NYCEats — Privacy Policy

Last updated: May 10, 2026

1. Summary

NYCEats does not collect, transmit, sell, or share any personal data. All restaurant, farmers market, and food event data is bundled with the app at build time. Your location, your recent searches, your filter selections, and your theme preference all stay on your iPhone.

2. Who we are

NYCEats is built and maintained by Pradyuman Gangan. Bundle identifier: com.nycfoods.NYCEats. Contact: gangan.pradyuman@gmail.com.

3. On-device processing

When you grant the Location While Using the App permission, the app reads your device's current coordinate from Apple's Core Location framework and uses it to center the map near you. The coordinate is used only by code running on your iPhone and is never sent to any server we operate.

4. What we do not collect

• No accounts, no sign-in, no email or phone collection.
• No analytics, telemetry, or product-analytics SDKs (no Firebase, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Sentry, Crashlytics, Segment, PostHog, or similar). The app links against zero third-party SDKs.
• No advertising identifier (IDFA) and no App Tracking Transparency prompt.
• No cookies, no web tracking, no fingerprinting.
• No crash reports collected by us. Apple may collect anonymized crash data under its privacy policy if you have shared analytics enabled in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements; we never receive or process that data.

5. Apple frameworks the app uses

The app uses Apple's MapKit and Core Location frameworks for the map and location features. Map tile rendering and place-name search (MKLocalSearch, MKLocalSearchCompleter, CLGeocoder) may cause Apple's frameworks to issue network requests to Apple servers. Those requests are governed by Apple's Privacy Policy, not ours, and NYCEats does not receive, log, or store the contents of those requests beyond what is needed to display results on screen.

6. Permissions

The app requests a single permission: Location While Using the App (NSLocationWhenInUseUsageDescription). You can deny it; the app still works and you can pick any NYC neighborhood manually via the location picker. You can revoke the permission at any time in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → NYCEats. The app does not request background location, notifications, contacts, camera, photo library, microphone, health, home, or Bluetooth permissions.

7. Local storage

The app stores the following items locally on your device via UserDefaults. None of this leaves your device, and all of it is removed when you uninstall the app:

• Theme preference (newsprint or late-night).
• Up to a small list of recently searched neighborhood / address names you typed into the location picker, with their coordinates.
• Your active filter selections (cuisine categories, cuisines, farmers-market days of week, boroughs, EBT-only toggle, year-round-only toggle).
• The last section you viewed (Restaurants, Markets, or Events).

The app does not write any other files to disk.

8. Links to other apps

Tapping “Get directions”, “Open in Google Maps”, or a phone number can hand off to Apple Maps, Google Maps, or the system Phone dialer respectively. Tapping “Enable location” on the permission-denied banner opens iOS Settings. Once you leave NYCEats, the destination app's own privacy policy applies. NYCEats sends only the address, coordinates, or phone number needed to populate the destination — nothing about you.

9. Where the data comes from

Restaurant, farmers market, and food event data shipped inside the app is curated from public sources (including NYC Open Data for farmers markets) and is bundled at build time. The app does not download any of this content over the network at runtime.

10. Children

NYCEats is rated 4+ and does not knowingly collect any data from anyone, including children under 13.

11. Your rights

Because the app does not collect or transmit personal data, there is nothing about you stored in any system we operate. If you have questions, a privacy request, or a concern, email us at the address below and we'll respond within 30 days.

12. Changes to this policy

If a future version of the app ever changes what it does — for example, adding analytics or an account system — this policy will be updated before the new version ships, and the “Last updated” date at the top of this page will change.

13. Contact

Email: gangan.pradyuman@gmail.com