BirdieIQ is a personal golf scoring-caddie application. This policy explains what information the app handles, why it is used, and the choices available to you.
Information Stored on Your Device
BirdieIQ stores the following information locally on your device so it can provide recommendations and round history:
- golf profile, handicap information, bag setup, base club distances, and selected ball;
- rounds, scores, shot outcomes, misses, penalties, putting, and recommendation history;
- optional range-session and scorecard imports;
- optional GPS shot markers, saved ball positions, and elevation estimates;
- optional Bluetooth device label or identifier for an external shot marker;
- optional silent swing clips, their local review index, and pending private-upload metadata when Coach Camera Beta is present in the installed build and you explicitly turn it on;
- optional Coach Report, consent, team, and encrypted-backup status; and
- app preferences, active-round recovery data, and diagnostics preference.
You can clear or export locally stored information from the app. Deleting the app also removes its locally stored information, subject to your device and backup settings.
Location
BirdieIQ requests foreground location permission only when location-supported features are used. Location may be used to estimate the ball position, distance, elevation, or course map position. The app does not request continuous background location tracking.
When an elevation lookup is requested, the relevant coordinate is sent to Open-Meteo's elevation service. Weather requests use the course location rather than your identity.
Bluetooth
Bluetooth scanning occurs only after you start a scan. A selected device identifier may be stored locally so the app can recognize that device later. BirdieIQ does not use Bluetooth for advertising or cross-app tracking.
Camera and Optional Private Swing Clips
BirdieIQ may request camera permission to scan a competition QR. In an installed build that contains the optional Coach Camera Beta, camera permission may also be used only after you explicitly turn it on to record short silent golf swing clips while BirdieIQ is open in the foreground.
Coach Camera does not record audio. A trusted tracker mark or your manual action may start one foreground source recording of up to 30 seconds; the app may retain up to three complete short candidates for your review. The framing-only mount preview cannot save clips. Tournament Mode and Competition Lock keep Coach Camera off.
Clips initially remain on that iPhone for playback and Actual/Practice/Keep unlinked/Delete review. BirdieIQ never automatically uploads video at round end, during play, or in the background. Only after the round is saved may you choose one Actual clip with an exact round, hole, shot, club, and result link, sign in with Apple, grant separate video consent, and explicitly upload it to private storage for an authorized coach. Practice, unlinked, ambiguous, and oversized clips are not eligible. A round has a lifetime limit of 20 private uploaded blobs. Coach playback uses a short-lived private link, never a public media URL.
You may revoke access or logically delete an uploaded clip. Either action blocks normal coach playback. The current Base44 storage service does not provide BirdieIQ a verified physical-blob-delete operation, so a logically deleted private blob may remain in protected storage and continues to count toward the 20-blob lifetime limit. Uploaded video has a current 365-day retention boundary. Video is not included in profile backup, completed-round/team sharing, Coach Report files, crash diagnostics, advertising, or tracking. Coach Camera does not provide pose/swing feedback or compare your swing with prior swings in the current beta.
Weather and Course Services
BirdieIQ may request course-area forecasts and observations from official NOAA/National Weather Service services, including the Aviation Weather Center, and elevation information from Open-Meteo. NOAA/NWS receives the registered course coordinate or configured weather-station IDs; Open-Meteo receives a coordinate only when an elevation lookup is requested. These services receive the request under their own privacy policies. Open-Meteo is not used as a runtime course-weather provider.
Optional Crash Diagnostics
If crash diagnostics are configured for the installed build and Diagnostics is enabled in the app, BirdieIQ may send technical crash information to Sentry. Diagnostics are configured to exclude your name, round history, precise location, request contents, session replay, and performance tracing. Technical information may include app version, update identifier, device/operating-system type, stack trace, and the area of the app where an error occurred.
You can disable Diagnostics at any time in Setup under Data & Privacy.
Sharing and Exports
BirdieIQ does not automatically post scores to GHIN. A scorecard, flagged recommendation, profile export, Coach Report, or private swing clip leaves the app only after the applicable explicit share/upload action and consent. Coach Reports and private clips never upload merely because a round ended. Video bytes are not included in profile backup, completed-round/team sharing, or Coach Report files.
Selected volunteer beta builds may show Send Beta Round Data on a saved-round History card. On the first successfully saved round—or the first History retry—the tester sees the exact disclosure. After consent, each successfully saved round opens a Mail draft addressed to support@birdieiq.us with one privacy-bounded JSON attachment for that round; History retains a manual retry action. The attachment may contain that round's scores, shots, club choices, precise GPS marks and recorded accuracy, map/lie evidence, and matching Finish, Back, Undo, and technical diagnostic events. It excludes photos/video, GHIN, name/email, subscription data, credentials, raw device identifiers, and every other round. BirdieIQ never sends the message itself: the tester reviews the Mail draft and taps Send.
Until iOS Mail reports Sent, BirdieIQ keeps the exact credential-free JSON package in a bounded local retry queue (no more than five reports). Saved drafts, cancellations, unknown Mail results, share-sheet use, and errors remain queued because BirdieIQ cannot prove delivery. A reported Sent result removes that report's local retry bytes. Editing, reopening, or deleting a saved round removes every queued package built from that older round state, so a later retry is rebuilt from current saved truth. Forgetting beta consent, clearing local history, or restoring a profile deletes the entire retry directory and transient attachments. This queue is excluded from profile and cloud backups. BirdieIQ administrators use a received beta report only for debugging and delete it after 30 days.
If you join a coach, team, school, or program inside BirdieIQ, completed competition rounds may be shared only after you give team-sharing consent. Practice rounds are a separate optional choice and are shared only if you turn on practice sharing; they are queued after a round is saved, never during play. You can turn future practice sharing off in settings. If the player is under 18, the same parent/guardian or school approval gate applies before enabling competition or practice sharing.
Account, Reports, and Encrypted Backup
In builds supporting coach practice plans, an authorized coach can propose a practice priority for a consenting team member. Opening plans retrieves those suggestions; agreeing, declining or marking completion explicitly sends your reply and any note to the team service. Stored records include the suggestion, replies, dates, player/team identifiers and the applicable membership-consent generation. Completion is self-reported and does not establish measured improvement. This does not grant private-video access or automatically upload rounds. Leaving the team or disabling practice sharing stops ordinary access but does not erase this history; contact privacy@birdieiq.us for deletion assistance. Authorized administrators may retain these records in private service backups.
Optional private media, Coach Report delivery, and encrypted cloud backup use Sign in with Apple to establish the account owner. A coach sees a report or clip only when current authorization and the applicable consent allow it. Report consent, video consent, team/round sharing, and backup are separate choices.
Manual mobile backup reads supported app-data stores, encrypts them on the device with AES-256-GCM, and uploads only the encrypted envelope. Its encryption key is stored in the iCloud-synchronizable Keychain and is not sent to BirdieIQ or Base44. Restore requires the same Apple/iCloud account with Passwords & Keychain enabled. Backup excludes video bytes, credentials, Apple tokens, signed media links, and local media paths. Backup and restore run only when you choose the action while the app is open and no round or device upload is active.
Sale, Advertising, and Tracking
BirdieIQ does not sell personal information. BirdieIQ does not use third-party advertising SDKs and does not track you across other companies' apps or websites.
Data Retention and Deletion
Local information remains on your device until you clear it or delete the app. You may delete an individual local Coach Camera clip without changing a shot, score, club, or tracker mark. For uploaded media, revoke/logical delete blocks normal access, subject to the physical-blob limitation described above. Coach Reports can be revoked or deleted separately. Received volunteer beta round reports are deleted after 30 days. Encrypted backups remain owner-scoped and require the matching iCloud Keychain key to restore. Optional crash diagnostics are retained according to the configured Sentry project settings. To request help with access, deletion, or a privacy question, contact the address below.
Children
BirdieIQ is not directed to children under 13. A school or coach using BirdieIQ with a minor should obtain any consent required by the school, parent, guardian, and applicable law.
Changes
This policy may be updated as BirdieIQ adds services or changes how information is handled. The effective date above will be updated when the policy changes.
Operating Entity and Contact
BirdieIQ LLC, an Arizona limited liability company
Contact: privacy@birdieiq.us
Third-party privacy information:
- Sentry: https://sentry.io/privacy/
- Open-Meteo: https://open-meteo.com/en/terms
- National Weather Service: https://www.weather.gov/privacy
- NOAA privacy: https://www.noaa.gov/protecting-your-privacy