Last updated: 5 September 2026
Khao is designed to be private. This policy explains, in plain language, exactly what the app does and does not do with information. It is deliberately short because Khao collects very little. It covers Khao on iPhone, iPad and Android.
Khao has no account system and no analytics. Everything you do in the app — your taste preferences, diet, allergies, household, meal times, likes and saved dishes — is stored only on your device. Khao does not operate a server that receives your personal data.
There is exactly one exception, and you have to go and choose it: a dish photo you decide to send. If you photograph something you cooked and submit it, that photo — and the name you pick to be credited by — leave your phone. Nothing else does. Full details are under "Photos you send us" below.
This is worth stating plainly rather than leaving you to infer it. Working out which dish to suggest — reading your palate, your allergies, your household's rules, the time of day and the time of year, and ranking the whole recipe list against them — runs on your device, every time. There is no request to anybody's server in that path, because there is no server. It is why the app still works with no network at all, and it is why nobody, including us, has to be trusted with your allergies.
Khao lets you speak what is in your fridge, or photograph it, instead of typing it. Both are optional, and typing works exactly as it always has — on every screen where one of these is offered, the typing field is offered beside it. On iPhone and iPad this lives in More → Leftover Remix; on Android it is on your kitchen list. The camera is also used in two more places, both optional: Fridge Scan (photograph your fridge; the photos are read on your phone and thrown away — only the ingredient list you confirm is kept, and nothing is uploaded) and the photo contest (described under "Photos you send us" — nothing uploads until you tap send). The microphone is used nowhere else in the app.
Except for a photo you deliberately send to the contest, nothing here is recorded and nothing is uploaded.
Khao then shows you what it thought it heard or saw, and adds nothing until you tick it. The only thing either route can leave behind is the list of ingredient names you confirmed, saved to your own kitchen list on this phone, exactly as if you had typed them.
What your phone asks you for differs by platform, because Khao asks for the least it can on each. On iPhone and iPad, your phone asks for the microphone, for speech recognition and for the camera, the first time you use one of these. On Android, Khao asks only for the microphone — and separately, only if you switch meal reminders on, for permission to send you notifications. It does not request camera permission and it does not request access to your photos, because a new photograph is taken by your phone's own camera app and a photo you already have is handed over by your phone's own picker; neither gives Khao your camera or your photo library. If you say no to anything, that route stops being offered, the app tells you how to turn it back on, and nothing else changes. You can change your mind at any time in your phone's own settings for Khao.
The following is saved locally on your iPhone, iPad or Android phone (in the app's own storage) and is never transmitted to us:
You can see all of it — You → Privacy & your data → Export my data produces a readable file. That file is created only when you tap the button, it is stored inside the app's own private space on the phone, it is left out of iCloud and iTunes backups and out of Android's cloud backup, and it is deleted again as soon as you leave that screen. You can erase everything from You → Privacy & your data → Delete my data, which also removes any export. Deleting the app removes all of it too.
Household → Invite by link lets you send someone a link so they can fill in their own diet, allergies and dislikes on their own phone, instead of you guessing.
Nothing about this passes through us, because there is nothing for it to pass through. There is no server, no account, and no database. Everything each phone needs travels inside the link itself.
#, which browsers never send to a web
server — so the site hosting that page cannot see it even in principle,
and it is not stored, logged or forwarded anywhere.Two honest limits, stated rather than glossed over. First, anyone who sees both the invitation and the reply can read the reply, because the invitation is what carries the key; there is no way around that without a server holding a secret, and a server holding other people's allergies is precisely what Khao refuses to have. Second, an invitation is a message: once sent, you cannot un-send it, in the same way you cannot un-send any other message.
For as long as you keep the app, and not a moment longer. Because Khao holds nothing about you anywhere except on your own device, there is no second copy sitting on a server with a retention clock running on it. Your settings and history stay on the phone until you erase them from You → Privacy & your data → Delete my data, or until you delete the app — either one removes the lot straight away. The export file is the shortest-lived thing here: it exists only while that screen is open. Apart from a dish photo you chose to send us — see "Photos you send us" — we keep nothing, so there is nothing for us to hold on to, and no backup of it for you to ask us about.
If you allow notifications, Khao schedules local meal reminders on your device — one about 45 minutes before each of the meal times you have set. These are generated on the phone; no reminder content is sent through us. Khao does not use remote push notifications.
From version 1.0.7, Khao lets you add your own photo of a dish you cooked, so that the next person deciding what to eat can see what it really looks like when somebody makes it at home. This is entirely optional. If you never tap "Add your photo", nothing in this section ever happens to you, and nothing about you leaves your phone.
When you do submit a photo, this is exactly what is stored, and where:
Nothing else goes with it. Your diet, your allergies, your household, your swipes and your saved dishes stay on your phone exactly as before. A photo submission carries no location and no hidden details: before upload the image is re-encoded and everything embedded in it — location, timestamps, device details — is removed.
Every photo is reviewed by a person before anybody else can see it. Until it is accepted it is visible to nobody but you. If it is accepted it becomes public inside Khao, credited to the name you chose. If it is rejected it is not shown to anyone.
Reporting, blocking and removal. Any published photo can be reported from inside the app, and you can block a contributor so you never see their photos again. Anything reported is reviewed and, if it breaks the rules, removed within 24 hours. When you report something, we store what you reported, the reason, the time, and the same opaque identifier — so that reports can be acted on and abuse of the report button can be spotted.
Getting your own photo taken down. Use More → My photos and delete it, or write to anirudhkapoor1996@gmail.com and we will remove it within 24 hours. You do not have to give a reason.
Photos and reports are kept for as long as the photo is published. When a photo is removed — by you, or by us — the image and its record are deleted.
From version 1.0.9 you can also enter a photo in the Khao photo contest. A contest entry leaves your phone the same way a dish photo does — only when you tap send, and only to the same moderated store, where a person reviews it before anyone else can see it. Three things are specific to contest entries. First, you can take the photo in the app or choose one from your photo library; your phone hands Khao the single image you pick, and Khao still cannot see the rest of your library. Second, before upload the image is re-encoded and everything embedded in it is stripped — location, timestamps, device details — and a photo with an identifiable person in it is rejected on your phone and never uploaded at all. Third, contest entries — unlike ordinary dish photos — may be used commercially, including being licensed or sold. We do not bury that in fine print: at your first entry you are shown, and must separately tick, this consent — "I agree my photo may be sold or licensed commercially, including on stock-photo marketplaces." — and until you tick it, nothing uploads. The full licence is in the contest rules inside the app. There is still no account and no sign-in: a contest entry is tied to the same opaque, app-specific identifier described above, which we cannot turn into your name, email, or device.
From version 1.0.9 there is a Send feedback box under More. What you type is stored, with the app version and language, in the same Apple CloudKit store the photos use, so a person can read it. It carries no name and no email — Khao cannot reply — and it rides the same opaque identifier described above. Please don't put personal details in the text itself.
The free version of Khao shows advertisements. The list below is exhaustive — there are no other ads anywhere in Khao — and because the two apps are at different points, it is written by version.
On iPhone and iPad running version 1.0.9, there is exactly one, and it is optional. On the screen after a cook flow you may choose to watch a single ad, and watching it earns you a day of Khao+. Nothing is shown unless you tap to start it, and nothing happens if you never do. A day earned this way is still honoured after you update.
From version 1.0.10 on iPhone and iPad, and on Android, there are three. Two are not optional, and they are on the same two screens on every platform:
The third is optional, and nothing starts it but you. Under More on iPhone and iPad, and under You on Android, you can choose to watch a single video, about thirty seconds long, and watching one earns you one Fridge Scan — photograph the fridge, correct the list, see what you can cook. You can earn at most three a day. Nothing plays until you tap, nothing is taken if you never do, and a scan that finds nothing costs you nothing: the scan is spent only when you confirm the list.
Every ad is labelled as an ad, on both platforms and in both languages, and it is never dressed up as part of Khao. Ads never appear while you are browsing dishes, and never inside a recipe you are cooking from. If no ad is available the space is not held open — the frame disappears entirely rather than leaving a gap that looks like something failed to load.
On Android, the screen you see after handing off an order also offers a scratch card, once a day. That is a reward, not an advertisement: it is Khao's own, it sells nothing, no third party is involved and nothing about you is sent anywhere to produce it. One of the things it can give you is a Fridge Scan — the same thing a video earns, and in addition to the three a day you can earn by watching, not instead of one of them. Khao+ subscribers see no ads at all, anywhere in the app, on either platform.
Ads are served by Google AdMob, and Khao requests non-personalised, contextual serving on every ad call. That means an ad is picked for the screen it appears on, not for you. Khao sends Google nothing about you — no name, no email, no diet, no allergies, no history of what you cooked or ordered; Khao does not even hold most of those off your phone. Like any internet request, an ad request reaches Google's servers and carries coarse, non-identifying facts: the kind of device you are using and your approximate region, which is what contextual serving works from. Khao does no tracking, so on iPhone and iPad it never shows Apple's tracking permission prompt — there is nothing to ask about. On Android, an ad request carries your device's resettable advertising ID, which Google uses for things like frequency capping and fraud prevention; you can reset it, or switch off ad personalisation entirely, at any time in Android's own settings. Khao sends Google nothing else about you on either platform. What Google does with the requests it receives is described in Google's own privacy policy.
Apart from those ad creatives and the dish photos described above, Khao still displays every dish as an illustration drawn on the device, downloads no other images from any server, and contains no analytics.
So that new dishes can be added without waiting for an app update, Khao checks once per
launch whether a newer dish list is available. It fetches a single public file over HTTPS:
raw.githubusercontent.com/anirudhkapoor1996-web/khao-catalog/main/catalog.json
This request contains nothing about you — no account, no identifier, no cookie, no preferences, no search terms, no request body. It is the identical request for every user of the app, and it is the only automatic network request Khao makes — the dish-photo requests described above happen only on screens you have opened, and only if photos have been submitted for that dish. The file is a list of recipes and nothing else: Khao downloads no code, and every feature and rule in the app is the same before and after.
The downloaded list is validated on the device before it is used — dish count, unique IDs, and allergen data are all checked — and anything that fails validation is discarded. If the request fails, or you are offline, the app works exactly as before using the recipes built into it.
Like any request to any website, GitHub's servers will see the IP address it came from, in the same way they would if you loaded a web page. We have no access to those records and receive nothing from them.
When you tap to order a dish, Khao opens Zomato or Swiggy — either the installed app or their website — with the dish name as a search. Khao sends nothing else, and only when you tap. Anything you do there is governed by their privacy policies, not this one.
Khao is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from them. Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, a child is anyone under 18 years of age. Khao has no account, collects no age information and builds no profile of any user, so it does not track or profile children — or anyone else. Advertising in the free version is contextual and never personalised — for children or for anyone else.
Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, you have the right to know what personal data is held about you, to correct or erase it, to complain about how it has been handled, and to nominate another person to exercise these rights on your behalf. Because Khao holds your information only on your own device, you can exercise the first two immediately and without asking anyone, from You → Privacy & your data.
If you are unhappy with how your information has been handled, contact Anirudh Kapoor, anirudhkapoor1996@gmail.com. We will respond within 90 days, as required by Section 13 of the Act, and usually much sooner. If you are not satisfied with the response, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.
None, with one consent-gated exception: contest photos — see "Contest entries" above; they carry no name, no location and no identifiable person, and nothing uploads without the separate tick. Beyond that, Khao does not sell, rent, or share your personal data with third parties, for advertising or for any other purpose. Your diet, allergies, household and swipes are never used to target advertising — that is a limit built into how the app works, not a promise about what is on the screen today, and it does not expire.
Khao is operated by Anirudh Kapoor, an individual based in India. In the language of India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, that makes him the "Data Fiduciary" for Khao and you the "Data Principal". This policy is governed by the laws of India, and the courts at Gurugram, Haryana have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from it.
If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date above will change. Material changes will be noted in the app.
Anirudh Kapoor — anirudhkapoor1996@gmail.com