What we keep,
and what we don't.
Last updated · July 14, 2026
The short version
Pixel Wild stores the things you create in the app — your captures, your sanctuaries, your friends list, your comments — and the account info we need to log you in. We don't sell your data. The app does show optional ads (you choose to watch one to earn Matter), which are served by Google AdMob — see Advertising below for what that involves.
Account
When you sign in with Apple or Google we receive your email and a display name. That, plus a Firebase user id, is what your captures and sanctuaries are attached to. You can delete your account from inside the app — that removes your profile, captures, sanctuaries, and friend connections from our servers.
Captures and the camera
Pixel Wild uses the camera to photograph and record species you find. Each photo or video is sent to our species-identification pipeline, which routes it to iNaturalist and/or Google Gemini for the actual identification, and is then stored alongside your capture record. We use the original photo only to identify the species and to generate the pixel-art version you see in the app. We strip EXIF metadata — including GPS coordinates — from the stored photo bytes; how your exact location is used is described under Locationbelow. Video captures include the original audio track as recorded; please be mindful of who and what is audible. We may also publish any capture as a species “in the wild” reference photo under a CC BY 4.0 license, credited by your display name with a link to your profile — see the Terms for the full grant.
Who can see your captures
Every capture has a visibility setting — public, friends, or private. Most captures default to friends-only; captures we identify as people default to private. You can change a capture's visibility at any time from the photo viewer. This setting controls the photo or video itself: a private capture's media is visible only to you, and a friends-only capture's media only to your accepted friends. It does not hide the discovery. A discovery groups every capture you've made of one species, and the discovery page — your name, the species, and when and roughly where you first found it — stays reachable by link even if you've made every photo on it private. To remove a discovery entirely, delete its captures.
Location
With your permission, each capture is tagged with the GPS location where you took the photo. That precise location is stored on your capture record. Your accepted friends can see the exact location of your non-private captures on a map — this is controlled by the Let friends see where I made my discoveries switch in Settings, which is on by default and can be turned off at any time. When a capture is shared publicly — through a discovery link or a public sanctuary — we only show city-level location, never your exact coordinates. Your discoveries do not contribute a location pin to any public map. We previously published an anonymous, approximate pin per discovery to a community species map; we removed that map and deleted every pin it held.
Sanctuaries and shared content
Sanctuaries are public by default. The username on your account (the short code in your share URLs, like pixelwild.dev/sanctuary/<id>) is what someone visits to see your sanctuary or discovery card — not your account id. You can make a sanctuary private from inside the app at any time. When another player opens your sanctuary inside the app, we record their visit so you — and only you, the owner — can see who has been by. Discovery share links (URLs of the form pixelwild.dev/discovery/<wildId>/<species>) are accessible by anyone who has the link and show your display name and avatar alongside the capture.
Friends and nearby discovery
The friends feature uses Bluetooth and your local Wi-Fi network to find other Pixel Wild players physically near you so you can send a friend request. This discovery happens device-to-device — the names and ids of nearby devices aren't sent to our servers. Once you send or accept a friend request, that connection is stored on your account.
Purchases
When you buy a Matter pack, Apple processes the payment through StoreKit. We receive a signed transaction record from Apple that proves the purchase happened, plus the product you bought and the transaction id. We don't see your card number or any other payment details — that stays between you and Apple.
Advertising
Pixel Wild shows optional ads through Google AdMob — for example, an ad you can choose to watch in exchange for Matter. To serve these, AdMob receives device and advertising identifiers and similar data, and on iOS the app asks for permission to track before any tracking-based ads are shown (you can decline). If you buy the ad-free upgrade, these ads are removed. Google's use of this data is governed by its own privacy policy.
Notifications
If you allow push notifications, we store an Apple Push Notification service token on your account so we can send you things like friend requests and replies. You can turn this off any time in iOS Settings.
We use the email address on your account for the running of the app: a welcome message, password resets, purchase receipts, replies to reports you file, and notices about your captures. Those come with the account and aren't optional.
Release news
Separately, you can opt in to an email when a big update ships. It is off unless you turn it on — we ask once, in the app, and a "no" is the end of it. Turn it off any time under Settings → Notifications → Release News Email, or with the unsubscribe link in the footer of any of those emails. We don't sell or share your address, and we don't send anything else to this list.
Where the data lives
Pixel Wild runs on Google Cloud (Firebase) for accounts, the database, file storage, and notifications. Species sprites are served from a Cloudflare R2 CDN, which doesn't see your account or your captures. Apart from species identification (iNaturalist and Google Gemini) and advertising (Google AdMob), we don't share your data with third parties.
Children
Pixel Wild isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has signed up, email us and we'll remove the account.
Your rights
You can delete your account from inside the app, which removes your data from our servers. If you'd like a copy of your data, want something specific removed, or have any other privacy question, email [email protected].
Changes
We'll update this page if our data practices change. The “last updated” date at the top is the easiest way to spot when something has moved.