Privacy Policy

The short version

Pocket Looper keeps your email address, the courses you save, the rounds you log, the friends you add, your profile picture and any photographs you submit. If you use the Lie Reader, it also keeps each photo you scan, what the caddie read from it and how the shot came out, privately, and uses them to improve the AI answers. If you use Coach, it keeps your practice plan and results, your swing videos and their measurements, your rules questions and your round plans, privately. The messages in your Notifications are made from your own rounds and practice only, and only you can see them. Your location, when you let your phone or browser use it, is used on your device to work out distances. Only a rough position is sent to Pocket Looper, to look up the weather and the course you are on, and it is not kept. Nothing is sold, and nothing is shared with advertisers.

What is stored, and why

Only what the site needs to work:

• Your email address and an encrypted password, so you can sign in. Handled by Supabase, which runs the sign-in system. If you sign in with Google or Apple instead, there is no password here: they confirm who you are and pass on your name and email address.
• Your username and display name, if you set them, and your profile picture.
• Your year of birth, which the app asks for once. It is kept on your account only to check the age rules (13 or older) and is never shown to other golfers.
• To keep tee and green positions accurate, if you are 13 or older, signed in and have allowed location, the app may save a few positions per hole during a round (where the hole started, where you stood on the green and where you finished it) when your GPS is accurate to under 15 meters. Each is saved with the course, hole, tee and time and a random round number, never your account or name, and never as a track of where you walked; they are used only to correct course maps, and deleted after about a year. Refusing location, or turning on Do Not Track in your browser, stops this. These anonymous course positions, kept without who you are, are used to improve course maps: a tee or green that sits in the wrong place is moved to where golfers really stand.
• Your home course, if you set one, so the site can say what is near it.
• The courses you mark as played or bucket-list, so your lists follow you between devices.
• The rounds you log: date, course, score, putts, par, the tees you played and their yardage, rating and slope, whether you walked, your playing handicap, your notes, and your optional ratings of the course, the clubhouse and the day. A round played hole by hole also keeps each hole's score, putts, fairway, green, penalties and, if you add it, how far your first putt was.
• Who you played with: the friends on a shared card, and for a guest, the name and, if the host adds it, the phone number the host typed in.
• Your mobile number, only if you choose to get messages by text: the number, when you confirmed it with a code, and when you agreed to get the texts and the exact words you agreed to. Reply STOP to any text, or write to support@pocketlooper.golf, and the texts stop.
• Photographs you attach to a round, which course each belongs to, and the hole, when you take one during the round.
• Lie Reader scans: the photo, the course, hole and yardage, what the caddie read from the photo (the lie, how much of the ball shows, the grass and ground, and the tip), any correction you make, the club and plays-like yardage it showed you, and your answer when the app asks how the shot came out ("Want to improve your caddie?"). Kept privately and used to improve the AI answers. See below.
• Golf School: the answers you give when you build a practice plan (your handicap or typical score, the days and time you have, where you can practice, your clubs and the stats from your rounds), the plan itself, how each session went, and your skills test and rules quiz scores.
• Swing Studio: each swing video you add, a still from it, the positions of your body joints measured from it (shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, ankles, and one point for the center of your head; face and finger points are not kept), the markers and drawings you add, the measurements, and the coach's reports. The body positions are measured on your phone; the video is cut and shrunk on your phone before it is uploaded. Kept in private storage that only you can open. Before your first swing is kept, you are asked to agree to this and to confirm you are 13 or older; that agreement is kept too.
• Rules questions: what you ask the Rules assistant, its answer, and whether you marked it helpful. Pocket Looper's admins can read the questions and answers, to check the answers are right.
• Round plans: the course, tees, day and tee time you plan for, the plan, and what went into it (your bag's yardages, your estimated handicap, the forecast).
• A count of the AI answers your account has asked for, with the date, so daily and monthly limits can be applied.
• Suggestions you send through the suggestion form: what you wrote, your display name and the email address on your account, so a reply can reach you.
• A record that you accepted these terms: your account, the date and time, and the version.
• If you ask to be told when the app launches, the email address you give, used once for that announcement and deleted afterwards or whenever you ask, and your invite code with a count of the friends who joined with it, so what you earn can be added to your account later. You don't need an account for this.
• If you turn on the morning email, your home course, its time zone and the day the last one was sent. Every email has a link to stop it, and so does the home page.
• Notifications: the messages Pocket Looper sends you (round summaries, the weekly summary, caddie tips and app updates), made only from your own rounds, stats and practice plan; when you read or delete each one; which kinds you chose to receive; your time zone and when you last opened the app, so the weekly summary arrives at 7:00 PM your time and stops if you have been away 60 days. For an app update, Pocket Looper sees how many golfers opened it, not who.
• Phone notifications, if you turn them on: the address your phone or browser gives Pocket Looper for sending them. Turning them off deletes it.
• Green Maps: if you ask to be told when it is live, a note that you asked.

Your location

Some parts of the site can use where you are: distances on the hole screen, the courses near you when you start a round, and the wind for the caddie. This only happens when you use one of those, and your phone or browser asks your permission first. The position is used on your device to work out distances. For the wind, a rough position (to about half a mile) is sent to Pocket Looper to look up the weather and is not kept; for the courses near you, the area around you is used to find them and is not kept either. Refusing it changes nothing else about the site.

If you mark where your ball is during a round (Mark ball), each spot you mark is saved with that round, to about a yard, with the time and the club, so the app can show your shot lengths and club distances. Only you can see them, and they go when you delete the round or your account.

Your home course, if you set one, is a course you chose (not a measured position) and is stored with your profile so that "near you" works without asking for your location.

Nothing on the site tracks where you go. A round is tied to the course you say you played, and to any spots you chose to mark; never to where your phone was the rest of the time.

Photographs and location data

Photographs taken on a phone usually carry the exact place and time they were taken. Before anything leaves your device, Pocket Looper redraws the picture in your browser and uploads only the redrawn version, which carries none of that. The GPS coordinates and the camera details never reach the server.

Approved photographs are shown publicly on the course page. Photographs you have submitted but that have not been approved are kept in private storage and are visible only to you. Your profile picture is private to you.

The Lie Reader and the AI answers

When you scan your ball, the photo is sent to Pocket Looper's server, which asks an AI model, provided by Anthropic, what the lie looks like. The photo, the answer, any correction you make and how you say the shot came out are then stored with your account in private storage.

They are private. No other user can see them, they are never shown on a public page, and the storage they are in cannot be browsed or listed from outside. Pocket Looper can see them, and uses all of them to test, tune and improve the Lie Reader and the caddie's AI answers, including training Pocket Looper's own models. They are not sold or shared with anyone for their own purposes.

The photo is redrawn on your phone before it is sent, and any location or camera information left in the file is removed again before it is stored.

Deleting your account deletes them. To delete them and keep your account, delete any scan in Profile > Lie scans, or write to support@pocketlooper.golf.

Coach and the AI coaching

Parts of Coach ask an AI model, provided by Anthropic, for an answer: a Golf School plan, a swing report, a rules answer, a round plan. Each time, the server sends only what that answer needs: for a swing report, a few stills from your swing (with your body lines drawn on them) and its measurements; for a practice plan, your answers and round stats; for a rules question, the question and the last few messages of that conversation; for a round plan, the course, the plan worked out by Pocket Looper and the forecast; for a round recap, that round's scores and stats. Your name and email address are never sent. The app asks your permission before your first AI answer, and you can turn AI answers off at any time in Account; everything else keeps working without them.

Swing videos, stills and body positions are kept in private storage that only your account can open, until you delete the swing or your account. If you stop using Pocket Looper, they are deleted after three years of inactivity at the latest. They are never used to identify you, and are not used to train AI models without asking you separately first.

Rounds, friends and what others can see

Every round is private: it is visible to you and to the people on the same card, and to nobody else. There is no public feed of rounds. Course pages show counts and averages that identify nobody.

Some numbers are worked out from everyone's rounds at a course, from the same tees and over the same number of holes: how golfers usually score there, and where your round sits among them ("Top 8% at this course"). Only totals are used, never a name or a single round, and nothing is shown until a set of tees has at least 10 rounds.

A friend request goes to the exact username you typed. Until it is accepted the other person sees only your username and display name. Friends see each other's shared cards, and nothing else about each other's accounts.

A guest on a card can get their scorecard from the host by text: the host taps a button and the message goes from the host's own phone, with the guest's own score; it does not link to the round, which stays private to the players. If the host added the guest's phone number, it is stored with that round so the card can show who was there, and is not used for anything else. The guest can ask for it to be removed at support@pocketlooper.golf.

While a card with friends is being played, the friends on it who have an account can follow it live from their Home page, and nobody else can. The live card shows the course, first names, the scores and any side games; never a phone number. It stops working when the round is saved.

Events

An event is a day of golf an organizer runs through Pocket Looper, and anyone with the event link can sign up, with or without an account. Signing up collects your first and last name and your handicap. If you give them, it also keeps your gender, your age, and a mobile number with your consent to texts about the event.

The event's leaderboard shows your first name, last initial and handicap to anyone with the event link.

Texts about an event are sent through Twilio, and only to a number you have confirmed with a code.

Event records are kept until the organizer deletes the event or their account. Your mobile number for an event is removed when your account is deleted.

Who else handles it

A small number of services run parts of the site on Pocket Looper's instructions. None of them is given your data for its own purposes.

They are:

• Supabase: stores the database and the files, and runs sign-in.
• Anthropic: provides the AI model behind the Lie Reader and Coach. For a Lie Reader read it receives the photo and the yardage; for Coach, only what each answer needs (see Coach and the AI coaching above). It never receives your name or email address, and under its commercial terms it does not use what it receives to train its own models.
• GitHub keeps a nightly backup copy of the database and the files for 7 days, so nothing is lost if something goes wrong. The copy is encrypted before it is stored, and only Pocket Looper holds the key.
• Vercel: serves the site. Like any web host it sees the address of the device that asked for a page, and keeps short-lived logs to keep the site running.
• Vercel Web Analytics: counts visits, which pages are opened and which site sent the visitor, so we know what is working. It uses no cookies, never sees your name or email, drops the part of each address after the question mark, and cannot tell one person from another across days.
• Twilio: sends the text messages you choose to get (and the one-time code that confirms your number), and stops them when you reply STOP. It receives the phone number and the message, and nothing else.
• Sentry: receives a short report when something breaks on the site or in the app (the page, a short error message and, if you are signed in, your account's ID, never your name or email), so we can fix it. It never receives what you type, your rounds or your photos.
• RevenueCat: handles purchases made through Apple, where the app offers them. It receives your account's ID and what you bought from Apple; your payment details stay with Apple.
• GolfAPI: a course data supplier (scorecards, tees, ratings and the locations of greens, tees and hazards). Our service from GolfAPI ends on November 24, 2026. While the app uses it, GolfAPI may be asked about a course, or about courses near a rounded position (about one kilometer) when you ask the app to find the course you are on. It never receives your account or your name.
• OpenStreetMap Overpass: receives the same rounded position (about one kilometer) when you ask the app to find the course you are on, so it can find the outline of the golf course. It never receives your account or your name.
• Golfbert (hole and green positions): it receives a course's name and location, never your account.
• GolfCourseAPI (scorecard checks): course names only.
• PostHog: product analytics (see below). It receives short event records tied to a random account number, never your name or email.
• Resend: sends our emails: the suggestion form, the morning best-time email if you turn it on, the round, weekly and badge emails (each with a link to stop them), and reminders about a paid plan, if you have one. It receives what the email says and the address it goes to.
• Google Maps: draws the satellite view of a hole. Your browser fetches the map for the area on screen directly from Google, as it would any picture on a web page. Our server also asks Google Places for places near a trip's courses; it is sent the course's area, never your account or your location.
• Google Fonts: supplies the lettering on the share cards. Your browser fetches it directly, as it would on any web page.
• Google and Apple: if you choose to sign in with them, they confirm who you are and pass on your name and email address. They learn that you signed in to Pocket Looper, and nothing about what you do on it.
• Apple, Google, Mozilla and Microsoft: deliver phone notifications, if you turn them on, through the notification service of your phone or browser. They receive the notification's title and a short preview, and the address of your device, nothing else.
• Apple speech recognition: if you use the hands-free voice words in practice or swing capture (next, make, miss, start, stop), your iPhone's own speech recognition listens for them. Apple runs it and may process the audio on its servers under its own privacy terms. Pocket Looper never receives or keeps the audio.
• Apple Weather (WeatherKit): provides the weather and wind for the caddie, the best time to play and forecasts. It is sent a course's coordinates, or your position rounded for the shot, never your account or name.
• Open-Meteo: a backup weather source used when Apple Weather does not answer, and for air quality. It is sent the same coordinates and nothing else.
• OpenStreetMap and CARTO: draw the map tiles. Your browser fetches the tiles for the area on screen directly from them, as it would any picture on a web page.

Nothing is sold. There are no advertising trackers on this site. We count how often things happen, such as sign-ups, rounds started and finished, and questions asked, in our own database, with no cookies. Counts are kept for 13 months. Events from a signed-in golfer are tied to the account; events from a visitor who isn't signed in are not tied to anyone. We never record what you type, and never sell or share these counts.

Product analytics. We use PostHog, a product analytics service, to understand which parts of Pocket Looper golfers use, for example how many people start a round or open the Lie Reader, so we can fix what is confusing and improve what helps. Once you have told us your year of birth and you are 13 or older, we send PostHog short event records such as "round started" or "plans screen viewed", with simple facts like 9 or 18 holes and the type of device (app or web). The records are tied to a random internal account number, never to your name or email. We do not send what you type, your photos, your swing videos, your exact location or your score details, and we do not record your screen. We do not use these records for advertising and do not sell them. Nothing is sent for golfers under 13 or for visitors who have not told us their year of birth. PostHog stores the records for us on servers in the United States, does not keep the address of your device, and keeps them for 12 months.

On your device

Your browser keeps a few things for Pocket Looper on the device itself: the token that keeps you signed in, a round you are in the middle of playing so that a lost signal does not lose the card, copies of your Golf School and round plans so they open with no signal, the terms you have accepted, and small preferences such as how a page was last laid out. These stay on the device, are not sent anywhere except as part of signing in, and are cleared when you sign out or clear the site's data in your browser.

Apple Health, in the iPhone app: if you turn it on, each round you save is written to the Health app on your iPhone as a golf workout, with the time played, the distance you walked and your steps as counted by the phone, and an estimate of calories. Pocket Looper only writes to Health; it never reads anything from it, and nothing from Health is sent to Pocket Looper. You can turn it off in Account & settings or in the Health app.

How long it is kept

Your account data is kept while your account exists. Lie Reader photos and records are kept until you ask for them to be deleted or your account is closed. Messages in Notifications are kept until you delete them. Delete your account from Account > Delete account, or ask at support@pocketlooper.golf, and it is deleted: rounds, lists, friends, profile picture, photographs, Lie Reader scans, swing videos, everything in Coach and your Notifications. Your analytics records at PostHog are deleted too, and, if you made a purchase through Apple, your customer record at RevenueCat (this does not end a purchase made through Apple; manage it in your Apple account first). Swing videos are also deleted after three years without use. Copies may survive in backups for a short period afterwards. A round you shared with friends stays on their card with your name on it, because it was their round too; your scores on it are removed.

The record that you accepted the terms is kept even after deletion, because it is the evidence of the agreement itself. It holds your account id, a date, a version number, and the type of browser or phone it was accepted on.

Web server logs are kept for a short period by the host and then discarded.

Your rights

You can download a copy of what is held about you at any time from Account > Download my data. You can also ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted, or object to a particular use. Write to support@pocketlooper.golf and it will be done, normally within thirty days. If you live somewhere with a data-protection authority, you may also complain to it.

Pocket Looper is run from the United States, and your data is stored there. If you are visiting from elsewhere, you are sending it there by using the site.

Children

Pocket Looper is not for children under 13 and does not knowingly collect anything from one. If you learn that a child under 13 has an account, write to support@pocketlooper.golf and it will be removed.

Cookies

Pocket Looper sets one kind of cookie: the one that keeps you signed in. There are no advertising or analytics cookies, which is why there is no cookie banner.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, you will be asked to accept the new version the next time you open the site. The date at the top says when it last changed.