Soil First (“the app”) is a care journal for your houseplants — it plans watering and other care around a quick soil check, keeps a history of what you did, lets you note how each plant is doing, and follows its growth in photos. It is published by Baron Mobile Games (“we”, “us”). This policy explains what information the app handles, why, and what choices you have. It applies to the Soil First Android application distributed through Google Play.
Everything you record stays on your phone. There is no account to create, no server to sync to, and no way for us to see your plants, your notes or your photos. The app works offline; the only thing it uses the internet for is showing advertisements, and our advertising provider collects some device data to deliver them. That is the only data collection involved, and it never includes anything you record in the app.
The app saves the following locally, in its own private storage:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your plants: name, species (from the app’s built-in catalogue) or a species name you type, room, the date it came into your care, pot and soil type, whether it is archived, and its cover photo | Your collection |
| Rooms: the built-in ones and any you create or rename | Grouping your plants |
| Care tasks: the tasks you keep for each plant (watering, fertilizing, repotting, pruning, misting), how often they come round and when each is next due | Planning care |
| Care history: each time you log, snooze or skip a task, the reason you give (for example “soil still wet”) and when | Your history, and the insights the app works out from it on your phone |
| Check-ins: how a plant is doing (thriving, okay or struggling), the symptoms you tick, an optional note and photo, and when | Following each plant’s health |
| Photos: copies of the growth photos you add, a small thumbnail of each, their captions and dimensions | Your growth timeline |
| Your progress: points, level, care streak, streak freezes, the badges you have earned and the record of the actions that earned them | Showing your progress in the app |
| Settings: theme, seasonal region, notification settings (digest time, quiet hours, which kinds of care count, the streak reminder, a pause), how your plant list is sorted, and which interval suggestions you have already acted on | Running the app the way you set it up |
| A count of how many times the app has been opened, and whether it has already asked for notification permission | Keeping your first use of the app ad-free, pacing advertisements, and never asking for a permission twice |
This data is written to your device’s private app storage. It is not transmitted to us or to anyone else, and we have no way to read it. There is no account, no login and no cloud sync — apart from loading advertisements, the app works completely offline. Uninstalling the app deletes all of it permanently, unless you have exported a backup yourself (see below).
The app opts out of Android’s automatic device backup, so Android does not copy its data — or your photos — to your Google account either.
Care intervals stretch in winter and shorten in summer. To know which season it is where you are, the app guesses your hemisphere from your phone’s region setting (for example English (United Kingdom)); you can change it in Settings. The app never asks for your location, has no location permission, and does not use weather services.
You can add a growth photo, a cover photo or a photo to a check-in in two ways. Choose from library opens Android’s photo picker: only the pictures you choose are handed to the app, and nothing else in your photo library is read. The picker needs no permission, so the app asks for none. Take photo opens the camera; the app asks for camera permission at that moment, the first time you tap it, and not before. On Android 9 and older, Android also asks for storage access at that moment, which the camera requires on those versions. If you refuse, you can still add photos from your library.
Each photo you add is re-saved as a new copy in the app’s private storage, together with a thumbnail. The copies stay on your phone, are never uploaded, and are not part of a backup file. They are deleted when you remove the photo, when you clear archived plants’ photos in Settings → Your data, when you delete a plant for good, or when you uninstall the app. Your original pictures are left untouched wherever they were.
Your data leaves the app only when you send it somewhere yourself, from Settings → Your data → Backup:
The file created for sharing is kept in the app’s private storage until your next export, until Android clears it, or until you uninstall the app.
The app can send you one daily digest at the time you choose (9:00 unless you change it), and only on days when some of your plants need care. It counts plants — “3 plants need attention today” — and never names them. You can also turn on a streak safety net, off unless you enable it: one evening reminder on a day your care streak is still at risk. Nothing is sent during your quiet hours.
On Android 13 and later your phone asks for permission to show notifications right after you add your first plant, or when you tap Allow notifications in Settings → Notifications — not when you install the app. If you refuse, the app works the same; its Today list still shows what needs care.
Notifications are scheduled locally on your phone. They are not push messages: nothing is sent from a server, and no one is told that a notification fired or what you did with it. You can pause every notification for a few days or weeks, or turn them off, in Settings → Notifications.
The app keeps a light record of your care — care you logged, check-ins, growth photos — to award points, levels, a streak and badges. Points are never tied to how often you water. This record is stored with the rest of your data on your phone and is not sent anywhere. You can earn an extra streak freeze by watching a rewarded advertisement, described below; it never grants points, levels or badges, nothing else in the app is tied to advertisements, and no feature is locked behind one.
You can remove photos, care tasks and rooms you no longer use, and delete an archived plant for good, which removes its photos from your phone. The plant’s past care entries stay in the app’s own database — they still count towards your streak and badges — until you clear the app’s storage. Uninstalling the app, or clearing its storage from your device settings (Settings → Apps → Soil First → Storage → Clear storage), removes everything, including photos and any backup file still waiting in the app’s cache.
Because we keep nothing anywhere else, that is a complete deletion — there is no copy on a server for us to remove, and nothing for you to request from us. Backups you exported yourself are in the places you put them.
Soil First is free and is funded by advertising. We use Google AdMob to display:
The first time you open the app it shows no advertisements at all. Advertisements are limited to content rated suitable for general audiences. Nothing you record in the app is ever sent to our advertising provider or used to select an advertisement; the part of the app that requests advertisements has no access to your plants, notes or photos.
To deliver and measure these advertisements, Google may collect and process:
| Data | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Device identifiers: the Android advertising ID and app set ID | Delivering advertisements (personalised ones only where allowed, see below), limiting how often you see the same one, measuring how advertisements perform, and preventing fraud |
| Device information (model, operating system, language, screen size) | Selecting an advertisement that fits your device |
| Approximate location, derived from your IP address | Serving region-appropriate advertisements and applying local law |
| Interaction data: app launches, taps, and views of advertisements | Measuring advertisement performance and preventing fraud |
| Diagnostic data about the app and the advertising library, such as launch time and responsiveness | Keeping advertisements working reliably |
This data is collected by Google, not by us. We only receive anonymous, aggregated reporting such as the total number of advertisements shown. Google’s handling of it is governed by its own policies:
If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, the app shows a consent form the first time you open it, provided through Google’s User Messaging Platform. It asks whether Google and its advertising partners may store and access information on your device, such as the advertising ID, and use it for personalised advertising. You may refuse. If you refuse, you will still see advertisements, but they will not be personalised, and the app works exactly the same either way.
You can change your decision at any time from Settings → Your data → Ad privacy options. That option appears only where the consent form applies.
Elsewhere, advertisements may be personalised using the advertising ID. Everywhere in the world you can limit this through your device: Settings → Google → Ads (on some phones, Settings → Privacy → Ads), where you can reset or delete your advertising ID and opt out of ad personalisation.
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
INTERNET, ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE | Downloading advertisements. Nothing else in the app uses the network |
AD_ID, ACCESS_ADSERVICES_AD_ID, ACCESS_ADSERVICES_ATTRIBUTION, ACCESS_ADSERVICES_TOPICS | Access to the advertising ID and to Android’s ad-measurement APIs, used by Google AdMob as described above. Added by the advertising library, not by the app itself |
CAMERA | Taking a photo of a plant. Requested the first time you tap Take photo, not at install. Never used for anything else |
READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE | Declared for Android 12 and older only; Android 13 and later never ask for them. On Android 9 and older the camera requires storage access alongside camera permission, so Android asks for both the first time you tap Take photo. Used only to receive the photo you take; the app never reads or writes your other files |
POST_NOTIFICATIONS | Showing the daily digest and, if you turn it on, the streak reminder. Requested after you add your first plant or from Settings → Notifications, not at install |
VIBRATE | Letting a notification vibrate, if your phone’s notification settings call for it |
RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED | Re-arming your scheduled notifications after your phone restarts. Added by the notification library. It carries no data anywhere |
WAKE_LOCK, FOREGROUND_SERVICE | Letting background work finish while the screen is off. Added by the advertising library and the Android work scheduler it uses. They carry no data of yours anywhere |
com.google.android.c2dm.permission.RECEIVE | Added by the notification library so that apps can receive push messages. Soil First never registers for push messages, so nothing is ever received through it |
READ_APP_BADGE, the launcher shortcut permissions, and the launcher-badge permissions of several phone makers (Samsung, Huawei, OPPO, HTC, Sony and others) | Added by the notification library so that apps can show a number on their icon. Soil First never sets one |
BIND_GET_INSTALL_REFERRER_SERVICE | Added by a system library that can tell an app how it was installed. Soil First never reads it |
DYNAMIC_RECEIVER_NOT_EXPORTED_PERMISSION | An internal permission the Android support library defines for the app’s own use. No other app can hold it |
That list is read out of the app’s build rather than written from memory, and is checked again against each release. Apart from the storage access the camera needs on Android 9 and older, the app does not request access to your files, and it never asks for your contacts, microphone or location; photos reach it only through Android’s photo picker or the camera, and backups only through the share sheet and file picker.
There are none. The app contains no analytics library and no crash reporter, so we receive no usage statistics, no session data and no crash reports containing your information. What we can see is limited to the anonymous, aggregated figures Google Play and AdMob show every developer.
Soil First is not directed to children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided personal information through the app, please contact us and we will address it.
Because we hold no personal data about you, there is nothing for us to export or erase on request. To exercise rights relating to data collected for advertising — including access, erasure, or objection under the GDPR — please refer to Google’s Privacy Policy, which describes how to make such a request. You can delete all locally stored data at any time as described under Deleting your data above.
If this policy changes, the revised version will be published at this address with an updated date at the top. Significant changes affecting how data is handled will also be reflected in a new app release.
Questions about this policy can be sent to:
barongamesup@gmail.com