Delete your account

This is the fastest route, and the one we recommend. It takes effect immediately.

1. 01

   Open Plantcare and sign in

   You need to be signed in to the account you want deleted.

2. 02

   Open your profile

   On the Garden tab, tap your avatar in the top right corner.

3. 03

   Tap Settings

   The third row of the profile menu, labelled "Settings - Account, preferences, privacy".

4. 04

   Scroll to the bottom and tap Delete account

   It sits under the Log out button, at the very end of the Settings screen.

5. 05

   Confirm twice

   Tap "Delete", then "Delete my account" on the second confirmation. This is the point of no return - the deletion cannot be undone.

You are signed out as soon as the deletion completes, and your account is gone from our systems at that moment.

If you can no longer open the app, or you lost access to your device, write to us. We also help by email if you prefer it to the app.

1. 01

   Email us from the address on your account

   Write to [email protected] from the email address you signed up with, so we can confirm the request is yours.

2. 02

   Use the subject "Delete my account"

   Include your Plantcare username if you know it. Nothing else is needed.

3. 03

   Wait for our confirmation

   We can write back once to verify your identity. We never ask for your password, and we have no way to read it.

We action verified requests within 30 days, and in practice much sooner. You get a confirmation email once the account is gone.

Deleting your account removes, permanently:

• Your profile - display name, username, email address and profile picture.
• Your sign-in methods - the links to your Apple or Google account, and any email sign-in records.
• Your gardens - every garden you own on your own, with all the plants in it, their care schedules, care history and progress photos.
• Health diagnoses and treatment plans generated for those plants.
• Your posts on Explore - the posts themselves, their photos, and the comments and likes attached to them.
• Your activity on other people's posts - the comments and likes you left, the reports you filed and the accounts you blocked.
• Your devices and reminders - push notification tokens and notification preferences, so the reminders stop at once.

None of this is recoverable. We cannot restore an account once it has been deleted, for anyone.

A few things outlive the account. Each one is either anonymised or belongs to somebody else.

• Plant identification records, anonymised - kept indefinitely. When a photo is identified we keep the record of which species was recognised, with the link to your account permanently removed. It can no longer be traced back to you, and it helps us measure and improve identification accuracy.
• Shared gardens - kept for the other members. A garden you share with other people is not deleted, because it is theirs too. See the next section.
• Encrypted backups - up to 30 days. Deleted data can persist in routine encrypted backups until those backups roll over, which happens within 30 days. Backups are never used to restore a deleted account.
• Diagnostic and crash reports - up to 90 days. Technical error reports used to fix bugs. They are not linked to your profile after deletion.
• One-time sign-in codes - up to a day. Codes emailed to you for email sign-in stop working minutes after they are sent. Any still on record when you leave go with the account, and expired codes are purged daily.
• Records we are legally required to keep - for example a record that a deletion request was made and honoured, kept for as long as the applicable law requires, and used for nothing else.

If you own a garden that other people are members of, that garden and its plants stay in place when you delete your account. Ownership passes to another member so they do not lose the plants they have been tending.

Your membership is removed, your name and picture disappear from the member list, and you lose access to the garden. If you want the garden deleted with you, remove the other members before you delete your account: a garden with no other members is deleted along with everything in it.

• From the app - immediate. Your account and data are removed as you confirm.
• By email - within 30 days of us verifying the request, usually within a few days.
• Photos and other files - deleted at the same moment as the account, not on a later sweep.
• Encrypted backups - cleared within 30 days of the account being deleted.

Write to us at [email protected] or through the contact page. Our Privacy Policy covers what we collect and why, and your other rights over it.