The short version
- We collect what Holmes needs to understand your home and remind you about it — including the videos and photos you choose to upload.
- We use it to find items in your home, give you care reminders, and run the service.
- We don't use your data for advertising, and we don't sell it.
- You can delete your account in the app at any time. Your videos and photos are deleted right away (anything a scan still in progress saves afterwards is deleted within a day), and the rest of your account data within 30 days.
What we collect
- Account
- Your email address. If you use Sign in with Apple, the identifier Apple provides for your account, and a token from Apple that we keep so we can ask Apple to revoke Holmes's access when you delete your account.
- Home details
- What you tell us about your home, such as its ZIP code, the year it was built, and whether you have pets — plus the approximate coordinates and climate zone we derive from your ZIP code.
- Videos and photos
- The videos you record of your home and the photos you take of appliance labels.
- What Holmes finds
- The items Holmes detects in your home and their attributes — for example, a water heater's manufacturer, model and age.
- Reminders
- The reminders Holmes creates for you and what you do with them, such as marking one done or snoozing it.
- Your feedback
- What you tell us about a finding — that you knew, didn't know, or that it's wrong.
- Preferences
- Your time zone and the hours when you're happy to receive notifications.
- Device
- A push notification token for your device, so we can send you reminders.
- Subscription
- Whether you have Holmes Plus, which we receive from Apple through RevenueCat. We never see your payment details.
- Server logs
- Records of requests to our servers: the kind of request, its result and timing, and your account ID. We use them for security and fixing problems, and keep them for 30 days. They don't include your IP address; to limit sign-in attempts, our servers look at it only in memory and don't store it.
How we use it
- To find the items in your home and give you care reminders about them.
- To run the service: signing you in, sending notifications, managing your subscription, and keeping Holmes secure and working.
We do not use your data for advertising, and we do not sell it.
Who helps us run Holmes
A few companies process data on our behalf, only to provide the service:
- Amazon Web Services
- Hosting and storage for your account, home details, videos and photos, and delivery of sign-in code emails through Amazon SES.
- Anthropic, via Amazon Bedrock
- Anthropic's Claude AI models, accessed through Amazon Bedrock, analyze your label photos and still frames from your videos to recognize items and read labels. Before your first walk-through, Holmes asks your permission to send them; until you agree, nothing is sent.
- Expo
- Delivers push notifications to your device.
- RevenueCat and Apple
- Handle Holmes Plus subscriptions and purchases.
Weather and recall checks
To keep watch, Holmes looks up public information from a few outside services. They receive only what's described below — no email address, name or other account information.
Freeze alerts
Holmes sends your ZIP code to phzmapi.org, a public lookup service, to find its approximate location and climate zone. It then requests forecasts for that location from the US National Weather Service.
Recall checks
Holmes searches the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's public recall database by the manufacturer name of appliances in your home.
How long we keep it
We keep your videos and photos while your account is active, so Holmes can show you what it found.
When you delete your account in Settings, your videos and photos are deleted immediately (anything a scan still in progress saves afterwards is deleted within a day), and the rest of your account data is deleted within 30 days. Deleted data may remain in encrypted backups for a limited period until they're overwritten.
Your choices
- Delete your account at any time in the Holmes app, under Settings. If you signed in with Apple, we also ask Apple to revoke Holmes's access.
- Turn off notifications at any time in your iPhone's Settings.
- Ask us anything, or ask for help with your data, by writing to support@getholmes.app.
Deleting your account doesn't cancel a Holmes Plus subscription, which is billed by Apple. You can cancel it in your Apple ID settings.
Children
Holmes is not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we'll delete it.
Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle your data, we'll update this page and the date at the top.
Contact
Holmes is made by TensorHQ. Questions about privacy? Write to support@getholmes.app.