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Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 2026 (updated to describe address search autocomplete)

The short version

Sunpatch stores your preferences in your browser. If you use the optional cloud save feature, your yard layout is stored anonymously on Cloudflare's infrastructure, with no account or personal information required. Address search and as-you-type suggestions, hardiness-zone lookup, hill shade elevation lookup, and map-based building suggestions are handled by small Cloudflare Pages Functions, which send only the needed search text or approximate location or map area to external services and may cache successful responses for up to 30 days. When you click an outbound affiliate or support link, we record an anonymous, cookieless count of that click so we can tell which links are useful. We do not sell personal information or maintain user accounts.

What your browser stores locally

Sunpatch saves the following items in your browser's localStorage to remember your preferences between visits:

KeyWhat it storesWhy
sunpatch_locationLatitude and longitudeTo pre-fill your yard location on return visits
sunpatch_units"imperial" or "metric"To remember your preferred unit system
sunpatch_auto_compute"1" if enabledTo remember your auto-compute preference
sunpatch_terrain_shade"1" if enabledTo remember whether hill shade beta is enabled
sunpatch_cloud_id / sunpatch_cloud_tokenA random identifier and ownership token for your cloud-saved yardTo offer to reload your last cloud save and let you update it without an account; the token never leaves your device
sunpatch_indoor_cloud_id / sunpatch_indoor_cloud_tokenThe same pair for the indoor planner's separate cloud-saved roomSo your saved room and saved yard don't overwrite each other
theme"light" or "dark"To remember your display preference
tour_done"1" once dismissedTo avoid repeating the intro tour
Other sunpatch_… preference keysDisplay and compute settings for both planners, for example auto-compute, the measure-at / sensor mode, slice height, color palette, grid resolution, the draggable panel position, the map overlay toggle, and whether you've dismissed the indoor introTo remember how you like each planner set up between visits

This data is stored only on your device. We cannot access it. To remove it, open your browser's developer tools, navigate to Application → Local Storage → your site's domain, and delete the entries.

Cloud saves

Sunpatch offers an optional cloud save feature in both the outdoor and indoor planners. When you click Save or Update, your layout (for a yard, the obstacle shapes and dimensions you've drawn; for a room, its dimensions and the windows, plants, and other objects you've placed), along with your approximate location (latitude and longitude), is sent to and stored on Cloudflare's KV infrastructure. No account, email address, or other personal information is required or collected.

A few things to know about how this works:

If you do not use the cloud save feature, no garden data is ever sent to our servers.

Third-party services

Sunpatch is delivered by and makes requests to external services. When these requests are made, your IP address and the relevant data are sent to those services, governed by their own privacy policies.

ServiceWhen usedData sentTheir policy
Cloudflare Pages & KV (hosting and cloud saves) Every page load and asset request; when you use address search and autocomplete suggestions, hardiness-zone lookup, or map-based building suggestions through /api/* endpoints; when you save or load a garden using the cloud save feature; and when you click an outbound affiliate or support link Standard HTTP request data, including IP address, browser type, requested URL, and timestamp; for app features, the address query, approximate location, requested map area, and cached API responses may also be processed by Cloudflare. For cloud saves, your yard or room layout (shapes, dimensions, placed objects, and approximate location) is stored in Cloudflare KV. For an outbound-link click, an anonymous event is recorded in Cloudflare Analytics Engine (see “Analytics and tracking” below). cloudflare.com
Stadia Maps When map tiles are displayed Map tile coordinates and standard HTTP request data, including IP address, browser type, referrer, and timestamp. stadiamaps.com
OpenStreetMap / Nominatim / Overpass When you search an address, when a US location is reverse-geocoded for hardiness zone lookup, and when map-based building suggestions are requested Address search query from the Cloudflare Function; approximate latitude/longitude for reverse geocoding; approximate map area for building suggestions. osmfoundation.org
Komoot (Photon geocoder) When you type in the address search box, to show address suggestions as you type The partial address text you type, sent through the Cloudflare Function; successful responses may be cached for up to 30 days. photon.komoot.io
phzmapi.org When a US location is set (to look up USDA hardiness zone) Your US postal code from the Cloudflare Function phzmapi.org
Open Topo Data When hill shade beta is enabled Approximate latitude/longitude sample points around your yard, sent through a Cloudflare Function and cached when successful. opentopodata.org
Affiliate platforms (Refersion, collabs.shop, and retailer-native referrals) When you click an affiliate link in the plant browser A referral identifier is embedded in the link URL; the retailer's or platform's site may set a cookie on their domain to attribute any resulting purchase to Sunpatch. We do not receive any personal information about your activity on third-party sites. refersion.com

All fonts and other assets are self-hosted, so no data is sent to Google or any font CDN.

Affiliate links

Some plant suggestions in Sunpatch include affiliate links to third-party retailers. If you click one and make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Clicking an affiliate link will take you to a third-party website governed by its own privacy policy.

Referrals are tracked by the affiliate platforms our retail partners use: currently Refersion (for West Coast Seeds and Leaf & Clay), collabs.shop (for Eden Brothers), and a retailer-native referral parameter (for The Living Seed Company). When you click an affiliate link, a referral identifier is included in the URL, and the retailer's or platform's site may set a cookie on their domain to attribute any resulting purchase to Sunpatch. We do not receive any personal information about your browsing or purchasing activity on third-party sites, only aggregate referral counts and commissions.

No tracking occurs unless you actively click a link. Browsing or filtering plant suggestions without clicking transmits nothing to any retailer or affiliate platform.

Current retail partners: West Coast Seeds, The Living Seed Company, and Eden Brothers for outdoor seeds and bulbs, and Leaf & Clay for houseplants.

Cookies

Sunpatch does not set any cookies. The preferences described above are stored in localStorage, which is not transmitted with network requests the way cookies are. If you click an affiliate link in the plant browser, the destination retailer's site may set cookies on their domain; those are governed by their own privacy policy, and we do not have access to them.

Analytics and tracking

We use no tracking pixels, fingerprinting, third-party analytics scripts, or cookies. We do not track your browsing across pages or sessions, and we cannot build a profile of you.

The one thing we do measure is outbound-link clicks. When — and only when — you click an affiliate link or a support link (such as “Buy Lucia a Coffee”), your browser sends a small anonymous event to our own /api/track endpoint, which records a single data point in Cloudflare Analytics Engine. This tells us which links people find useful so we can improve and prune them. Each event contains only:

No cookie or persistent identifier is set, nothing is stored on your device, and the event carries no information that identifies you. Simply browsing, computing sun or light, or placing plants transmits no analytics event — only an actual click does. Aside from this, Cloudflare Pages (which hosts the site) provides us with the aggregated traffic statistics it generates for every site it serves, such as total request counts and bandwidth.

Your rights (GDPR / CCPA)

We do not maintain user accounts. The only personal data we store server-side is what you explicitly upload via the optional cloud save feature: your yard or room layout (shapes, dimensions, placed objects, and approximate location). This data is stored anonymously and automatically deleted after one year.

To request access, correction, or deletion of a cloud-saved garden, contact us at the email below with the full share URL. To remove locally stored data, clear localStorage as described above. Address search requests, hardiness-zone lookups, map-building suggestion requests, and cached API responses are processed through Cloudflare as described above.

For questions about data held by Stadia Maps, OpenStreetMap, Komoot, or phzmapi.org, contact those services directly.

Changes to this policy

If we add features that change how data is handled, we will update this page and revise the "last updated" date above.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Email [email protected].