Your family's Christmas stays on your iPhone. MerryNest has no account, no MerryNest server, and no way for us to read what you write. The only company MerryNest talks to is Apple — to sell or restore a purchase, and, if you choose to use Family Board, to share that board through your own iCloud account. From version 1.5, if you share a shop's product page into MerryNest, your iPhone loads that one page itself to read the gift's name, picture and price (see below). Nothing is sent to us.
What MerryNest stores, and where
Everything you create in MerryNest — gifts, recipients, family plans, traditions, kindness moments, meal and shopping lists, table moments, memories, photographs, Time Capsule entries, and every past Christmas in Christmas Through the Years — is stored locally on your device, using Apple's SwiftData framework.
It is not uploaded to us. There is no “us” to upload it to: MerryNest has no backend, no database and no cloud storage of family content. We cannot see your data, and we could not produce it if asked.
Family Board, the one thing that leaves your device
Family Board is optional, and it is the only part of MerryNest that shares anything. A board's name, its item titles, the names you assign, dates, locations and completion states are stored in your own iCloud account and shared with the people you invite. It goes to Apple's iCloud, not to us — we still have no server and still cannot read it.
A board never copies your gift details, hiding places, budgets, private notes, photographs or memories. Copying a local plan onto a board is a deliberate act: you choose the plan and review the copy before it is saved.
Family Board needs iCloud and an internet connection. The board's owner can manage participants or stop sharing at any time through Apple's sharing controls. Invited participants can take part without buying MerryNest Plus.
We collect no personal information. No name, no email address, no phone number, no account, no advertising identifier, no device identifier and no usage analytics. MerryNest contains no analytics SDK, no crash-reporting SDK, no advertising SDK and no third-party SDKs of any kind.
Permissions, and when they are asked for
Every permission is optional. Declining any of them leaves the rest of the app working.
| Permission | When it is requested | What it is used for |
|---|---|---|
| Photo library | Never prompted | Photographs are chosen through Apple's PhotosPicker, which runs outside the app. MerryNest receives only the image you pick and never gains access to your library. |
| Face ID | Only when you turn on “Lock Gifts with Face ID” (version 1.5) | Checked by iOS on your device to keep the gift list hidden from peeking eyes. MerryNest never receives your face data or passcode. |
| Camera | Only when you choose to take a photo inside a memory | The photograph is saved into that memory on your device. It is not uploaded. |
| Notifications | Only when you enable a reminder on a specific plan, or tap “Enable reminders” in Settings | A single local notification an hour before that plan. There are no automatic, daily or marketing notifications. |
| Calendar (write-only) | Only when you enable “Add to Apple Calendar” on a plan and save it | Writes that one event to your calendar. Write-only access means MerryNest cannot read your calendar. |
Purchases
MerryNest Plus is a one-time purchase sold through the App Store using Apple's StoreKit — either MerryNest Plus Forever, which is yours for every Christmas from here, or a single Christmas unlock. Nothing auto-renews.
- Payment is handled entirely by Apple. MerryNest never sees your payment details, and no payment information is stored on your device by the app.
- Buying, restoring or checking a purchase communicates with the App Store. Apart from Family Board and saving a gift from a shop (both described here), this is the only network activity in the app, and it carries no family content.
- Your entitlement is read from the receipt on your device, which is why MerryNest Plus keeps working offline.
- Because nothing renews, there is no subscription to cancel. Restoring a purchase on a new device uses the same Apple ID; refunds are handled by Apple.
- If a single-Christmas unlock ends, nothing you created is deleted or hidden. Existing content stays readable and editable; only the creation of further premium content is restricted.
Apple's own privacy policy governs the purchase itself: apple.com/legal/privacy
Widgets
MerryNest's Home Screen widgets read a small summary stored in a shared app group on your device. That summary contains a countdown, the number of gifts still to wrap, your Christmas Journey progress, and the titles and times of upcoming plans.
Gifts marked private are excluded from the widget before that summary is written, so a concealed present is never counted on a screen other people can see. The app group is local to your device; nothing in it leaves the device.
Siri and Shortcuts
MerryNest offers one App Intent — “Open our Christmas in MerryNest” — which opens the app. It exposes no family content to Siri and reads nothing.
Saving a gift from a shop (version 1.5)
When you tap Share on a product page in Safari or a shop's app and choose MerryNest, your iPhone loads that one page, once, to read the product's name, picture and price. This happens only when you choose to share, and only for the page you shared.
- The page is requested by your iPhone directly from the shop, as if you had opened it in a browser. The shop sees an ordinary page visit; it is not told the gift is for anyone.
- Nothing about the gift, the person it is for, or your family is sent to the shop, to Kaspar Works, or to anyone else. We run no server and receive nothing.
- The saved gift — link, name, picture, price and who it is for — is stored only on your device, as a private gift idea.
- If the page can't be loaded, MerryNest still saves the link, with nothing sent anywhere.
Children
MerryNest is a family app and is designed to be used with children present. It collects no personal information from anyone, of any age, for advertising or analytics. There are no accounts, no profiles, no messaging, no social features and no advertising.
Family Board is the exception to “shared with nobody”: it shares what you put on it with the people you invite, through your iCloud account. An adult should manage who is invited and review anything written about a child before it goes on a board.
Your control over your data
- Edit or delete anything, at any time, from inside the app.
- Closing a Christmas keeps it. It moves into Christmas Through the Years, and nothing is destroyed.
- “Delete this Christmas permanently” is a separate, explicitly confirmed action. It erases that one year's gifts, plans and meal items. It never touches another year, and it never deletes memories.
- Deleting the app removes your local records. Because local content is stored on the device, removing MerryNest takes your family's records with it, and there is no copy for us to restore. Export your Christmases first if you want to keep them.
- Family Board lives in iCloud, so deleting the app does not delete it. You can delete individual board items; the owner can delete a whole board for everyone, or manage access through Apple's sharing controls. Stopping sharing cannot erase a copy another participant has already made for themselves.
Data we would disclose
None, because we hold none. We have no family content to hand over to anyone, including in response to a legal request. Family Board records live in your iCloud account, under Apple's terms — not ours.
Changes to this policy
If MerryNest ever gains a feature that changes what happens to your data — iCloud family sharing is the one currently planned — this policy will be updated before that feature ships, and the change will be described in the app's release notes.