Last updated: October 16, 2026
Morel (“the Service”) is operated by Ardent Research, Inc. (“we”, “us”, or “our”). This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use and share it, and the choices you have.
When you create an account, we collect your email address, display name, and profile photo (if you sign in with Google). This is used to identify you on the platform and display your profile.
If you choose to add your phone number — an optional step used to confirm it's really you and to help friends find you — we collect it and send it to our SMS provider, Twilio, to deliver a one-time verification code. Adding a phone number is never required to use the app, and you can skip it or remove it at any time.
If you choose to use the “Find Friends” feature and grant the app access to your contacts, we read your address book on your device and send only the phone numbers — never names or any other contact details — to our server. Each number is hashed and compared against the phone numbers of existing Morel users who verified a phone number.
We keep those hashed numbers so that when someone from your contacts joins Morel, we can tell you. We keep them only for that purpose and to show you people you know on the app. They are stored with our database provider and included in our backups, as described in Section 3, and we share them with no one else. We do not keep names or any other contact details, and we do not keep the numbers themselves in readable form — although a hashed phone number is not anonymous, so we treat them as personal information. Hashed numbers stay until you delete them — you can do that anytime from Settings → Notifications, and deleting your account deletes them too.
Granting contacts access is never required to use the app, and you can revoke it at any time in your device's Settings.
When you check in to a restaurant, we collect your device's precise location (latitude and longitude, from GPS) to verify you are near the restaurant. We also collect photos you upload, dish ratings, and review notes.
If you grant the app the always-on location permission — “Always Allow” on iPhone, “Allow all the time” on Android — we receive location data while the app is not open, so we can remind you to check in. We receive none of it unless you grant that permission, and you can change it at any time in your device's settings.
On iPhone, your device sends us two kinds of data, and works out on its own when you arrived somewhere:
On Android this works differently, and Google is involved. Instead of your device deciding on its own, we ask Google Play services to watch for you arriving at or leaving the restaurants we are interested in, and to tell us whether you are still, walking, or driving. That means Google Play services receives your location and the list of restaurants being watched, and it is Google rather than your own phone that works out that you arrived. What reaches us is the same either way: the place, the times, and how you were moving. See Section 3.
All of this background location data, on either platform, is stored for 90 days and then automatically deleted. It is stored alongside your account so visit reminders can reference your prior check-in history and so you can request a copy of (or deletion of) your data at any time — see Sections 6 and 7 below. If you log a detected visit, we may save its location as the check-in’s location. Separately, when we detect a possible restaurant visit we send that result — the restaurant, roughly how close you were, and how long you stayed — to PostHog, our product-analytics provider (see section 3), where it is kept separately under the analytics retention in section 6 rather than on the 90-day schedule above. The underlying coordinates are not sent to PostHog.
To stop background location collection, change the Morel app’s location permission to something other than always-on. On iPhone that is Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Morel, set to “While Using the App” or “Never.” On Android it is Settings → Apps → Morel → Permissions → Location, set to “Allow only while using the app” or “Don’t allow.” Visit reminders will stop firing. Setting it to “while using the app” leaves everything else working; turning location off entirely also stops check-in verification and walking directions, which need your location at the moment you use them.
If you grant the app the motion permission — “Motion & Fitness” on iPhone, “Physical activity” on Android — we receive a short summary of how you were moving alongside each visit event above. On iPhone your phone does all of the interpreting on-device, using Apple’s Motion & Fitness API. On Android this works differently: Google Play services does that interpreting, so Google is involved rather than only your device. See Section 3. What reaches us is the same either way:
We use this for two things: telling the difference between stopping at a restaurant and walking or driving past one, so we don’t send you a check-in reminder for a place you never entered, and measuring how often that judgement is right so we can improve it.
We do not receive step counts, workouts, distance, pace, floors climbed, raw accelerometer or gyroscope data, the individual readings behind the numbers above, or anything from Apple Health. We never use this data for advertising, profiling, or fitness tracking, and we never sell it.
We store the first label, together with the reminder decision it led to (for example, “skipped, looked like walking past”). Both are kept on the visit record they belong to and deleted on the same 90-day schedule as the location data above. That same label is also sent to PostHog, our product-analytics provider (see section 3), where it is kept separately under the analytics retention in section 6 rather than on the 90-day schedule above. The arrival-window label and its three numbers are used to make that decision and then discarded. They are never written to our database.
To stop motion collection, turn off Morel in Settings → Privacy & Security → Motion & Fitness on iPhone, or Settings → Apps → Morel → Permissions → Physical activity on Android. Visit reminders keep working, but they will be less accurate and you may get more reminders for places you only walked past.
When you check in, Morel can suggest photos you already took at that restaurant so you can add them in one tap. Your device does this matching, using each photo’s time and location. It can also judge on the device which photos look like food: on iPhone with Apple’s built-in image analysis, and on Android with Google ML Kit, which reports usage and diagnostic information back to Google, though never the images. See Section 3.
Morel can also suggest restaurant visits you never logged. For this, your device groups your photos by when and where they were taken, and sends us the center point and date of each group, so we can look up the restaurants near it and check whether you already logged that visit. That lookup can include Google (see Section 3). If you log one of those visits, we save that center point as the check-in’s location.
Of the photos auto-find shows you, we receive only the ones you choose to add and any receipt you tap to have read. We keep the photos you add. We send a receipt photo to Google Gemini to read the dishes and prices, and we do not save it. We strip embedded location data from photos before upload; on the rare browser where that step cannot run, the photo is uploaded as it is and we record the failure so we can fix it.
When this feature is on for your account and you have given Morel full access to your photos, your iPhone checks your recent photos for food. It does this on the phone itself, using Apple’s built-in image analysis. It only looks at photos that have a location and were taken around a visit or in the last six hours. It runs when iOS reports that you arrived at or left a place, when your phone reports a significant change in location, and when you open the app. Morel does not do this on Android.
Each time it runs, for up to six photos that look like food, your phone sends us the photo’s latitude and longitude, how accurate that location is, the time it was taken, and a score for how much it looks like food. It also sends a start and end time and your time zone offset. It never sends the photo itself or any identifier for it.
We compare those locations with the restaurants we know about. If they match one, we may send you a notification asking about that visit. When we create a reminder this way, we keep the restaurant, the location of one of the photos and the visit times on it, and delete them after 90 days, on the same schedule as the background location data above. If you log one of these visits, we may save that photo location as the check-in’s location. We do not store the food scores.
To turn this off, go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Photos → Morel on your iPhone and choose any option other than full access. This also turns off photo auto-find, which needs full access. The “Auto-find my restaurant photos” switch in Morel’s settings does not turn this off.
If you choose to bring your lists over from another restaurant app, you sign in to that app from within Morel. The sign-in details you enter are used only to reach your own account on that service and fetch your lists. Depending on your device, they either go straight from your device to that service or pass through our servers on the way. We never store your password, and we never use those details for anything other than the import you asked for. We store the lists, ratings, and photos that come back so they appear on your Morel profile. Importing is entirely optional and is never required to use the app.
We use PostHog and Vercel Analytics to collect usage data including pages visited, features used, and performance metrics. To understand and debug how features are used, PostHog also captures session replays — playbacks of your in-app interactions, such as taps and navigation. What you type into a form field is masked as you type it and is not recorded, but text you have already posted and that is shown back to you on screen, such as check-in notes, comments, and your bio, is visible in the replay. This helps us improve the Service. We honor your browser's “Do Not Track” signal for PostHog analytics and session replay, and we exclude our own admin accounts from PostHog. Neither exclusion applies to the usage events we record in our own database, or to Vercel's page-performance measurements.
We collect standard technical information including browser type, IP address, and device type for security (rate limiting, bot detection) and analytics purposes. When you search or start a check-in, our bot-detection provider also runs a script that observes how the page is being used, such as timing and interaction patterns, to tell real people from automated traffic. See Section 3.
We record how you arrived at Morel, so we know which of our own campaigns and invite links are working. That includes the referral or campaign code in a link you followed, and, when you install the app from an app store, the install-attribution information the store gives us: on iOS whether the install came from one of our App Store ads, and on Android the install referrer Google Play recorded, which can include a Google Ads click identifier. We do not use any of this to target ads at you.
We do not sell or license your data, we do not share it with data brokers, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising or to target ads at you. The only advertising-related exception is measuring our own app-store ad campaigns. On iOS, the app sends Apple a one-time attribution token, described below. On Android, we read the install referrer that Google Play records when you install the app, which can include a Google Ads click identifier, so we can tell which campaign your install came from; that referrer is read on your device and sent only to our own servers, never to an advertising network.
We share data only with the service providers listed below, and only to the extent needed to operate the Service, with one exception you control: if you choose to bring your lists over from another app, the sign-in details you enter for that app go to that app, as described in Section 1.
Most of these providers are bound by an agreement with us that requires them to protect your data and use it only for the purposes we specify. Two groups are not. Google and Apple sign-in, Apple's ad measurement, Meta, and Calendly act as independent companies under their own terms and privacy policies rather than on our instructions. And our place-lookup provider, the OpenStreetMap Foundation, runs a free public service that we use without an account or an agreement, so what it does with the coordinates and place names we send is governed by its own privacy policy.
The Android app relies on Google Play services for things the iPhone app does with Apple's own frameworks, so on Android these go to Google:
We may also disclose information (a) to comply with a legal obligation, subpoena, or court order; (b) to enforce our Terms or protect the rights, property, or safety of Morel, our users, or others; or (c) in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, in which case we will notify you.
The following is visible to other users of the Service by default: your display name, profile photo, bio, restaurants you've checked in at, dish photos and ratings, review notes, follower and following lists, collections you've shared, and your Instagram handle if you add one.
You control visibility in these ways:
Search engines may index public profile and check-in pages. Once content has been public, copies may persist in search indexes and archives outside our control.
If you are in the European Economic Area or United Kingdom, we process your personal data on the following legal bases under the GDPR:
Subject to applicable law, you have the right to:
California residents (CCPA / CPRA): You have the right to know what personal information we collect, request deletion, correct inaccurate information, and limit use of sensitive personal information. We do not sell or share your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we do not offer financial incentives in exchange for personal information. You will not be discriminated against for exercising these rights. The business responsible for your personal information is Ardent Research, Inc.
To exercise any of these rights, email us at the address below or use the “Delete Account” option in Account Settings.
We use cookies for authentication (session management via Supabase). PostHog sets cookies and uses local storage to measure product usage and capture session replays; on the web you can opt out of those by enabling your browser's “Do Not Track” setting, which we honor. Our maps provider, Mapbox, stores a randomly generated identifier on your device, described in Section 3. We also use browser local storage to save your city preference and collection data for offline access. We do not use advertising cookies.
We implement reasonable security measures including row-level security on our database, rate limiting, bot detection, and encrypted connections (HTTPS). However, no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure.
The Service is not intended for users under 13 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, please contact us at support@morel.app and we will delete it.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by updating the “Last updated” date at the top of this page.
Morel is operated by Ardent Research, Inc. from the United States, and most of our service providers are located in the United States. Some are not: our place-lookup provider is based in the United Kingdom, our automated photo-moderation provider is based in France, and our backup-storage provider operates data centres worldwide. In addition, Google processes the photos and review notes described in Section 3 on a multi-region endpoint, so that processing can take place in Google data centres outside the United States. Our AI routing provider may pass a request to a model host outside the United States; those requests contain restaurant and menu information, not text you have written. If you access the Service from outside the United States, your data will be transferred to and processed in the United States and in the other countries described above. Where required, transfers out of the EEA or UK rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent safeguards.
Questions about this policy? Contact Ardent Research, Inc. at support@morel.app.
