Privacy Policy for gote

Last updated: 8 August 2026

gote is a species-identification flashcard game for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, built on the public iNaturalist API. This policy explains what it stores, what leaves your device, and how to delete it.

The short version: you can use gote without an account, and by default nothing you do is sent to us. Everything below describes features you switch on yourself.

What gote stores on your device

Kept locally, in the app’s own storage. It never leaves your device unless you turn on Sync across devices.

• The iNaturalist username you enter, and a cached copy of that account’s public observations (photos, species names, dates, locations as provided by the API)
• Your gameplay statistics: rounds played, answers right and wrong, per-species tallies, accuracy history, and your daily streak
• Your preferences: language for species names, theme, and the game filters
• The species you’ve flagged (marked to revisit), per account
• A cache of photo files, so cards work offline

Deleting the app deletes all of it. You can also clear statistics at any time in Settings ▸ Reset statistics.

What gote sends, and to whom

iNaturalist (always)

To fetch cards, gote requests public data from api.inaturalist.org: the observations of the username you entered, taxon information, look-alike species, and — for Nearby species — the species commonly observed near a location you choose. Photos are downloaded from iNaturalist’s image servers.

These are ordinary web requests, so iNaturalist receives your device’s IP address and the query itself, as any website would. gote does not send them your identity, and gote has no account system of its own for this. iNaturalist’s handling of that data is covered by their Privacy Policy.

gote reads only public observations. It cannot see private or obscured records, and it never writes anything to iNaturalist.

Sync across devices (only if you turn it on)

If you enable Settings ▸ Devices ▸ Sync across devices, your gameplay data is stored on servers operated by Supabase on our behalf, so your devices can share one set of statistics.

What is stored there:

• An account identifier — a random ID, not linked to your name
• Your gameplay history, round by round: for each round the number of cards answered and got right, the date in your local calendar, which species you got right or wrong, and — when you pick the wrong option in a multiple-choice round — which look-alike species you confused for which. Since version 2.37.4 it also records, per species, when you last answered it and how long your answers took, so the app can eventually work out what you are about to forget. This is detailed — see “What your synced play history actually contains” below
• Your preferences, the iNaturalist username you entered, and the species you’ve flagged to revisit (kept in step across your devices; the most recent change wins)
• Your email address, only if you choose to link devices. It is used solely to recognise your devices as belonging to the same person. There is no password, and we do not email you anything other than your sign-in codes.

What is not stored there: your photos, your location, your contacts, your device identifiers for advertising, or anything about you beyond the above.

Sync is off unless you turn it on, and the app is fully usable without it.

Location

Nearby species asks for your location so it can find species observed near you. The coordinates are used to make that single request and are not stored on our servers or shared with anyone. You can decline the permission and pick a place manually instead; every other part of gote works without location access.

What gote does not do

• No advertising, no ad identifiers, no ad networks
• No tracking across other apps or websites, and no data sold or shared with data brokers
• No third-party analytics SDK in the app, and no profiling of you for marketing, recommendations or any purpose other than showing you your own statistics. The website counts visits — see “About this website” below
• No account required to use the app

To be clear about what that last point does not mean: with sync on, the record of your play is detailed. See below.

What your synced play history actually contains

If you enable sync, it is worth understanding what is being stored, because “gameplay statistics” is vaguer than the reality.

Every round you finish is stored as its own row: how many cards you answered, how many you got right, the calendar date, which species you got right or wrong, and — for wrong multiple-choice answers — which look-alike species you picked instead of the right one (so the app can point out pairs you tend to mix up). Individual answers played on the Apple Watch are stored the same way. Nothing is aggregated away — the history is kept round by round, because your statistics, accuracy chart and streak are calculated from it.

Since 2.37.4, each species also carries when you last answered it and how long your answers took — kept as a total and a count, so what is stored is an average rather than a log of individual response times. It exists so a future version can resurface a species just before you would forget it, which needs to know both when you last saw it and how confidently you knew it. Nothing in the app reads it yet. Answers that took more than a minute are discarded rather than recorded, because at that point the number describes an interruption rather than you.

The short notes you write on the “Species you mix up” comparison screen (your own reminder of how to tell two look-alikes apart) are stored with the same account data. If you turn on sync, they are backed up and kept in step across your devices, alongside your other settings; the most recent edit of each note wins. If you don’t use sync, they stay on your device only. Either way they are free text you chose to write and are never shared with anyone else.

Taken together that is a detailed picture of what you studied and when: which species you struggle with, and every day you played. It is tied to your account identifier, and to your email address if you linked devices.

It exists for one reason — so the app can show you your own progress on all of your devices, and work out what to put in front of you next. It is not sold, shared, or used to profile you for advertising, recommendations, or anything outside the app, and nobody outside gote’s own service has access to it.

To be exact about the timing data above, since “we build no model of you” would be the easy thing to write and would not be true: the app does model one thing, which is how well you know each species, in order to decide what to show you. That model is yours, lives in your own account, and is never used to target, rank, or describe you to anyone. If that is more than you want stored, do not turn sync on; the app is fully usable without it, and everything stays on your device. If you already turned it on, Delete synced account removes all of it.

About this website

Everything above describes the app. This section is about goteapp.com, the site you are reading this on — a static site with no accounts, no logins and no comments.

It uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits, so we can tell whether anyone is finding the site. It is used instead of the usual analytics products for a specific reason: it sets no cookies and builds no identifier that follows you between sites or between visits. That is also why this site shows you no cookie banner — there is nothing to ask you to consent to.

What it records is aggregate and about the page, not about you: which pages were loaded, which site referred you, rough country, and browser/device type, plus page-loading speed. It cannot tell us who you are, cannot follow you to other websites, and there is no profile of you anywhere in it. We see totals, never individuals. Nothing you do on this website is connected to your app data or to a synced account — the two are entirely separate.

The App Store and Google Play buttons are ordinary links; we do not track clicks on them.

Deleting your data

• On your device: Settings ▸ Reset statistics clears your gameplay data. Deleting the app removes everything, including the cache.
• On the server: Settings ▸ Devices ▸ Sync across devices ▸ Delete synced account permanently deletes your account and every row associated with it, including your email address if you linked one. This is immediate and cannot be undone. Your statistics on the device you are holding are kept, so you can keep playing; use Reset statistics as well if you want those gone too.

You do not need to contact anyone to delete your data, but if something isn’t working you can reach us at the address below.

Children

gote is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from them. It requires no account to play, and the only personal information it can ever hold is an email address you choose to provide.

Data retention

Synced data is kept until you delete your account. If you never turn on sync, there is nothing on our servers to retain.

Where data is processed

Sync data is stored by Supabase in the region chosen for the project. If you are in the EEA or UK, your data may be processed outside your country. You can avoid this entirely by not enabling sync.

Your rights

Depending on where you live you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete your personal information, and to withdraw consent. The Delete synced account button covers deletion immediately; for anything else, contact us.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the updated version will be published here with a new date, and significant changes will be noted in the app’s changelog.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or a request about your data: milder.spilled.9d@icloud.com

(The same address the app uses for feedback and bug reports, under Settings → Send feedback.)

Source code: https://github.com/turbolya/gote

gote is an independent, unofficial app. It is not created by iNaturalist, the California Academy of Sciences, or the National Geographic Society.