Privacy Policy
Watchnext helps you and your friends decide what to watch together. This policy explains what data the app touches, what stays on your device, and how to remove everything. It is written to match what the code actually does.
Account data
When you create an account we store your email address, display name, and optional profile photo. This data lives in Google Firebase (Authentication, Firestore, and Storage), which acts as our backend. We use it to sign you in, show your profile to friends you have connected with, and attribute the recommendations you send.
Taste profile
The taste quiz you take during onboarding produces a taste profile — a set of genre and mood signals. We store it with your account and use it to compute match scores with friends and to personalize recommendations.
Swipes and interactions
When you swipe on titles or interact with recommendations, we record which titles you liked, passed on, or saved. This history is stored with your account so the app can avoid repeats, compute matches with friends, and keep your watchlist in sync across sessions.
Contact matching
Finding friends by contacts is optional. If you allow it, your contacts' phone numbers and email addresses are normalized and hashed with SHA-256 directly on your phone.
Raw contact data never leaves your device.
Only the irreversible hashes are uploaded, and they are used solely to check whether a contact already has a Watchnext account. We never see, store, or transmit the names, numbers, or email addresses in your address book.
Your own phone number, if you choose to add it to your profile, is stored only as a one-way hash so friends who have your number can find you — the raw number is never uploaded.
AI features
Some copy in the app — the short blurb explaining why you and a friend match, and suggested wording when you send a recommendation — is generated by AI. To produce it, taste signals (genres, moods, and title preferences) are processed via our servers using Anthropic's Claude.
- Only taste signals are sent — never names, email addresses, user IDs, or anything from your contacts.
- Requests go through our own servers; the AI provider never receives your identity.
- There is no chat feature, so no conversations are processed.
Crash diagnostics
The app reports crashes and errors through Sentry so we can find and fix bugs. These reports describe what the app was doing when it failed and are not linked to your identity — they do not include your email, display name, contacts, or taste profile.
Data retention and deletion
We keep your data only while you have an account. You can delete your account at any time inside the app: open Settings, find the Danger zone, and choose Delete Account. This removes your profile, taste profile, swipe history, recommendations, friendships, matches, stored photos, and login credentials from our systems. Deletion is permanent and we do not keep copies.
What we do not do
- No ads.
- We never sell your data.
- No cross-app tracking — we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites.
Movie data
Movie and TV metadata — titles, posters, descriptions — comes from The Movie Database (TMDB). Requests to TMDB fetch content only; they do not carry your personal information.
Children
Watchnext is for people 13 and older. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, contact us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update this page and the effective date above. Meaningful changes will also be noted in the app.
Contact
Questions about your data are welcome at enriquebarclayrd@gmail.com.