PRTL

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 2, 2026

This policy explains what information PRTL ("we," "us") collects when you use the PRTL mobile app and the prtlhome.com website, why we collect it, and how it's stored. PRTL turns a wall-mounted display into a calendar, weather readout, stock ticker, rotating art frame and more, controlled from your phone. PRTL is pre-launch: no frames have been manufactured or sold.

1.Information the app collects

We collect the following categories of information directly from your use of the app:

Category
What we collect
Why
Account
Your email address and a password, through Firebase Authentication. Firebase stores the password in hashed form; we never see it.
To create your account, sign you in, and send password-reset emails you ask for
App content
Your Rooms, Displays, Modes, schedules and mode settings (for example which stocks, calendars or city you chose), plus things you save, such as recent prompts, saved routes, saved mottos and whiteboards
To run the app and remember your setup across sessions and devices
Paired frames
When you pair a frame: a record linking it to your account, with the frame's hardware ID, software version, and when it was last online
So only your frame can show your content, and so you can unpair it
Photos
Only the photos you pick for the Family Photos mode. The app resizes them on your phone and uploads them to our cloud storage.
To show your own photos on your display
Reference photo
A photo you choose to attach when generating art in an art mode
To generate that image. It is sent to our server and to Google Gemini
Location
Your phone's location, only when you tap to use it in Flights, Prayer Times or Traffic. Weather and Sunrise use a city you type instead. For My Maps, your phone reads where photos you pick were taken and sends only the US states, not the coordinates. We never read your location in the background.
To find flights overhead, local prayer times, your route, or the states on your map
Calendar
Events from the calendars you pick (title, time, location and notes), read on your phone when you generate the Calendar mode
To draw your calendar image. The events are sent to our server for that
Generated and rendered images
Images the app generates or renders for you (art, calendar, weather, stock and other displays)
To show on your display
App activity
A record of a few steps you take in the app (starting and finishing setup, generating a preview, applying content, regenerating), with the mode involved, your phone's platform and the time, stored with your account. Steps taken before you sign in are recorded without any account attached
To see where the app works and where people get stuck. This is our own record, not a third-party analytics service
Technical data
Your IP address and request details in our server logs, and a daily count of the images your account generates
To keep the service secure, limit abuse, and cap generation costs

We do not ask for or knowingly collect payment card numbers, government ID, precise health information, or biometric data. The app has no in-app purchases today.

2.This website and the waitlist

When you join the waitlist, ask to be notified, subscribe to updates, or apply as a creator on prtlhome.com, the form sends what you enter to Formspree, the service that delivers it to us by email. That includes:

  • your email address, and your name, company and social handle if you give them;
  • which form you used, and what you told us you were interested in;
  • how you found us: the page you first landed on, the site that sent you, the date of that first visit, and any campaign tags (such as utm_source) in the link you followed.

To remember how you found us between visits, the site keeps that first-visit record in your browser's local storage. It also keeps a count of the forms you have submitted and, if you arrived through a reservation link, a note to keep showing the reservation section. These stay in your browser. Only the first-visit record ever leaves it, and only inside a form you choose to submit. Our pages set no cookies.

The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which processes your IP address to deliver pages and block attacks. We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count page views; it sets no cookies and does not follow you to other sites.

To come off the waitlist or stop updates, email [email protected].

3.How we use your information

  • To operate the app: sign you in, sync your Rooms, Displays and Modes, and apply content to your frame.
  • To make what you asked for: turning your photos, calendar, watchlist, city, location or art prompt into an image on your display.
  • To email people on the waitlist about PRTL, which is what they signed up for.
  • To answer you when you contact us.
  • To maintain and secure the service, for example daily limits on image generation.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising. We do not use your photos, calendar or location to train AI models. We send them to Google Gemini or to a data provider only to make the specific image or display you asked for.

4.Third parties and service providers

We use the following services to run PRTL. Each receives only what it needs to do its part:

  • Google Firebase (Authentication and Firestore) stores your account and app content.
  • Google Cloud (Cloud Storage and Cloud Run, in the United States) stores generated images and the photos you upload, and runs our server. Images reach your app and frame through short-lived signed links.
  • Google Gemini API receives what an AI image needs: your prompt or quote, any reference photo you attach, the start point of a Traffic route, or the states on a My Maps map. It also handles a small amount of text generation, sent as single requests with no saved conversation.
  • Live-data providers receive only what a mode needs, never your name, email or account: Open-Meteo (weather, sunrise and air quality for the city you type), the US National Weather Service (severe-weather alerts for that city), airplanes.live (flights near the point you choose), AlAdhan (prayer times for the location you choose), Yahoo Finance (prices for the ticker symbols you pick), ESPN (scores for the league you pick), BART (departures for the station you pick), and the Art Institute of Chicago (public artwork).
  • Your phone's own location service (Apple or Google) turns your location into a street address when you set up Traffic.
  • Formspree receives website form submissions and emails them to us.
  • Cloudflare hosts this website and provides its cookieless page-view counts.

We do not use any advertising SDK or third-party analytics SDK in the app. If that changes, we'll update this policy first. Connecting a Spotify account is not available yet; we will update this policy before it is.

5.Storage and retention

Your account and app content are stored in Google Firebase, namespaced to your account. Generated images and the photos you upload are stored in Google Cloud Storage in the United States and served through signed links that expire after a short window (currently about 15 minutes). The underlying file stays in storage until it is deleted, and a deleted file can remain recoverable for up to 7 days.

We keep your account and content for as long as your account is active, or as needed to provide the service. Waitlist sign-ups are kept until you ask to be removed. When you ask us to delete your data (see below), we delete your account record, your app content, and your stored images and photos, and email you when it is done, except where we're required to keep information for legal or security reasons.

6.Your choices and controls

  • Photos, location, and calendar access are all optional, per permission, and requested only when you use the mode that needs them. You can grant, deny, or revoke any of them at any time in your phone's Settings app.
  • Revoking a permission stops that mode from working, but doesn't affect the rest of the app. Flights and Prayer Times also accept a location you type in.
  • You can remove photos you uploaded for Family Photos from inside the app.
  • You can stop using any mode at any time from within the app.
  • To leave the waitlist or stop updates, email [email protected].

7.Deleting your account and data

You can delete your account from inside the app: open Settings, then under Account Data tap Delete Account and confirm. For your security, the app may ask you to sign out and sign back in first. This cannot be undone.

Deleting in the app removes your sign-in account, your app content and saved items, your app activity record, and the photos you uploaded for Family Photos, and it disconnects your paired frames. If a photo cannot be deleted, the app stops and tells you, rather than deleting your account and leaving the photo behind.

One thing is not removed automatically yet: the images PRTL generated or drew for you (art, calendars, weather and other displays). A calendar image can show your event titles. Until that cleanup runs automatically, email [email protected] from the address on your account and we will delete them by hand and confirm when it is done. Email us too if the in-app deletion fails.

8.Children's privacy

PRTL is not directed at children under 13 (or the equivalent minimum age in your jurisdiction), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we'll delete it.

9.Security

We rely on Firebase Authentication and Firestore security rules to restrict access to your data to your own account, on short-lived signed links rather than public links for images and photos, and on frame credentials that we store only in hashed form. No method of storage or transmission is 100% secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.

10.Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we'll update the effective date above and, where required, notify you in the app or by email.

11.Contact us

Questions about this policy or your data? Email [email protected].