uploaded, and we never see it.
• Cloud Identify: when you ask for a cloud match, the photo you choose is sent over an encrypted connection to our identification service, which uses Google’s Gemini vision AI to compare it against the catalog and read any text in the photo. The photo is used only to answer that one request: it is not kept after the match is made, and — under the Gemini API’s paid-tier terms — Google does not use it to train or improve its AI models.

The app asks for camera and photo-library permission only so you can take or pick the photo you want to identify, or a photo you want to post in the community. You can say no and still use the rest of the app.

The community (the Share tab)

The village square is the one place in MyVillage where other people can see what you share. Posting requires an account. When you post:

• Your post is public within the app. Your photos, your caption, the pieces you tag, and your display name can be seen by anyone who uses MyVillage, including people without accounts. Please don’t post photos that show things you wouldn’t want other collectors to see — house numbers, faces of people who haven’t agreed, or anything else private.
• Your reviews are public too. Reviews you write about pieces show with your display name.
• Reports and blocks. If you report a post or review, we store the report so a moderator can look at it. If you block someone, we store that choice so the app can keep their posts out of your feed. Reports are visible only to our moderation team.
• Moderation. We may remove posts or reviews that break the community rules in our Terms of Use, and we may suspend accounts that keep breaking them. If we remove your content, it is deleted from our servers; copies already seen or saved by other people are outside our control.

A basic automatic word screen checks names, captions, and reviews for a small list of plainly offensive words before posting. It is a first line of defense, not a guarantee.

What the app downloads

MyVillage downloads its catalog — piece names, specifications, prices, and catalog photos — from our database (hosted by Supabase) so the catalog can grow without an app update every time. Like any internet service, our providers’ systems automatically record basic technical information (such as IP addresses) in server logs in order to operate and secure the service.

Deleting your account and data

You can delete your account at any time in the app (Account → Delete account). Deleting your account permanently removes your account, your email address, your display name, your synced collection and layouts, and your community posts and reviews from our database. Collection data and photos stored only on your device are removed when you delete the app. If you have any trouble deleting your account, write to us at the address below and we will take care of it.

What we don’t do

• No advertising, and no advertising or analytics trackers in the app.
• We do not sell or rent personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing. The only services that handle your information are Supabase (hosting, accounts, backup, and the community) and Google (only the identification photos you choose to send), each working on our behalf.
• No tracking of you across other companies’ apps or websites.
• The app is not directed at children.

Changes

If a future version of MyVillage changes any of this, we will update this policy before that version is released, and the app’s App Store privacy label will be updated to match.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or anything you’d like us to delete: [email protected]