Privacy
Zaika is a private cookbook. This page explains what the app collects, why it is needed, when another service receives it, and the controls you have.
Version 9 · Last updated 11 October 2026
Who is responsible for your information
Zaika is run by Owniko Technologies LLC, which is responsible for the information this page describes. Where the page says “Zaika”, “we” or “us”, it means Owniko Technologies LLC.
Your cookbook is private by default
Recipes, plans, grocery lists, cook logs, and profile details are private to your account by default. Database access rules tie them to your Zaika user id; privacy is not only a visual setting in the app.
A recipe becomes available to someone else only when you explicitly create a share link or send it to another Zaika user. Shared content includes its creator attribution. You can revoke a public link, and direct-share recipients can report or block unwanted content.
Reporting a recipe someone sent you shares it with the Zaika team for review: the recipe as it was sent, who sent it, who reported it and why. We may remove a reported recipe from the inboxes that still hold it, or pause an account’s ability to send recipes; when several different people report the same account in a short time, its sending pauses automatically until we have looked. A sender is told their sending is paused, never who reported them. Copies people already saved to their own cookbook stay theirs.
Information we collect
Account and profile information: email address, internal user id, authentication provider details, and optional name, handle, and profile image. We use this to sign you in, sync your account, show attribution, and support sharing.
Cookbook content: source links, pasted text, recipe scans and photos, parsed recipes, ingredients, steps, notes, tags, plans, grocery lists, cook history, share records, and content you send to or receive from another user. We use it to provide the features you choose.
Preferences and goals: language, diet choices, cuisine regions, appliances, measurement style, recipe-source preferences, notification choices, and optional calorie or protein goals. We use these to tailor cooking, planning, and notification features.
Device and service information: push token, app version, device and operating-system details, a random identifier for this installation of the app, subscription entitlement and store purchase status, product interactions, and crash or performance diagnostics. These support notifications, purchases, app updates, reliability, fraud prevention, and product improvement.
If you joined the pre-launch waitlist (now closed), we keep your email address and whether a referral brought you there, to tell you once that the app is out. This website sends PostHog a few page and button events (which page was opened, whether a store button was pressed, whether a form was sent), with your browser family, operating system and whether the device is a phone, tablet or desktop, under a random id kept in your browser. That id is not joined to your email address or to an account, and the events never carry what you typed.
If you write to us through the creators page’s request form, we keep your name, email address, the profile links or handles you give and your message while we review the request and for up to 180 days after it is answered, and a salted digest of your network address for seven days to limit abuse. A request never becomes a public profile and never publishes anything.
AI-assisted recipe features
Link, pasted-text, photo, audio, and video imports, recipe translation, and nutrition estimates can use external AI, media-resolution, and speech-to-text services. Before the first assisted feature, Zaika explains what can be sent and asks for your explicit permission. Declining leaves manual recipe entry and all non-AI features available.
Depending on the import, processing can include the source URL and public source content, text you pasted, images you selected, the relevant audio/video, or saved recipe fields needed for the translation or nutrition estimate shown to you. The purpose is limited to resolving, transcribing, structuring, translating, or estimating the submitted recipe. We do not include your email address, profile, or unrelated cookbook content in those provider requests.
See the maintained service-provider list for the current AI and transcription recipients. You can withdraw permission in Settings at any time; future AI-assisted imports, translations, and new nutrition estimates then stop until you consent again. Withdrawal does not undo processing that already completed.
Zaika caches structured results from public source links so the same public link does not require a second billable extraction. This de-identified cache is not readable from a user account and does not contain the identity of the person who first imported the link. Private scans and pasted family recipes are not eligible for the public catalog.
Recipe requests and recordings from people without an account
A Zaika user can ask someone at home for a recipe by sending them a link. The person who answers needs no account. What they send — a voice recording, a photo, typed text and the name they choose to sign with — is stored for the person who asked, as part of their private cookbook. We do not collect the responder’s phone number or email address.
When the person who asked turns a response into a recipe, the recording, photo or text is sent to the same AI and transcription providers listed on the service-provider page to transcribe and structure it. The response page says so before anything is sent. The kept recording plays back only to the person who asked, and to anyone they later choose to share that recipe with by turning on “include the voice notes” for a shared cookbook. Recordings never enter the public catalog.
A response that is not turned into a recipe is deleted 14 days after the request it answered expires (requests expire after 60 days). A recording kept with a recipe stays as long as that recipe does. If you sent a recording and want it removed, email privacy@zaika.app with the name you signed with and the dish; we will confirm with the person who asked and remove it.
Location, notifications, and email
If you save a favorite grocery store using your location, Zaika stores the selected store name and precise coordinates in your private profile. If you separately enable “notify near stores,” the device registers an operating-system geofence around those saved coordinates so it can remind you about unchecked grocery items.
Background location is optional. Zaika does not keep a continuous route or location history. You can turn store proximity off, remove a saved store, or revoke location permission in system Settings. Push notifications are also optional and can be disabled by category in Zaika or entirely in system Settings.
Zaika sends two kinds of email to the address on your account. The first is about the account itself — your sign-in code, and a notice if your account is scheduled for deletion or restored. Those are not a mailing list and cannot be switched off, because without them you could not sign in or find out that someone had asked to delete your cookbook.
The second is a small number of messages about getting something out of Zaika: a welcome shortly after you sign up, and at most a note or two in your first few weeks about a feature you haven’t used. Every one of those carries an unsubscribe link, and Gmail and similar clients show their own unsubscribe button beside them. Unsubscribing stops that second kind for good and leaves the first kind alone. We do not sell or rent your address, and we do not send you other companies’ marketing.
Analytics, diagnostics, and subscriptions
Zaika sends a limited, typed set of product events to PostHog and associates them with an internal user id after sign-in. SDK screen, touch, and app-lifecycle autocapture are disabled. Events do not include recipe text, imported URLs, search terms, names, email addresses, or precise location.
Zaika records masked session replays only for accounts we have enrolled: internal team accounts, testers on pre-release builds, and people who asked us to look into a problem and agreed to a recording, for a limited time. If that is you, PostHog receives about one screenshot a second of what was on screen, plus your taps and the internal user id, so a problem you report can be watched and reproduced instead of described. Text, typed input, photos and system pickers are masked on the device before anything is sent: what you wrote, imported or photographed stays on your phone, and only the app’s own labels and messages remain readable. Recordings are kept for 30 days, and an enrolment lapses on its own. For everyone else the release does not record sessions: no screenshots, screen recordings, or tap recordings are sent, and product analytics is limited to the typed events described above.
Sentry receives scrubbed crash and performance diagnostics plus the internal user id needed to investigate a failure. Default personally identifying collection is disabled. RevenueCat receives the internal user id and app-store purchase information needed to verify subscription access. Zaika never receives your payment-card details.
Zaika does not sell personal information, show third-party advertising, or use this data to track you across other companies’ apps or websites. The full operational list is on the service-provider page.
Retention and deletion
We keep your account and private cookbook while the account is active. You can request deletion in Settings. Access on that device ends immediately, followed by a 30-day recovery window in case the request was a mistake. An intentional new sign-in during that window explains and cancels the scheduled deletion; merely reopening a still-signed-in app does not.
After the recovery window, Zaika permanently removes the account and its private content from the primary application systems and deletes or de-identifies account-linked processor records where supported. Limited security, transaction, tax, dispute, or abuse-prevention records may be retained only when required for a legal or legitimate operational obligation.
No longer have the app? Request deletion from the web using an emailed verification code. Deleting Zaika does not cancel an App Store or Play Store subscription; the deletion flow provides a direct link to manage it.
Your choices
Settings lets you withdraw future AI processing permission, control notification categories, disable store proximity, manage shared links, and request account deletion. System Settings controls camera, photo-library, notification, and location permissions. Subscription settings are managed by the app store that billed you.
To ask for a copy, correction, or deletion of your information, or to object to a use not exposed in Settings, email privacy@zaika.app. We may need to verify that the account belongs to you before acting.
Changes and contact
We will update this page when collection or processing changes materially. If an AI-processing change materially expands the recipient or purpose, Zaika will ask for permission again before the next assisted import.
Privacy questions: privacy@zaika.app. General help: support@zaika.app.
Changes
- Version 9 · 11 October 2026 — The website’s few anonymous page and button events are listed under Information we collect: which page was opened, whether a store button was pressed, whether a form was sent. The pre-launch waitlist is closed; what it kept is still described.
- Version 8 · 10 October 2026 — Creators can write to Zaika through a request form on the creators page; what it keeps, and for how long, is listed under Information we collect.
- Version 7 · 4 October 2026 — Explains how the app checks for updates between store releases: it sends Expo its version, platform and a random identifier for this installation, none of which carries anything you saved.
- Version 6 · 27 September 2026 — Explains what happens when you report a recipe someone sent you: the Zaika team reviews the recipe as it was sent, and may remove it from other inboxes or pause the sender’s sending. The sender is never told who reported.
- Version 5 · 25 September 2026 — Names the company that runs Zaika and is responsible for your information: Owniko Technologies LLC. Nothing about what Zaika collects or how it is used changes.
- Version 4 · 23 September 2026 — Zaika now sends a small number of emails about using the app — a welcome, and at most a note or two in your first weeks about a feature you have not used. Every one has an unsubscribe link; sign-in codes and account notices are separate and continue.
- Version 3 · 7 September 2026 — Accounts we enrol for a limited time (internal team accounts, testers, and people who asked us to look into a problem) have masked session replays recorded so it can be reproduced; nobody else’s sessions are recorded.
- Version 2 · 4 September 2026 — Added how recordings, photos and text sent by people without an account (answers to a recipe request) are processed, kept, shared and removed.
- Version 1 · 11 August 2026 — First published version.