Effective: 19 August 2026
Latchkey is a house and pet sitting handover app made by Outback Automation (Australia). The person who lives in the home (the “householder”) writes down how the house and the animals work, then shares it with a sitter for the days of the sit — and only for those days. This policy explains, plainly, what happens to the information you put into it.
We do not collect your personal data. Latchkey has no accounts, no sign-up, no analytics, no advertising, and no third-party services. Everything you enter — your house notes, your animals, routines, photos, videos, alarm codes — lives on your devices and in your own iCloud, shared only with the sitter you invite, for a period you choose. We never see it, and we have no server that could.
Your house and animals — notes about the property, its systems, house rules, your animals, their routines, medications and vet details are stored on your devices and synced through Apple’s iCloud (CloudKit), in a private area owned by your own Apple Account.
What you share with a sitter — when you set up a sit, you choose which parts to include. Only those parts are placed in a shared area that the sitter can open. The rest of your house book is never shared and is not reachable by them.
Photos and videos — reference photos and short clips you record (the food, the portion, how a door latches) are stored in that same iCloud area. They are never uploaded to us.
What the sitter creates — when a sitter marks something done, adds a note, or sends you a photo of your animals, that goes into the same shared area for the sit. Nothing else from the sitter’s phone is read, sent, or visible to you.
Nothing reaches Outback Automation. We cannot read, access, or recover your data — it sits under your own Apple Account and Apple’s terms.
Latchkey never asks for anyone’s location. There is no location permission in the app at all — not for the householder, not for the sitter. The only coordinate the app knows is the property’s, worked out on your own device from the address you type, which needs no permission and reads nothing from the phone. The householder can never see where a sitter is — not precisely, not approximately, not as a “last seen”, and not worked out from when a task was ticked off — because no such information exists anywhere in Latchkey.
Notifications — reminders for feeding and other routines during a sit.
Camera and microphone — only when you choose to take a photo or record a short clip showing how something is done, or when a sitter photographs a completed task.
Photo library — only when choosing an existing photo or video to add.
Calendar — only if a sitter chooses to add the sit’s routines to their own calendar. iOS calls the permission “full access” because creating a new calendar requires it: Latchkey writes the sit’s events into a dedicated calendar named for the sit, so they can be removed in one action, and never reads anything from your calendars — there is no code in the app that fetches an event.
Contacts — never asked for. Choosing a sitter uses Apple’s own contact picker, which shows no permission prompt and hands the app only the single card you pick.
Location — never asked for, as above.
Access ends with the sit. The sitter’s app closes the pack and deletes its local copy, including photos and videos, and the householder’s device removes the sitter from the shared area.
We want to be straight with you about what that does and does not do. It stops any further access, and it removes the copy on their device. It cannot un-tell somebody something they have already read. If you share an alarm code, a key location or a Wi-Fi password, treat it as shared. Where you can, use a guest Wi-Fi network and a guest access code you change afterwards — that is the only kind of expiry that is genuinely complete.
Payment is handled entirely by Apple through the App Store; we never see your payment details. Latchkey is free to download, and inviting a sitter is a single one-off purchase — not a subscription. Sitters are never charged — the person going away pays, once, and anyone helping them out uses the app for free.
None. No analytics, no advertising, no tracking, no software development kits from anybody else. The only external service involved is Apple’s iCloud, under your own Apple Account and Apple’s privacy terms.
Your data stays until you delete it. Deleting the app removes the local data from that device. A householder can delete a house book or an individual sit outright, and a sitter can leave a sit at any time. You can also manage or remove the app’s iCloud data in Settings on your device.
Latchkey is made for adults arranging care of their home and animals, and is not directed at children.
Because we hold no data about you, there is nothing for us to hand over, correct, or delete — you hold all of it. If you have a privacy question or concern, we would genuinely like to hear it.
If the app’s data practices ever change, this page will be updated before the change ships, with a new effective date.
support@outbackautomation.com.au
© 2026 Outback Automation — Australian owned & operated.