Effective date: September 2026 | Last updated: 8 September 2026
This policy describes what Crabitat actually stores, syncs and shares. It is written from the app’s behaviour rather than from a template, and it is generated from the same source as the copy inside the app.
The short version: Crabitat works fully without an account, keeps everything on your device by default, has no advertising and no analytics, and never uploads your photos.
Who we are
Crabitat is published by Ali3N Studios LLC. For anything in this policy, write to developer@ali3nstudios.com.
You do not need an account
Crabitat works completely without one. The care reference, the food database, every emergency page, all four calculators, the setup checklist, reminders and logging all work with no account and with no network connection.
An account exists for two things only: backing your records up, and sharing a tank with somebody else.
What is stored on your device
All of this stays on your phone unless you sign in and sync.
- Your tanks, crabs, and every log, reading, feeding and molt record, in a local database.
- Photos you attach, saved in the app’s own storage.
- Saved food mixes, hygrometer calibrations and reminder settings.
- An account identifier, and whether you have completed onboarding.
- Whether Crabitat Pro is unlocked, and when that was last confirmed.
- Any care content updates the app has downloaded.
Photos never leave your device
Photos you attach to a tank or a crab are saved on your phone and are not uploaded — not to us, not to our sync service, and not to anybody you share a tank with.
When you attach a photo, Crabitat re-encodes it from its pixels and writes a new file. That removes all metadata, including GPS location, capture time and camera model. It is done this way rather than by deleting known tags so that nothing we did not anticipate can survive.
Crabitat uses the Android photo picker, so it never asks for permission to your photo library and can only see the single image you choose.
What is sent to our servers, if you sign in
Signing in is optional. If you do, the following is stored in Google Cloud Firestore under an account identifier:
- Your tanks: name, dimensions, size, target temperature and humidity, and notes.
- Your crabs: name, species, size class, shell notes, status and dates.
- Your logs and events: readings, feedings including which foods were offered and eaten, water changes, substrate work, observations, and molt records.
- Who made each entry, so a shared tank can show who did what.
- Saved food mixes and hygrometer calibrations, which are private to you and are never shown to people you share a tank with.
- Invite codes you create, which record the tank, who created it, when it expires and whether it has been used.
Who can see it
Only you, and anybody you explicitly invite to a tank. An invited caregiver can see that tank’s records and add entries while their access lasts. They cannot change your targets, delete anything, or invite anybody else, and you can remove their access at any time.
These rules are enforced on the server, not only in the app.
We do not sell your data. We do not share it with advertisers. There are no advertisements in Crabitat.
Accounts and sign-in
Crabitat uses Firebase Authentication. An anonymous account is created for you and holds no personal information — it is an identifier and nothing else.
You can optionally attach a Google account or an email address and password so your records survive a new phone. If you do, we receive the email address associated with it, and your display name if Google provides one.
Attaching an account keeps your existing identifier, so nothing you have already saved moves or is lost.
Care content updates
Crabitat periodically checks a fixed web address for corrections to its care information. That request sends no identifier and uploads nothing. It is an ordinary download of a public file.
Purchases
Crabitat Pro is a one-time purchase through Google Play, handled by our payment provider RevenueCat. They receive an app-specific identifier and the purchase token that Google Play issues, which is what lets your purchase be restored on a new device.
We never see your payment details. Google Play handles the payment.
What we do not do
- No advertising, and no advertising identifiers.
- No analytics SDK and no behavioural tracking.
- No crash reporting that includes your content.
- No selling or sharing of personal information.
- No uploading of your photos.
- No artificial intelligence processing of anything you write.
Backups
Crabitat asks Android to exclude its data from cloud backup and from device-to-device transfer. Your records live either on your device or, if you sign in, in your account — not in an Android backup that might be restored onto a phone signed in as somebody else.
How long we keep it
Your records are kept until you delete them. Deleting your account empties them from our servers immediately and clears everything Crabitat has stored on the device.
Emptied, rather than erased without trace, and the difference is worth being exact about. Every tank, crab, log and molt record you own has its contents removed — the names, the notes, the readings, the foods, the photographs, and who made each entry. What is left is a marker: an identifier, the fact that it was deleted, and who could see it. Those markers are what tell anybody you had shared a tank with to stop showing it, instead of leaving them with a stale copy.
Entries you made in somebody else’s tank stay in their records, because they are that person’s account of how their animals were cared for and are not ours to remove. Your name comes off them when you delete your account.
Anything that cannot be cleared straight away is cleared the next time you open the app.
Invite codes expire after seven days and can be cancelled sooner.
Backups held by our cloud provider may retain deleted records for up to 30 days before they are overwritten in the ordinary course of operating the service.
Your choices
- Use the app without an account, and nothing leaves your device.
- Export everything as a file, from Settings.
- Delete everything, from Settings, or by writing to us if you no longer have the app installed.
- Remove somebody’s access to a shared tank at any time.
Children
Crabitat is rated for ages 13 and over. It is written so that a younger keeper can read it, and it contains nothing unsuitable for one, but it is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect information from them.
If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, write to us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the copy inside the app changes with it — both are generated from one source, so they cannot disagree.
Contact
Ali3N Studios LLC — developer@ali3nstudios.com
See also the Crabitat Terms of Service and how to delete your account.