McLearen Kitchen assistant

Privacy

McLearen Kitchen has no account and no analytics, and keeps nothing of yours online unless you share a recipe as a link or send one to your own other device through the Kitchen Link mailbox. This page says what the app does with information, in plain words.

What stays on your device

Your recipes, pantry, lists, timers, settings and the app's log live in a database file on the device (on Windows, mclearen_kitchen.sqlite in Documents) and in the app's own settings. The app does not upload them anywhere, except a recipe you share as a link (below). Backups and exports are files you make and keep.

When you share a recipe as a link, the app sends that recipe — its name, description, servings, times, category, tags, ingredients, steps and the address it came from; never your notes, cooks or photos — to the McLearen Kitchen website, which runs on Cloudflare. The website keeps it for 30 days and then deletes it; you can take it down sooner from My shared links. Anyone with the link can open the page; it is not listed anywhere and asks search engines not to index it. The key that takes a page down stays on your device; the website keeps only a fingerprint of it. The website limits how often one internet address can share, and when someone reports a page it keeps a short fingerprint of their address so that each address counts once.

A private link is sealed on your device before it leaves it, with a key that only the link itself carries (the part after “#”, which browsers never send to a website). The McLearen Kitchen website keeps the sealed copy for 7 days without being able to read it, with the same limits and reports as shared links. It can carry your notes and cooks when you choose; anyone you give the whole link to can open it.

Kitchen Link connects your own phone and PC, encrypted end to end and with no account: straight over your home network when the phone reaches the PC there. Only phones you link with a code from the PC can connect, and you can remove them on the PC. What the PC sends to a phone, and what a phone sends when it cannot reach the PC (away from home, say), goes through the Kitchen Link mailbox on the McLearen Kitchen website. It is sealed on the device with a key only your two devices hold (made when you linked them), so the website keeps it without being able to read it; it sees only its size and when it came. It is deleted when the other device collects it, or after 14 days.

Websites you import from

When you paste a recipe's address or open a page inside the app, the app fetches that page from the site, the way a browser would; the site sees your connection as it would for any visitor. The app sends nothing about you to the site.

Kroger

If you link a Kroger account, the sign-in happens in Kroger's own page. The app keeps the sign-in tokens in the device's secure storage and uses them only to read your store and products and to add items to your cart. The app never sees your Kroger password.

Allrecipes and MyRecipes

If you link an Allrecipes/MyRecipes account, you sign in inside a page the app shows; the page itself talks to the site. The app does not read your password or your cookies. Importing your saves and saving a recipe to the account go through that page.

Nutrition

Nutrition estimates send a food's name to the USDA FoodData Central service to look it up. Nothing else is sent.

Voice, camera, Bluetooth and photos

Spoken commands and reading aloud use the device's own speech engines; the audio is not sent to us. The camera reads recipe cards on the device. Bluetooth reads a thermometer you pair; the app does not talk to the thermometer maker's cloud. Recipe pictures are kept on the device.

The app's log

The app writes a local log of what it did (no passwords, no tokens). It stays on the device unless you copy it to send it to us.

Children

The app is not directed at children under 13.

Contact

Questions about this page: write to support@mkaapp.com.