Foothold privacy policy
Effective date: October 24, 2026
Foothold is a private app. It’s for the thing you keep putting off: you name a summit, promise one small step, and prove it with a photo. It is published on the App Store by Sean McElligott (“we”, “us”). This policy explains what happens to your information when you use Foothold.
Foothold is yours alone. We don’t collect any of your data. There’s no account, no sign-in, no profile and nothing to share or post. Your summits, footholds, photos and “I am” statements stay on your iPhone, and the only copy anywhere else is an optional backup in your own iCloud, which we can’t see. We have no servers, no analytics, no tracking and no ads, so there is nothing for us to see, sell or share.
Foothold keeps the following on your iPhone:
None of this is ever sent to us. Foothold does not connect to any server of ours, because we don’t have one.
If your iPhone is signed in to iCloud, Foothold keeps a copy of your climb and its photos in your own iCloud, so a new iPhone can bring your climb back. The copy sits in Foothold’s own hidden space in your iCloud, not in iCloud Drive’s Files view. It is stored by Apple under your Apple Account and Apple’s privacy policy, and we have no way to see it.
You can turn this off any time in Foothold’s Settings with the iCloud backup switch. When you turn it off, you can also choose Turn off and remove from iCloud to delete the copy. Your climb and photos stay on your iPhone either way.
Separately, if you back up your whole iPhone to iCloud or to a computer, Apple may include Foothold’s data in that backup, as it does for most apps. We can’t access that either.
Foothold asks for camera access only so you can photograph a kept step. If you choose a picture from your library instead, iOS lets you pick a single photo and Foothold only receives that photo. Foothold never reads the rest of your library.
When you let a summit go and choose to keep its photos, Foothold asks to add them to your photo library. That permission only lets it add photos, not look at the ones already there.
Reminders are scheduled on your iPhone by the app itself. Widgets and Live Activities show your current step on your Home Screen and Lock Screen. None of this goes through any server of ours.
Subscriptions are handled entirely by Apple through the App Store. We never see your name, email, Apple Account or payment details. Apple only tells the app whether your subscription is active. Apple’s handling of purchases is covered by Apple’s own privacy policy.
Foothold has no share buttons. Your summits, footholds and photos are for you, not something to post. Nothing leaves the app unless you save photos to your own library or the iCloud backup above is on.
Foothold contains no third-party analytics, advertising, tracking or crash-reporting tools, and no code from other companies besides Apple’s own. We do not track you across other apps or websites.
If you’ve turned on sharing with app developers in your iPhone’s Analytics settings, Apple may share crash reports with us. That is Apple’s setting and Apple’s report, not something Foothold collects.
To delete everything Foothold stored on your iPhone, delete the app. That removes your summits, footholds, photos, statements and history from the phone.
To delete the iCloud copy too, turn off iCloud backup in Foothold’s Settings and choose Turn off and remove from iCloud before deleting the app. You can also remove it later in your iPhone’s Settings under your name, then iCloud, then Manage Storage (or Storage), then Foothold.
Because we never had a copy, there is nothing else to delete.
Foothold is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone, including children.
If this policy changes, we’ll update this page and change the effective date above. If Foothold ever starts collecting data, we’ll say so here and in the app before it happens.
Questions about privacy? Email footholdapp@gmail.com.