Privacy policy

Last updated 4 November 2026

Halo Cooking Book is the website at halocookingbook.co.uk, the halo cooking book app for iPhone and Android, and the Halo cooking book extension for Chrome. It's run by Oscar Layzell in the United Kingdom, who is responsible for your information. For anything about your information, email [email protected].

The short version: we keep what's needed to run your cookbook, we never sell it, and there are no adverts or trackers.

What we keep

• Your account: your email address, and the first name and picture you add for friends to see (your picture is one of your own recipe photos).
• Your cookbook: the recipes you save and the links they came from, photos you add, and what you do with them: ratings, tags, stars, portions, pins, wine pairings and bottles you keep.
• Shopping and prices: your trolley and shopping list, and the items, prices and shops read from receipts you upload. The receipt itself is read and not kept.
• My day: what you add to My day and the cooks you plan, with their calories and nutrition.
• Friends: who you're friends with, recipes you send and receive, and email addresses you invite.
• Subscription: whether you subscribe, when it renews and whether it was through our website, the App Store or Google Play. We never see your card details.
• Subscribe page visits: which subscribe prompt brought you to the subscribe page, which plan you picked and whether you went on to subscribe, so we can make the page clearer. Kept for a year, never shared.
• Pages visited: which kinds of page you open (for example "a recipe", never which recipe), the website that linked you here and any campaign tag in the link, so we know what gets used. Kept for a year, never shared.
• Limits and fixes: how much of your weekly AI allowance you've used, how many PDFs and recipes you've sent each day, and links that failed to save, so we can make saving better.
• On your device: sign-in cookies, settings remembered on that device, and, if you allow notifications in the app, a code that lets us send them to your phone.

Why we use it

• To run your cookbook and show it on your devices (this is the service you asked for).
• To send the emails you ask for: sign-in codes, recipe PDFs and invites to friends.
• To take payment for a subscription, and to keep the weekly and daily limits fair.
• To keep the service safe and fix problems.

We don't sell your information, show adverts, or use it to track you around the web.

AI

Some features use AI from Anthropic (Claude): pasting a recipe, saving one from a photo, reading a receipt, estimating nutrition, working out a cost, the quick calorie estimate, and Mike's wine pairing, which also searches the web for bottles. When you use one, the text, photos or recipe it needs are sent to Anthropic to read. Anthropic's terms for businesses say it doesn't use this to train its AI. Saving a recipe from a link doesn't use AI.

Who helps us run it

These companies handle information for us, only to provide their part of the service:

• Supabase: our database, sign-in and photo storage.
• Vercel: hosts the website.
• Anthropic: the AI features above.
• Jina AI: when a recipe site turns our server away, the link is fetched through Jina Reader. Only the link is sent.
• Resend: sends our emails.
• Stripe: takes payment for subscriptions bought on our website.
• Apple, Google and RevenueCat: handle subscriptions bought in the app. RevenueCat sees your purchases and an account number, not your email.
• Expo: delivers app updates and the app's notifications.

Some of them store or handle information outside the UK, for example in the United States. Where they do, they use the safeguards UK data protection law requires.

Chrome extension

The extension only acts when you ask it to. When you save a recipe, it sends the recipe parts of that page and its address to your cookbook. On a supermarket's site it types the item you're finding into the site's search bar, and Got it ticks the item off your Trolley. After that search it reads the prices per kg shown on the results, on your computer, to light up the cheapest, and sends them nowhere. It doesn't read your basket, orders or browsing history. The details are on the extension's page.

What friends and others see

Friends see your first name and picture, and the recipes you send them. When you share a recipe by link, anyone with the link can see that recipe, your first name and your picture, until you switch the link off on the recipe.

How long we keep it

For as long as you have an account. You can delete your account in the app (My account, then Delete my account), or email [email protected] and we'll do it for you. That removes your recipes, photos, prices and everything else straight away, apart from copies in our providers' backups, which are cleared on their normal schedule. Payment records are kept by Stripe, Apple or Google for as long as the law requires.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your information, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to how we use it. Email [email protected]. If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Cookies

We only use cookies and device storage that the site needs: to keep you signed in and to remember your settings on that device. No advertising or analytics cookies.

Children

Halo Cooking Book isn't meant for children under 13.

Changes

If this policy changes we'll update this page and its date, and email you about anything important.