PocketPetal Get it on the App Store

For parents

PocketPetal is a game about finding real plants and adding them to a collection. Players of all ages use it, and the app sets itself up for each player's age. Here's what that means for your child.

Before you head out

PocketPetal uses image recognition to guess plant names, and it often gets them wrong. Many harmful plants look like harmless ones.

  • Never let your child eat, taste or touch a plant because of what the app says. The app is a game, not a guide to plants.
  • Teach "look, don't touch". Your child takes a photo; the plant stays where it is.
  • Explore together. Younger children should always play outside with a grown-up nearby.
  • If you think your child has swallowed or touched a harmful plant, call emergency services or your local poison control centre right away.

How the app knows your child's age

PocketPetal doesn't ask anything when it first opens: a new player can catch a plant straight away, and until they tell the app their age, it runs in kid mode. It asks for a birth month and year, with no answer pre-filled, when your child leaves the result of their first catch, or earlier if they tap sign-in, subscriptions, Game Center or notifications. On iOS 26 and later, the app then also checks the age range Apple shares for your child's Apple Account, if you allow it, and uses whichever age is younger.

Your child can't change their age to an older one in the app. The settings move up on their own as birthdays pass. If the age entered was wrong and your child is younger, email and we'll switch the account to kid mode. We'll ask you to confirm the request from your child's device, so we change the right account.

Kid mode (under 13)

What your child can do: photograph plants, add them to a collection, earn XP and badges, level up, keep a daily streak and complete quests.

What's switched off:

  • usernames, friends, user search, the friends feed, sharing, referral codes and profile pictures, so other players can't find or contact your child;
  • signing in with Apple, Google or email, and every email from us;
  • push notifications;
  • third-party analytics and crash reporting;
  • Game Center;
  • using photos to train our image recognition model;
  • upgrade prompts and adverts (there are no adverts for anyone).

What works differently:

  • Each photo is checked on the phone for faces before it's sent. A photo with a face in it is turned down and never uploaded.
  • The phone rounds its location to about 110 km before sending anything, which is enough to tell the seasons and the region, and far too rough to find a town.
  • Once your child's age is in, the plant notice is shown again in words written for children: "Look, don't touch or taste. Ask a grown-up." (Before that, every new player sees the general notice.)

Because kids play without signing in, a child's collection stays on the device it was made on and can't be moved to a new phone.

Teens (13 to 17)

Teens can have a username and friends, and link an account so their collection is backed up. Some things start switched off, and a teen can turn them on:

  • precise location (until then, about 10 km);
  • being findable in user search;
  • sharing catches to the friends feed;
  • push notifications.

Photos from anyone under 18 are never used to train our model.

No ads, and we never sell data

PocketPetal has no adverts, and we never sell anyone's data or share it for advertising. For a child in kid mode, the only companies that receive anything are the ones that run the game for us: Google's Firebase (where the game's data is kept), the image recognition services that read the plant photos (Pl@ntNet, Plant.id and our own model, hosted by Hetzner), RevenueCat (which handles purchases, and receives only a random account ID) and Apple. The privacy policy lists each one and what it gets.

Purchases, the grown-up check and Ask to Buy

  • PocketPetal is free to play. In kid mode it never shows upgrade prompts.
  • The subscription screen sits behind a grown-up check: a multiplication question a young child is unlikely to answer.
  • If your child is in your Family Sharing group with Ask to Buy on, Apple asks you to approve each purchase.
  • Ask to Buy doesn't apply when a child uses your Apple Account. If they play on your phone, use Screen Time to require a password for purchases.

Game Center

Game Center is off in kid mode, and for anyone who hasn't told the app their age yet: the app doesn't sign in to it or report anything. For teens signed in to Apple's Game Center, the badges they earn appear as Game Center achievements, and two scores (species collected and longest streak) go to Game Center leaderboards. That data is held by Apple, not by us, and we never see your child's Game Center identity. You can limit Game Center in Screen Time.

How long we keep your child's data

For as long as your child plays, because the game shows their collection back to them. A kid account that hasn't been used for 12 months is deleted automatically, with everything in it. Opening the app counts as using it. You can delete it sooner at any time.

Review or delete your child's data

Delete everything now: on your child's device, open Settings → Delete Account. It's immediate and can't be undone.

Stop any further collection: delete the account, then remove the app.

See what we hold, or ask us to delete it: email with the subject "Parent request". Kid accounts have no name or email, so we'll ask you to confirm the request from your child's device before we share or delete anything. We reply within one month.

Some US states, starting with Texas, require a parent's consent before a minor downloads an app or buys something in it. Apple asks for that consent through the App Store. If you withdraw it, Apple tells us and we lock the account: the app shows only a message that a parent turned PocketPetal off.

Questions

Write to . PocketPetal is made by Starling Petals LLC, 3255 Lawrenceville Suwanee Rd, Suite P888, Suwanee, GA 30024, United States. Telephone: (530) 255-4719. The full details are in our Privacy Policy (section 8) and Terms of Service.