Your bins, your phone

At a glance

• No account.
• We never keep your street address.
• No tracking across apps or websites.
• We never sell your data.

On your phone

Your places, your schedule (bin night, how often each bin goes, which week is which, and any one-off changes), reminder times, bin night confirmations, and Patch's name and tone are stored on this iPhone. They are not sent to us, apart from the bin nights in Starting bin night on the Lock Screen. Deleting the app deletes them. Your iPhone's own backups may include them, under Apple's terms.

Widgets and the Live Activity read your schedule from a shared space on your iPhone that only Local Bins can use. The Apple Watch app gets a copy straight from your iPhone. The widgets and the Watch send nothing to us.

Local Bins doesn't ask for your camera or your photos.

Adding bin days to Calendar

Add to Calendar copies your collection dates into a Local Bins calendar on your iPhone, or a calendar file you share. Your calendar provider then handles them under its own terms.

The app asks for calendar access only when you turn this on. It changes only its own Local Bins calendar and doesn't look at your other events. Turning it off removes that calendar.

Starting bin night on the Lock Screen

While Bin night on the Lock Screen and reminders are both on, the app sends Local Bins Services what it needs to start the Live Activity at your reminder time, even if you haven't opened the app: a push token from Apple, a random device ID, your place's time zone, and the next 8 weeks of bin nights. Each bin night has the collection date, your reminder time (when it starts), the bedtime check time, the out-by time, and whether bins go out the night before or the morning of, plus whether it's kerbside or a bin room, each bin's type and lid colour, and whether the app has already set that night up on your iPhone.

It never sends your address, place name, suburb or bin names. A bin you renamed goes as its usual type, so a night we start shows the standard name, such as General waste. Instead of your real place and collection IDs, the app sends random stand-ins it makes for this iPhone, so two phones in one household don't send matching IDs.

It's kept by Local Bins Services on Vercel and Neon in the United States (Virginia), and Apple's push service delivers the start. Each update replaces the bin nights, and a night goes once its out-by time passes. A note that a night's start was sent is kept for two days after collection. The record is tied to a keyed hash of your app's App Attest key, so only your copy of Local Bins can change or delete it. We also keep when it was last refreshed, and whether it came from a test build or the App Store build. Vercel's request logs hold the random device ID for up to a day.

It's deleted straight away when you turn off Bin night on the Lock Screen or reminders, when Apple says the push token no longer works, once the last stored bin night has passed, and after 8 weeks without a refresh. A random device ID and the last push token stay in your iPhone's keychain after you delete the app, only so a reinstall can remove the old record.

Filling in answers from council data

When you set up a place, the app can look for official council data. It sends the map position of the address you picked, or your current location, once, to the Local Bins schedule lookup. It never sends your street address. If there's a reliable match, it returns the collection pattern for that area and the app fills in your answers. You check every date before it's saved.

The lookup only happens while you set up a place. It isn't repeated later, and the app doesn't bring dates across from earlier test versions.

Address suggestions while you type come from Apple Maps, under Apple's terms. If you use your current location, your iPhone asks Apple Maps for the suburb. Your position isn't saved.

We can switch this lookup off. When it's off, nothing is sent and you answer the questions yourself.

App settings

From time to time the app downloads a small settings file from Local Bins Services, for example whether the council data lookup is switched on. The request includes the app version and nothing about you.

Checking requests come from the real app

Requests to Local Bins Services are protected by Apple's App Attest. Your iPhone creates a key that only this copy of Local Bins can use, and Apple confirms the app is genuine. We store the key's public part and a counter, so nobody else can pretend to be your app. It doesn't identify you and isn't used for ads. We delete a key 180 days after the app last used it.

Local sponsor cards

On the free plan the app may show one labelled card from a local business. To choose a card, the app sends Local Bins Services the suburb, postcode and state of the place you're looking at, which screen it is, and any cards you've hidden. We count views and taps so sponsors know a card was seen. If you report a card, we get the reason you choose and any note you write.

Sponsor cards never use your precise location, your advertising identifier or tracking across apps. They are never shown on bin night, during setup, or next to where your dates come from. Paid plans remove them.

Google ads

On the free plan the app may show Google banner ads. They are requested as non-personalised ads. Local Bins turns off Google's publisher first-party identifier and does not request App Tracking Transparency permission.

Google's Mobile Ads SDK may still process your IP address and approximate location, device or app identifiers, ad and app interactions, and crash and performance data to deliver, secure and measure ads. Google's processing is covered by the Google Privacy Policy.

Where Google's consent tool applies, you can reopen your advertising privacy choices in You › Privacy choices. Paid plans remove Google ads.

Telling us council data was wrong

If the app filled in your answers from council data and you changed them, it can tell us what was wrong, so we can fix it for your neighbours. It asks first. If you say yes, it sends the council area it matched, what you changed (for example, "recycling is the other week"), and the app version. Never your street address, name or exact location.

You can turn this off in You › Privacy choices. Because these reports aren't linked to you, we can't find and delete a single one.

Household sharing

Household sharing uses iCloud. The people you invite see the shared place, its schedule, the rota and who put the bins out. It's stored in your iCloud and theirs, under Apple's terms. Local Bins doesn't receive it and there's no Local Bins account. Leave or stop sharing any time from Household in the app.

Sharing your collection pattern

After you set up, the app asks whether you'd like to share your collection pattern anonymously, so the next neighbour can set up with one tap. It's off unless you turn it on. Nothing is sent until your first collection shows the dates are right.

A shared pattern is your suburb, postcode and state, the weekday, how often each bin goes, and which week the alternating bins fall on. Never your street address, name, exact location, reminder times, bin names, lid colours or one-off changes. Bin rooms are never shared.

A neighbours' schedule is offered only once at least five households in a suburb have shared the same pattern and we've checked it. If you use one, the app can tell us anonymously, with the same switch, whether the dates worked after your first collection.

You can withdraw it any time in You › Privacy choices. Your pattern is deleted from Local Bins Services straight away. A shared pattern is refreshed while you use the app and deleted 180 days after its last refresh, so if you delete the app, your shared pattern is removed automatically within 6 months.

App Attest stops one phone counting as several households. Someone holding both our database and a separate secret key could tell which App Attest key shared a pattern in which suburb, but never your address, name or Apple account.

This website

No cookies, no analytics, no tracking. Fonts are served from this site. Our web host keeps standard server logs, including IP addresses, for security.

If you send a sponsor enquiry through the form on the sponsor page, we receive the details you type. The form uses Cloudflare Turnstile to stop spam. Turnstile processes your IP address, browser details and similar signals for that check, under Cloudflare's Turnstile privacy addendum.

If you send a council enquiry through the form on the councils page, we receive the details you type, and it uses Turnstile in the same way.

Where your data is handled

Local Bins Services runs on Vercel and keeps its data with Neon, both in the United States (Virginia). Sponsor enquiries, council enquiries, sponsor card counts and reports, App Attest keys, corrections to council data, shared collection patterns and the bin nights for starting the Live Activity on the Lock Screen are kept there. Vercel's own request logs, which include IP addresses and the area a request was for, are kept for up to a day.

See what we keep, and for how long.

TestFlight

When you test through TestFlight, Apple also processes testing information and shares usage, crash and feedback information with the developer. See Apple's TestFlight privacy information.

Who we are

Local Bins is published on the App Store by Rodney Telford. Email hello@localbins.app.

For data or deletion requests, see the data page. We'll update this page when the app changes, and change the date at the top.