Using Plato without an account
What we collect
- Account information — your email address, and a display name if you provide one, used to create and sign in to your account. If you sign in with Google, Google shares your name, email address and a link to your profile picture; the picture link is kept with your account but Plato doesn't show or use it. If you sign in with Apple, Apple shares the name and email you choose to share, which can be a private relay address. Plato asks Google and Apple for nothing else: no access to your Gmail, contacts, files or any other data in those accounts.
- Fitness data you enter — workouts, exercises, sets, weights, reps, workout dates and durations, custom exercises, templates, and your weekly training split.
- Body weight you enter — dated weigh-ins, if you choose to record them. These are optional, entered by hand, and used to chart your weight over time and to value bodyweight exercises (pull ups, dips) at what you actually weighed on the day you trained.
- Cardio sessions tracked by your Apple Watch — distance, heart rate and calories for sessions you start in Plato. See Apple Health and Apple Watch below.
- Distance from your iPhone's step counter — for runs, walks and hikes you start in Plato with no Apple Watch tracking them. See Your iPhone's step counter below.
Plato does not collect your location, contacts, photos or any advertising identifiers, and never your route or where you were. Apart from what your Apple Watch or iPhone measures during the cardio sessions you start, the only body measurement it holds is the weight you type in yourself.
How it's used
Your data is used only to provide the app's features: signing you in (and, for email accounts, verifying your address and resetting your password), syncing your workouts, templates, custom exercises, weekly split and weigh-ins across your devices, computing your statistics, personal records and progress charts, and restoring your history when you sign in. Data from Apple Health and your iPhone's step counter has further limits, described below.
There are no ads, and Plato contains no analytics or tracking code: it builds no profile of you, does not follow you across other companies' apps or websites, and never sells your personal data or shares it with third parties for their own purposes.
Apple Health and Apple Watch
When you start a cardio session in Plato — a run, a walk, a ride, a swim — and have an Apple Watch with Plato on it, the watch tracks the session. The first time, iOS asks whether Plato may use Apple Health for this. Plato never reads workouts that other apps recorded, and reads nothing from Apple Health outside the sessions you start in Plato.
During a session, the watch measures your time, distance, heart rate and active calories. It works out distance using its own sensors, including GPS outdoors, but Plato never receives your location or route. When you end the session, the watch saves it to Apple Health as a workout, so it counts toward your Activity rings, and sends your phone what it measured: the time, distance, active calories, average and maximum heart rate, and a record of how far you had gone at points through the session. Your phone works out your splits and fastest times from that record and then discards it.
The session is saved as a Plato workout with its time, distance, splits, fastest times, active calories and average and maximum heart rate. With an account, that is stored with your account (see Where it's stored) so it appears on your other devices; as a guest, it stays on your device. While a session runs, the watch also sends your phone its live numbers, directly between your own devices, so the phone can show them.
Data from Apple Health is used only to show you your own workouts and progress. It is never used for advertising or marketing, never sold, never shared with anyone else, and never stored in iCloud. You can withdraw Plato's access at any time in the Health app or in Settings → Health → Data Access & Devices; sessions then run on your phone's own clock, without the watch's measurements. Sessions already saved stay until you delete them, and are removed with the rest of your data if you delete your account.
Your iPhone's step counter
When you start a run, walk or hike in Plato and no Apple Watch is tracking it, Plato asks your iPhone's step counter how far you went. The first time, iOS asks whether Plato may use Motion & Fitness. Plato asks only about the time between starting and ending the session, leaving out any pauses, and only how far — not your steps through the rest of the day, and never your location.
While the session runs, the distance and your average pace are shown on screen. When you end it, Plato asks how far you went in each minute of it, works out your splits and fastest times from those, and then discards the minute-by-minute figures. The session is saved as a Plato workout with its time, distance, splits and fastest times, stored as described in Where it's stored.
Motion data is used only to show you your own workouts and progress, and is never used for advertising, sold or shared. You can turn Plato's access off at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Motion & Fitness; Plato then asks you how far you went at the end of a session, as it does on a device without a step counter.
Where it's stored
Plato stores your account and fitness data with Google Firebase (Authentication and Cloud Firestore), acting as our data processor. Data is transmitted over encrypted connections and protected by access rules so that only your signed-in account can read or write your own data. Firebase servers are located in the United States, so your data is processed there regardless of where you live. You can review Google's practices in the Firebase Privacy and Security documentation.
Like most connected services, Firebase temporarily processes technical information such as IP addresses and device identifiers to operate and secure the service (for example, to prevent abuse of sign-in). Plato does not access or store this information itself.
How long we keep it
Your data is kept for as long as your account exists. When you delete your account, your data is deleted immediately from the live database. Residual copies in encrypted backups are purged on the backup provider's standard schedule.
Stored on your device
Small settings such as your preferred weight unit, rest-timer duration, light or dark appearance and accent colour, and the last kind of cardio you started, are stored locally on your device and never leave it (apart from going to your own Apple Watch, below), as is the start time of any set timer or rest countdown you have running, so it keeps counting if the app is closed.
If you use Plato on Apple Watch, your iPhone sends your paired watch the workout in progress, your templates, your weight unit, rest-timer setting and accent colour, and the watch sends back the sets you log on it. This goes directly between your own devices using Apple's WatchConnectivity; it does not pass through our servers. The watch keeps the latest copy so it opens quickly, along with any sets logged on it that your iPhone hasn't saved yet. Signing out on your iPhone clears it from the watch.
If you have an account, Plato also keeps a copy of your account's data on your device: your workouts, templates, custom exercises, weekly split and weigh-ins. That lets the app work with no signal, which is common in gyms. Changes you make offline wait on the device and are sent to your account when you are back online. It is the same data already stored with your account, plus any changes still waiting to be sent, and nothing extra. It is only readable by Plato while you are signed in to that account, along with the name and email address of the account last signed in, so the app can open without waiting for a connection. Signing out removes all of it from the device, and so does deleting your account or removing the app. If your session ends some other way — for example after you change your password on another device — the copy stays in Plato's private storage, so changes not yet sent aren't lost, until you sign in again, sign out, or remove the app. It is not included in iCloud or computer backups.
Deleting your data
As a guest there is no account to delete, because nothing ever left your device. Profile → Delete all data erases the local copy, and removing the app does the same.
Children
Plato is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.
Changes
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new "last updated" date.
Contact
Plato is made by Full Stach LLC. Questions or requests about your data: support@platoworkouts.com