Rowlight is a crochet and knitting pattern companion for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. It's made by Rowlight, a small independent software studio in Virginia, USA ("we", "us"). This policy explains what happens to your information when you use the Rowlight app and the rowlight.app website.
The short version
- Your patterns, projects, counters, notes and markup stay on your devices and in your own private iCloud. We can't see them.
- There are no Rowlight accounts, no ads and no tracking. We don't sell or share personal information.
- The app sends a small amount of anonymous usage analytics, such as "a counter was advanced" or "a pattern was imported". This data can't be linked back to you, and you can turn it off in Settings.
- Apple handles all purchases. We never see your payment details.
1. Your patterns and projects: on device and in your iCloud
Everything you create or import in Rowlight is stored on your device. That includes PDFs and images of patterns, project details, designer credits, counters, every count you tap, notes, Apple Pencil markup and session times.
If iCloud is turned on for Rowlight, this data also syncs between your devices through Apple's CloudKit private database. That database belongs to your Apple Account. Apple stores it under its own privacy policy, and the developer has no access to its contents. We can't read, copy, restore or delete your Rowlight data, and we never receive your pattern files.
Rowlight never uploads your patterns anywhere else. No server, no "cloud AI", no sharing service, no pattern library.
2. Anonymous usage analytics (TelemetryDeck)
To find out which features help and where the app breaks, Rowlight uses TelemetryDeck, a privacy-focused analytics service. TelemetryDeck GmbH, Von-der-Tann-Str. 54, 86159 Augsburg, Germany, processes the data on our behalf, on servers in the European Union.
What the app sends. Short event names ("signals") about how the app is used:
- App events: app launched, onboarding finished or skipped, sample pattern opened, pattern imported (file type only), project created, archived or finished.
- Counting events: a counter was advanced or undone, and where the tap came from (phone, iPad, Watch or Live Activity), a repeat or reminder was set up, highlight band used.
- Purchase-flow events: paywall shown, trial started, purchase completed or restored. These record that the event happened; price and payment details are handled by Apple and never sent.
- Reliability events: sync succeeded or failed (an error code, no content), and how long a screen took to load.
- Device context: app version, OS version, device model family (for example "iPhone" or "Apple Watch"), language and region setting, and whether accessibility settings such as larger text are on.
- Time: when each signal was sent.
What the app never sends: pattern files or their text, project names, designer names, notes, counts tied to a named project, your name, email, Apple Account, contacts, location, IP-based identity, or any advertising identifier.
No identifier that points to you. The TelemetryDeck SDK uses a random identifier that is created for each app installation. It is hashed (one-way scrambled) on your device before anything is sent, and TelemetryDeck adds its own salt again on receipt. We see only anonymous, aggregated counts, such as "how many installs used the Watch app this week". We can't look up a person, and we don't combine this data with any other data set. TelemetryDeck doesn't store IP addresses and uses no cookies or tracking technology.
How to opt out. Open Rowlight → Settings → Privacy and turn off Share anonymous usage data. The app stops sending signals immediately. Opting out doesn't change any feature.
We keep analytics only as long as they're useful for improving the app. TelemetryDeck's own privacy policy is at telemetrydeck.com/privacy.
3. Purchases
Rowlight Pro is sold through the App Store as an annual subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase. Apple processes the payment, so we never receive your name, payment card or billing address. Apple gives the app a receipt that shows which Pro features are unlocked; that check runs on your device. Apple's privacy policy covers purchase data.
4. Crash reports
If you've chosen to share analytics with app developers in your device's settings (Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements), Apple may give us anonymous crash reports. Apple controls that setting and that data.
5. Things Rowlight doesn't do
- No Rowlight account, sign-in or profile.
- No advertising and no advertising SDKs.
- No tracking across other companies' apps or websites, so Rowlight never asks for App Tracking Transparency permission.
- No selling or "sharing" of personal information, as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines those terms.
- No sending of your patterns or notes to AI services.
- Designer and shop links open in Safari or your default browser. What happens there is covered by that website's privacy policy.
6. App Store privacy label
On its App Store privacy label Rowlight declares "Data Not Linked to You", with these types:
- Usage Data → Product Interaction (purpose: Analytics)
- Identifiers → Device ID (purpose: Analytics)
- Diagnostics → Other Diagnostic Data, for sync-error signals (purpose: Analytics)
All three are marked "not used for tracking".
Why not "Data Not Collected"? Apple counts data as "collected" when it leaves the device and is kept longer than it takes to answer a request in real time. Anonymous analytics stored by TelemetryDeck meets that definition, even though it's anonymous. Apple also asks developers to declare the anonymous per-install identifier TelemetryDeck uses. So the honest label is "Not Linked to You", not "Not Collected". Your patterns and projects in your private iCloud aren't on the label. They're stored by Apple on your behalf, and we have no access to them.
If you turn off anonymous usage data, the app collects nothing at all.
7. Children
Rowlight is a general-audience app. It isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from children. The app has no accounts or sign-ups, and the only data it sends is the anonymous analytics described above. A parent or guardian can turn analytics off in Settings at any time.
8. Your choices and your data
Your Rowlight data lives in places you control, so you can see, export and delete it yourself without asking us.
- Export: open a project, then tap Export to save a
.rowlightbackup file (project details, counters and attached files) or your counters as text. - Delete a project: open the project, then tap Delete Project. The deletion syncs to your other devices.
- Delete all Rowlight data:
- In iCloud, on iPhone or iPad: open Settings, tap your name, then iCloud → Manage Account Storage (on some versions, Storage). Tap Rowlight, then Delete Data from iCloud.
- On a Mac: System Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage → Rowlight → Delete from iCloud.
- Delete the Rowlight app from each iPhone and iPad (touch and hold the icon, then tap Remove App → Delete App). Delete it from your Apple Watch too: in the Watch app on iPhone, open My Watch → Rowlight, then turn off Show App on Apple Watch. Deleting the app removes the data stored on that device.
- Deleting iCloud data is permanent. Export anything you want to keep first.
- Analytics: turn off Share anonymous usage data in Rowlight's Settings. Because analytics data is anonymous, we can't find or delete one person's signals. There's no way to tell which signals are yours.
If you're in the EU, UK or EEA (GDPR). We process anonymous analytics based on our legitimate interest in keeping the app reliable and useful (GDPR Article 6(1)(f)). You can object at any time by turning analytics off. You have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or port personal data, and to complain to your local data protection authority. In practice, we hold no personal data about you that we could identify. Write to us anyway and we'll explain what we can.
If you're in California or another US state with a privacy law (such as Virginia's VCDPA). We don't sell personal information, "share" it for cross-context behavioral advertising, or use it for profiling. You have the right to know, delete and correct personal information, and you won't be treated differently for using those rights.
9. Security
Data on your devices is protected by Apple's device encryption and your passcode. CloudKit data is protected by Apple's iCloud security; if you've turned on Advanced Data Protection, it's end-to-end encrypted. Analytics are sent over encrypted connections (HTTPS).
The rowlight.app website and beta list
This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics, ads or third-party scripts. Its fonts are served from rowlight.app itself.
If you join the TestFlight beta list, we store your email address, the time you joined, your browser’s user-agent string (for example “Safari on iPhone”, which helps us spot automated sign-ups) and which form you used. That entry is kept in Cloudflare Workers KV, part of Cloudflare, Inc., which hosts this site. We use your email only to send the beta invitation and one note when Rowlight launches. We don’t share it, sell it, or add it to a newsletter.
To keep the form from being abused, your IP address is checked against a short-lived rate limit. It isn’t stored with your entry. Cloudflare processes standard connection data, such as IP addresses, to deliver and protect the site, under its own privacy policy.
To be taken off the list, email support@rowlight.app from that address and we’ll delete your entry within seven days. We delete the whole list once it’s no longer needed for the beta and launch.
10. Changes to this policy
If we change how Rowlight handles data, we'll update this page and the effective date above. If the change is significant, such as collecting a new type of data, we'll also say so in the app's release notes before or when it takes effect. We'll never start collecting your pattern content.
11. Contact
Questions or requests: support@rowlight.app
Rowlight, Virginia, USA