Privacy Policy
Pixlaine is a pixel art pattern maker for crochet and knitting that runs entirely in your browser. You can use it without an account, without giving us any personal data, and without accepting any cookies. This policy explains what changes when you do choose to sign in, share a pattern, or contact us.
Using Pixlaine Without an Account
If you never sign in, we hold no personal data about you. Your grids, projects, row progress, achievements and preferences are written to your own browser's storage on your own device and are never transmitted to us. The only information that reaches a server is the anonymous, cookieless page-view count described under Analytics, and the standard technical request logs any web host keeps.
What We Collect
- Support messages. The content of any email or message you send us, including your email address or social handle.
- Account data, if you create one. Your email address, used only to sign you in. Optionally: a public username you pick, an avatar composed from built-in icons and colours, and a public Instagram handle.
- Your saved patterns, if you use an account. Stored privately so they sync across your own devices.
- Yarn totals, if you use an account. A running total of the yarn length behind the pattern rows you tick off, for the "yarn crocheted" meter.
- Public content you choose to publish. Patterns you share to the community gallery, with their title, description, category and difficulty.
- Images you choose to upload as a Supporter Pack holder: a profile photo, a maker logo, or a photo of a finished item on a shared pattern.
- Maker links, if you add them. A Ko-fi handle and a link to your own shop.
- Purchase records, if you buy the Supporter Pack. See Payments below.
- Local app data stored in your browser, never sent to us. See the Cookies and Local Storage notice for the full list.
- Anonymous visit statistics collected without cookies by Cloudflare Web Analytics, plus technical request logs from our host.
How We Use Data
- To sign you in and sync your patterns between your devices.
- To display the content you have deliberately made public.
- To reply to support requests and investigate bugs, security issues and abuse.
- To maintain app functionality and remember your settings.
- To understand overall feature usage and decide what to build next.
We do not use your data for advertising, we do not profile you, and we do not sell or rent personal information to anyone.
Legal Bases
Where the GDPR applies, we rely on: performance of a contract, for running your account and syncing your patterns; your consent, for anything you actively publish or upload; our legitimate interest in a working, secure and improving service, for support, abuse investigation and anonymous statistics; and legal obligation, for keeping the records that tax and consumer law require after a purchase.
Accounts and Cloud Sync
Creating an account is optional. The app never uses passwords: you sign in with a one-time code emailed to you. Your email address is held by Supabase, our backend provider, purely to sign you in. We do not copy it into our own tables and we never use it for marketing.
When you are signed in, the patterns you save sync to your private cloud storage so they are available on your other devices. Only you can read them. If you set a public username, that chosen name, not your email, is what other people see on patterns you share.
You can delete your account at any time from the account settings. Deleting it permanently removes your account, every pattern stored in the cloud with it, every pattern you shared, and any image you uploaded. Export the patterns you want to keep before deleting, since this cannot be undone.
Community Gallery
Sharing a pattern is optional and only possible when signed in. A shared pattern is public: anyone can see the pattern picture, its title, description, category, difficulty, your public username, and your Instagram handle if you added one. Each shared pattern also has a public page of its own on pixlaine.com showing the same details, which search engines such as Google may index and show in their results. Deleting the share removes that page from Pixlaine within minutes; a search engine can take longer to drop it from its own results. Your email address is never shown. Only share a pattern you have the right to make public.
You can remove a shared pattern at any time from the "Shared" section of your profile; people who saved it then lose access. Saving (bookmarking) someone's pattern stores only a reference, not a copy. You can report a pattern you consider inappropriate, and a reported pattern is hidden pending review.
Your public profile page shows your username, avatar, any links you added, and the patterns you have shared. It contains nothing you have not chosen to publish.
Images You Upload
Supporter Pack holders can upload three kinds of image: a real profile photo, a maker logo, and a photo of a finished item attached to a shared pattern. These are resized in your browser before upload, which also strips camera metadata such as GPS location, and are then stored in our media bucket at Supabase. They are served from a public address, which is what allows them to appear on your patterns, so treat them as public: do not upload anything you would not want seen. Removing an image from your profile or pattern removes it from the site, and deleting your account removes all of them.
Payments
Pixlaine is free. The optional Supporter Pack is a one-time purchase that unlocks decorative and creator-side extras only. Checkout is handled by Stripe, which acts as merchant of record and processes the payment and any applicable VAT.
We never see or store your card details. Stripe receives your account email address and an internal account identifier so the purchase can be matched to the right account. In return we store, against your account, only the fact that you hold the pack and an order reference used to handle refunds. Stripe processes this data under its own privacy policy.
Third-Party Services
- Supabase (hosted in the European Union) provides sign-in, private storage of your saved patterns, the public community gallery, and the media bucket for uploaded images.
- Cloudflare Web Analytics provides cookieless, privacy-friendly visit statistics.
- Stripe processes Supporter Pack purchases.
- Ko-fi handles voluntary donations, on its own site.
- OVH, our web host, processes standard traffic logs.
Opening an Instagram, Ko-fi, Stripe or maker shop link takes you to a third-party site with its own rules.
Where Your Data Is Stored
Account data, saved patterns, gallery content and uploaded images are held on Supabase infrastructure in the European Union. The site itself is hosted in France by OVH. Cloudflare and Stripe operate globally and may process data outside the EU under the safeguards set out in their own policies.
Yarn Meter and Achievements
The app shows an estimate of how much yarn you have crocheted and how much everyone has crocheted together. Your own figure is computed on your device. If you are signed in, your total is also stored with your account so it follows you across devices and is added into the single community-wide total. Only the combined total is ever shown to other people; nobody can see your individual figure.
Achievements, the unlockable profile icons and colours, are stored only in your browser's local storage and are never sent to a server.
Cloudflare Web Analytics
We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to understand how many people visit and which pages are popular. It does not use cookies, does not store personal information, and does not track you across other websites. That is why the site shows no cookie banner: there is nothing to consent to.
Learn more: Cloudflare Privacy Policy
Data Retention
- Support emails: kept only as long as needed to handle your request, then deleted.
- Account data, cloud-saved patterns and uploaded images: kept until you delete them or delete your account.
- Shared patterns: kept until you remove them or delete your account. Bookmarks are references you can remove at any time.
- Your personal yarn total: deleted with your account. Yarn already counted into the community-wide total stays part of that anonymous aggregate, which contains no personal data.
- Purchase records: kept for as long as accounting and tax law requires.
- Analytics: aggregate visit counts only, no personal data.
Children
Pixlaine is not directed at children under 13, and accounts are not intended for them. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.
Your Rights
If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to the processing of your personal data, and the right to receive it in a portable form. Most of these are available directly in the app: your patterns can be exported at any time, and account deletion removes everything associated with you.
For anything else, contact us through the contact page and we will respond within one month. If you are not satisfied, you may lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority; in France this is the CNIL.
Changes to This Policy
If this policy changes materially, the date at the top of this page changes with it. Significant changes affecting account holders will also be signalled in the app.