Privacy policy

Last updated: 7 September 2026

Squishiverse is an app for children to keep track of their squishy toys: take a picture of each one, give it a name, rate it, tag it, and (if a grown-up turns it on) show the collection to a friend. It is made for ages 9 to 11. This page says what happens to what your child puts in.

Squishiverse is made by Courtney Shoemaker. “We” on this page means her, and nobody else.

The short version

Nothing your child types or photographs is sent to us. There is no account, no sign-up, and no server of ours anywhere in the app.
The pictures are made safe on the phone before they are saved. Any face the phone finds is covered with a solid block. Nothing is uploaded to do this.
The collection lives on your child’s phone and in your family’s own iCloud. Not with us.
Showing the collection to a friend is off until a grown-up turns it on, and so is trading, and so are notifications. All three are behind one grown-up question.
There are no ads, no tracking, no analytics, and no other companies’ code in the app.

What the app stores

For each squishy, whatever your child chooses to add: a name, a picture, a type, a shop or brand, colors, size, what it is filled with, how it feels, sounds and smells, where it came from and when, star ratings, condition tags, a favorite ranking, notes, and whether she thinks it is real or a fake.

She can also pick a name for herself: a first name or a nickname, up to twenty characters. That is the only thing about her that a friend ever sees.

The app never asks for your child’s name, birthday, email address, phone number, or location. There is no account to create.

If something goes wrong while sharing, the app writes the error to a file inside its own folder on the phone so a grown-up can read it later. It stays on the phone.

What happens to a picture

The picture can only be taken with the camera, inside the app. The app cannot open the photo library.
Before it is saved, the phone looks for faces in it. Any face it finds is covered with a solid dark block. It is not blurred or pixelated, either of which can sometimes be undone. This happens entirely on the phone; nothing is sent anywhere to do it.
Your child then moves and scales the picture into a square. Cropping cannot bring back a face that was already covered.
The picture is shrunk to at most 1600 pixels on its longest side and re-saved. Re-saving it this way drops the information the camera attached to the original: where it was taken, when, and on which phone.
The original, full-size picture is not kept. The smaller, face-blocked copy is the only picture the app has. It is the one that is stored, the one a friend sees, the one on a notification, and the one in a backup file.

The phone finds most faces, not every face. A face in profile, partly hidden, very small, or seen in a reflection may be missed. Please look at the picture before your child saves it.

Where the collection goes

The collection is stored on the phone. If the phone is signed in to iCloud, the app also keeps a copy in that iCloud account, the one your family controls, so it is not lost if the phone is. That copy uses your iCloud storage and is covered by Apple’s iCloud terms, not by anything of ours.

We have no server of our own, and nothing in the app sends your child’s collection to us.

If the phone is not signed in to iCloud, the collection stays on the phone only.

Who can see it

Your child, on their phone. Nobody else, unless a grown-up turns sharing on.

Sharing is off when the app is installed. Until a grown-up turns it on, there is no button to invite anyone, and no collection can leave the phone except as a backup file.

If a grown-up turns sharing on

Your child can invite a friend from inside the app, by picking the friend from Contacts or typing their phone number or email address. The app checks that an Apple Account uses it, adds that person, and gives your child a link to send through the phone’s own share sheet. When the friend opens the link, a copy of the collection arrives on their phone. What crosses is:

Each squishy’s name, its picture, its tags, its star ratings and its condition tags.
Your child’s chosen nickname, as the title of the collection and on anything she sends.

What does not cross, ever:

The notes. They are kept in a separate file on the phone that is not connected to iCloud at all, and they are not attached to the squishy they are about, so there is no path for a share to carry them. They are labeled in the app as “only you can see these”.
Whether she thinks a squishy is real or fake. That is kept with the notes, and it is not shown at all on a collection that came from someone else.

A friend can send back two things and nothing else:

A reaction, chosen from six fixed symbols: love, so cute, I want one, wow, funny, cool. There is no way to type anything.
A trade offer, if trading has also been turned on. See below.

Only people who were individually invited can open the collection. The link the app hands back only works for people your child has already added, so a link forwarded to someone who was not invited does not let them in.

Turning sharing back off does not take access away from a friend who already has it. It only stops new invitations. Taking someone off is a separate act: open “Who can see it”, tap the friend’s name, and tap Remove Share. After that the collection is no longer available to them, and they cannot open it again unless your child sends a new invitation.

A child on the receiving end can leave a friend’s collection, which removes that friend’s copy from her phone.

“Show this to my friends”

Your child can point her friends at one of her squishies. That sends which squishy and when, with no text of any kind. It stops counting after two weeks. Whether a friend has looked is kept only on that friend’s own phone and is never sent back. The same is true of the “New” marker that shows what a friend has added since you last looked: it is a date kept on your phone.

Trade offers

Trading is off until a grown-up turns it on, and when it is off there is no Trades tab and nothing trade-shaped anywhere in the app.

An offer means “these, for that”. Your child marks a squishy as up for trade; a friend she has already invited picks up to three of their own and offers them. The offer carries copies of those squishies (their names and the same face-blocked pictures), the friend’s nickname, the time, and whether the answer is yes, no, or still waiting.

There is no money in the app. Nothing is bought, sold or priced, and there is no in-app purchase of any kind.
There is no message on an offer. The pictures, and the names your child’s friend gave her own squishies, are the whole of it. Saying no sends no reason.
No strangers. An offer can only be made on a collection its owner has already invited that person to see.
Nothing moves. Saying yes is only an answer. No squishy changes hands in the app; if the children swap, they swap in real life and each updates her own collection.

An offer stops counting after two weeks.

Notifications

Notifications are off until a grown-up turns them on, and iOS asks separately. Saying no costs your child nothing in the app, and she is not asked again.

If they are on, the app sends one message for everything that happened, about a minute after it happened, never one per squishy. A message can only ever say that a friend reacted to one of her squishies, that a friend pointed her at one of theirs, that a trade offer arrived, or that an offer of hers was answered. There are no streaks, no reminders, and nothing asking her to come back.

The message is written on the phone from the app’s own words, the squishy’s name and the friend’s nickname; the picture on it is the same stored, face-blocked picture. Nothing is sent anywhere to produce a notification.

The grown-up page

Notifications, sharing, trading and “Save a copy” all live on one page behind one question: a two-digit multiplication written out in words. Answering it once opens all four for as long as that page is open, and closing it locks them again. A wrong answer gets a new sum, and repeated wrong answers cost a short wait.

This is an adult-level task, not a lock. An older child who reads the words carefully and reaches for a calculator can get past it. It is there so that the switches that change who can see the collection are not something a nine-year-old flips by accident.

Getting the collection out

A parent can save the whole collection to a file (names, pictures, ratings, reactions, notes and the real-or-fake verdicts) from the “Save a copy” screen on the grown-up page. It is behind the grown-up question because the file contains the notes. The same screen puts a saved file back. Where that file goes is up to the person who made it; the app puts it in the share sheet and does nothing else with it.

Deleting things

Delete a squishy in the app and it is removed from the phone and from the iCloud copy, and the private note about it is deleted with it.
Delete the app and everything on the phone is removed: the collection, the notes, and everything else kept only on that phone. A copy of the collection (not the notes) stays in your own iCloud account until you remove it there.
Remove a friend’s share from “Who can see it”: tap their name, then Remove Share.
There is no account to delete, because there is no account.

Other companies

None. The app contains no advertising, no analytics, no crash reporting, and no software from any company other than Apple. Nothing about your child or their phone is sent to anyone.

Children’s privacy

This app is made for children aged 9 to 11. Nothing your child puts into the app reaches us: there is no account, no server of ours, and no third-party code in the app. What the app stores is described above, along with the one case where something can reach another household: a collection a grown-up chose to share.

Changes to this policy

If the app changes what it does with your child’s pictures or words, this page changes first, and the date at the top moves.

Contact

Questions about anything on this page: fullcountstattracker+squishiverse@gmail.com