We used to tell people Tonight's Table didn't track anything, full stop. That changed when we made every feature free and switched to an ad-supported model. We'd rather explain exactly what's true now than quietly leave an old promise on the page. So here's an honest accounting of what the app does and doesn't do with your data.
We still don't run a server of our own
There is no Tonight's Table backend. No database with your name on it, no API endpoint that logs your queries. When you tap "Find a spot," your phone talks to Apple's MapKit service directly. Your search never touches our infrastructure, because we don't have any. And your purchase status is just a single boolean Apple StoreKit reports back to your device — we never see your payment details.
Your app data stays on your phone
Your visited log, your ratings, your search radius, your hide-chains setting, your language preference, your last entered location — all of it is in iOS UserDefaults, Apple's standard local key-value store. It's sandboxed to the app and gets deleted with the app. None of it is synced to iCloud, and none of it leaves your phone through us. If you delete the app, every piece of data you've ever entered is gone.
The honest part: the free app shows ads
The free version of Tonight's Table is supported by ads — a banner and the occasional full-screen interstitial. Those ads are served by a third-party advertising partner (we plan to use Google AdMob), and that partner is its own company with its own data practices. To show and measure ads, and to personalize them where allowed, it may collect things like your device's advertising identifier (IDFA), coarse location, your IP address, and basic device information, and it may combine that with data from other apps and sites. That happens inside the ad provider's systems, not ours — but it's real data collection, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
You're in control of the tracking
Before the ad partner can use your advertising identifier to track you across other apps and websites, iOS shows you Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt. If you decline, the ad partner won't use the IDFA to track you — you'll still see ads, just less personalized ones. You can change your answer any time in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.
Or skip the ads entirely
If you'd rather have none of this, there's a one-time Remove Ads purchase for $4.99. It turns off the ads and stops the ad SDK from loading, so the ad-related data collection doesn't happen at all. Every feature is free either way — Remove Ads doesn't unlock anything, because nothing is locked. (If you bought the old "Pro" upgrade, you're already permanently ad-free.)
The principle, updated
We still believe the strongest privacy posture is not collecting data you don't need. We don't collect any ourselves. What's changed is that the free tier now relies on a third party that does — and the honest move is to say so plainly, tell you how to limit it, and give you a clean way to opt out for good. That's the trade we landed on to keep every feature free for everyone.