Terms of Use
These Terms of Use (the “Terms”) are a legal agreement between you and TinyVault (“TinyVault”, “we”, “us”, “our”), an independent app studio, governing your use of the Fridge Inventory mobile application and any related services, content and updates (together, the “App”). They also serve as the end user license agreement for the App.
By downloading, installing or using the App you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the App and delete it from your device.
1. Who may use the App
You must be at least 13 years old (or the minimum age of digital consent in your country, if higher) to use the App. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use the App only with the involvement of a parent or guardian who agrees to these Terms on your behalf. You confirm that you are not barred from using the App under the laws of your country and that any information you give us is accurate.
2. Licence
Subject to these Terms, we grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable and revocable licence to install and use one copy of the App on devices you own or control, for your own personal, non-commercial use, in accordance with the usage rules of the app store you obtained it from.
You may not, and may not permit anyone else to: copy, modify, translate or create derivative works of the App; reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble it, or otherwise attempt to derive its source code (except to the extent this restriction is prohibited by applicable law); rent, lease, lend, sell, sublicense or distribute it; remove or obscure any proprietary notices; circumvent any usage limit, paywall, quota or security measure; or use the App to build a competing product or to scrape, bulk-extract or resell its content or the results of its online features.
The App is licensed, not sold. TinyVault and its licensors retain all right, title and interest in and to the App, including all intellectual property rights in its software, design, catalog data, text and graphics. No rights are granted except those expressly stated here.
3. Food safety, expiry dates and “use soon” — important
This section is the most important part of these Terms. Please read it carefully.
- The App is not a source of truth for whether food is safe to eat. It is a personal record-keeping and reminder tool. It does not inspect, test, sense or verify your food in any way.
- Freshness indicators are generic estimates, not real expiry dates. Unless you enter a date yourself, the App estimates freshness from typical shelf-life values for a product category, counted from the moment you added or restocked the item in the App. It does not know the product’s printed “use by”, “best before” or “sell by” date, how long the item sat in the shop, how it was transported, whether it has been opened, or how your refrigerator, freezer or pantry is actually performing. Marks such as the amber “ageing” dot, the red overdue mark and the “Use soon” list are convenience prompts derived from those estimates and nothing more.
- You are solely responsible for checking the actual product. Always rely on the packaging, the manufacturer’s printed dates and storage instructions, and your own inspection (appearance, smell, condition of the packaging) before consuming, serving or discarding any food. Where the App and the physical product disagree, the physical product always wins.
- Do not treat the absence of a warning as an assurance. An item shown as fresh, or shown with no warning at all, has not been assessed by us and may nevertheless be spoiled, contaminated or unsafe. Equally, an item flagged as “use soon” or overdue may be perfectly good; the App is not an instruction to throw food away.
- Notifications and reminders may not arrive. Reminders depend on your device, its operating system, your permission settings, battery-saving modes and network conditions, and are deliberately rate-limited. They may be delayed, suppressed, duplicated or never delivered. Do not rely on them for anything that matters.
- Allergens and dietary needs. Any allergen, diet or ingredient information shown in the App — including in catalog entries, recipes and AI suggestions — may be incomplete, out of date or wrong, and cannot account for a specific product’s formulation, “may contain” warnings, or cross-contamination. If you or anyone you cook for has a food allergy, intolerance or medical dietary requirement, you must verify every ingredient against the actual product packaging. Never rely on the App to keep an allergen out of a meal.
- Not medical, nutritional or professional advice. The App does not provide medical, dietary, nutritional or food-hygiene advice, and is not a substitute for guidance from a qualified professional or from your national food-safety authority. If you have a medical condition or believe you have consumed unsafe food, seek qualified medical help.
Decisions about what to eat, cook, serve or discard are yours alone, and you make them at your own risk.
4. Recipes and AI-generated content
Every recipe the App suggests is written entirely by an AI model from the ingredients you have listed, and is labelled “AI recipe”. They are not tested recipes and have not been cooked by anyone. The App filters them against the allergens and diet you have set, but that filtering is automated and can fail — always check every ingredient yourself if you or anyone you cook for has an allergy. AI-generated content is marked in the App. Such content is produced automatically, is not reviewed by a human, and may be inaccurate, incomplete, unsafe or unsuitable — including as to quantities, cooking times, cooking temperatures, doneness, food handling, substitutions, allergens and nutrition.
You must apply your own judgement and standard safe-cooking practice, including cooking food to safe internal temperatures and handling raw ingredients properly. Recipes are provided for general informational purposes only. Recipe text, images and metadata supplied by third parties remain the property of their respective owners and are made available to you for personal use only.
5. Your content and your data
Your inventory, shopping list, custom items, preferences and settings (“Your Content”) are yours. They are stored on your device; we do not host an account system or keep a copy. You are responsible for Your Content, including keeping your own backups — use the export function in Settings. Uninstalling the App, clearing its storage, losing or resetting your device, or a device or software failure may permanently delete Your Content, and we cannot recover it.
You grant us only the limited permission needed to process the data you actively submit to an online feature (for example the ingredient names sent to fetch recipes) in order to return a result to you. How that works, and what we do and do not collect, is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.
You must not use the App to store or transmit unlawful content, or to submit content that infringes anyone’s rights.
6. Camera, microphone and voice input
Some features ask for access to your camera, photo library, microphone or your device’s speech recognition. These are optional, are requested only when you first use the feature, and can be revoked at any time in your device settings — the rest of the App continues to work without them.
Photo scanning and voice recognition are automated, best-effort and frequently imperfect: items may be missed, invented, mis-identified or mis-counted, and speech may be mis-transcribed. You must review what the App understood before applying it — the App always shows you a confirmation step for this reason. Do not point the camera at, or dictate, anything you do not wish to have processed as described in the Privacy Policy, and only capture images and audio you have the right to capture.
Photo scanning is limited by an allowance shown in the App (currently a small number of free scans in total, and a weekly number of scans with Pro). A scan counts once our server has analysed the photo, including when nothing recognisable is found. Scans that fail before the photo is analysed do not count. We may change the allowance for future scans.
7. Pro subscriptions and purchases
The App’s core inventory, shopping list and reminder features are free. Certain features are offered as part of a paid plan (“Pro”), available as an auto-renewing subscription or a one-time purchase.
- Billing is by the app store, not by us. All purchases are processed by Apple or Google under their own terms. Prices are shown in the App before you buy and vary by country, currency and applicable taxes.
- Auto-renewal. A subscription renews automatically for the same period at the then-current price unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours before the period ends.
- Cancelling. You manage and cancel subscriptions in your Apple App Store or Google Play account settings — cancelling is not possible from inside the App. Cancelling stops future renewals; you keep Pro until the end of the period you have paid for.
- Free trials and introductory offers, where offered, convert to a paid subscription at the end of the offer period unless cancelled beforehand. Any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited if you buy a subscription during the trial.
- Refunds are handled by the app store under its policies. We generally cannot issue refunds directly, but we will help you where we can — write to us.
- Restoring. Use “Restore purchases” in the App to re-apply an existing purchase on a device signed in to the same store account.
- Changes. We may change Pro’s price or what it includes. Price changes do not apply to a period you have already paid for, and where required we will notify you and give you the opportunity to cancel before the change takes effect. A “lifetime” purchase means for as long as we continue to offer the App; it is not a promise that the App will exist forever.
Nothing in this section limits any statutory withdrawal, cancellation or refund right you have as a consumer, including the EU/UK right of withdrawal, to the extent it applies.
8. Availability, online features and quotas
Online features (recipes, AI adjustments, the recipe chat, photo scanning) depend on our servers and on third-party providers, and are subject to fair-use quotas and daily and monthly limits that protect us from runaway costs. The recipe chat in particular is limited by how many answers containing recipes a device has been given — a small fixed number for the life of a free install, and a monthly allowance with a Pro plan. Questions that do not produce recipes, such as a clarifying question, do not count against it. These allowances may change. We may change, limit, suspend or discontinue any feature — including an entire online feature — at any time, with or without notice. We do not guarantee that the App or any feature will be available, uninterrupted, timely or error-free. The App is not designed for use in any situation where failure could lead to death, injury, or environmental or property damage.
You must not interfere with the App or our servers, attempt unauthorised access, send automated or excessive requests, or use the App in a way that could damage, disable or impair it.
9. Third-party services
The App relies on third-party services (including Anthropic for AI features, Google Firebase for our server, and your app store). We are not responsible for third-party services, their content, availability or practices, and their inclusion is not an endorsement. Their own terms may apply to you where you interact with them.
10. Disclaimer of warranties
To the maximum extent permitted by law, the App is provided “as is” and “as available”, with all faults and without warranty of any kind. We expressly disclaim all warranties, whether express, implied or statutory, including any implied warranties of merchantability, satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, quiet enjoyment and non-infringement.
Without limiting the above, we make no warranty that: the App will meet your requirements or be uninterrupted, secure or error-free; any freshness estimate, expiry indication, reminder, recipe, allergen note, nutritional figure, scan result or transcription will be accurate, complete or current; defects will be corrected; or that Your Content will be preserved. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained from us or through the App creates any warranty not expressly stated in these Terms.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so some of these exclusions may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits your statutory rights as a consumer, or our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded by law.
11. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, TinyVault and its suppliers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, goodwill, data or content, business interruption, cost of substitute goods, or any illness, spoilage, food waste, allergic reaction, property damage or other harm arising from or relating to your use of, or inability to use, the App — including any reliance on a freshness estimate, expiry indication, reminder, recipe, allergen note, scan result or transcription — whether based on warranty, contract, tort (including negligence), statute or any other legal theory, and whether or not we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.
Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the App will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you actually paid us for the App in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) EUR 50.
These limitations apply even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose, and are a fundamental basis of the bargain between us. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you; in that case our liability is limited to the smallest extent permitted by law.
12. Indemnity
To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless TinyVault and its officers, contractors and suppliers from any claim, demand, loss or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your misuse of the App, your breach of these Terms or of any law, or any content you submit. This does not apply where the claim results from our own breach or negligence.
13. Updates and changes to the App
We may release updates, and your device may install them automatically depending on your settings. Updates may add, change or remove features. We may stop supporting older versions of the App or older operating systems, after which the App may stop working correctly on your device.
14. Changes to these Terms
We may amend these Terms as the App evolves. We will revise the “Last updated” date above and post the new version on this page. If a change is material we will give reasonable prior notice through the App or this website. Your continued use of the App after a change takes effect means you accept the amended Terms; if you do not accept them, stop using the App and delete it.
15. Termination
You may end this agreement at any time by deleting the App from your device. We may suspend or terminate your licence immediately if you materially breach these Terms, or if we discontinue the App. On termination the licence in Section 2 ends and you must stop using and delete the App. Sections 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16 and 17 survive termination. Termination does not by itself entitle you to a refund, except where required by law or by app-store policy.
16. Governing law and disputes
These Terms are governed by the laws of [GOVERNING-LAW COUNTRY], without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the courts of [COURTS / CITY] have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them. If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, the United Kingdom or another jurisdiction whose law grants you the protection of your local mandatory consumer rules, nothing here deprives you of those rules or of the right to bring proceedings in the courts of your place of residence. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply. EU consumers may also use the European Commission’s online dispute resolution platform, though we would much rather you simply emailed us first.
17. Apple App Store — additional terms
The following applies where you obtained the App from Apple’s App Store. These Terms are between you and TinyVault only, not with Apple, and TinyVault alone is responsible for the App and its content. Apple has no obligation to provide any maintenance or support for the App. If the App fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price (if any); to the maximum extent permitted by law Apple has no other warranty obligation whatsoever. TinyVault, not Apple, is responsible for any claims relating to the App, including product liability, any failure to conform to legal requirements, and claims under consumer protection or privacy law, and for the investigation, defence, settlement and discharge of any third-party claim that the App infringes intellectual property rights. You confirm you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated as “terrorist supporting”, and are not on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you.
18. General
These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the App and supersede any prior understanding. If any provision is held unenforceable, it will be limited or severed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest remains in force. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, on notice. These Terms are drafted in English; a translation, if provided, is for convenience and the English version governs to the extent permitted by law.
19. Contact
TinyVault · tinyvault.apps@gmail.com — questions about these Terms are answered by a person.