Tusslings Privacy Policy

Last updated: 28 October 2026

Tusslings is made by Butterknife LLC, doing business as Tusslings, a US company.

Tusslings is a virtual-pet game that grows from your real activity. It runs on your Garmin watch and, optionally, on your phone. The game keeps your data on your devices. We do not run a server for it, we do not have accounts, and we never receive your tusslings, your activity, or your health data. Some data does travel between your own devices, through Garmin, Apple and Google services that connect them, and in a few cases you choose, to other people's devices. This policy says exactly what, and when.

1. Information We Collect

1.1 We do not collect personal information on our own servers. Butterknife LLC operates no server for Tusslings. There is no account, no login, and no sync service of ours. The apps contain no analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting SDK and make no web requests to us or to anyone else.

1.2 Game data. Your tusslings, their names, levels and experience, your roster, your daily egg, your streak, your condition meters, your achievements, your styles, your saved backup codes, and your settings. This is stored in your watch's and your phone's app storage.

1.3 Activity and health data on your Garmin watch. The watch apps read:

• Steps or wheelchair pushes, your daily goal, floors climbed, distance, calories, intensity minutes, and up to seven days of this history, to hatch eggs and grow your tussling.
• Heart rate, stress, Body Battery, and the bedtime and wake time in your Garmin profile, to set your tussling's mood. These readings are used at the moment and are not stored.
• During a workout you record with Tusslings: your session's measurements, including heart rate, GPS position, pace, distance, calories and, for some sports, motion to count jumps. Your heart-rate zones from your Garmin profile are used for coaching cues.
• The location of Garmin's cached weather observation, to calculate sunrise and sunset for the watch face. It is kept in memory only and is not stored or transmitted.

The watch keeps summaries of recent workouts (sport, distance, time, pace and date), personal bests, and the distances and times needed to recognise achievements such as a half marathon or a triathlon.

1.4 Health data on your phone, if you grant permission.

• iPhone (Apple Health): steps, flights climbed, resting heart rate and sleep for your Health trends; and, if you choose to check workouts, workouts and swimming, cycling and walking or running distance, including which app recorded them. Tusslings never writes to Apple Health.
• Android (Health Connect): steps, floors climbed, resting heart rate and sleep for your Health trends; exercise sessions and distance if you choose to check workouts or import them; and moderate and vigorous activity intensity if you use the Wear OS link. Imported workouts from other apps (title, times, distance and source app) are saved in Tusslings on your phone.

1.5 Information you enter yourself.

• Nutrition: if you use the nutrition feature, your sex, age, height, weight, activity level and goal (lose, maintain or gain weight), and a food diary of what you eat. Tusslings calculates calorie and macronutrient targets from these on your phone.
• Logbook: meal quality, an optional note, and sleep hours.
• Workouts and plans: names, notes and the weights you lift.
• Phone coaching and activities: your training goal, preferred days, equipment, experience and available time; daily energy, soreness and feeling-unwell check-ins; activity dates, durations, distances, sources, effort ratings and notes. Guided phone sessions store timer state and the steps you mark done or skip. Phone timers do not record GPS or health sensors.
• Stroller Run: your runner weight, stroller model, stroller weight, combined passenger weight and gear weight, or a measured total load; surface and your export preference. No child names, ages or individual passenger records are requested.
• On the watch: a first name or nickname of up to 12 characters, your birthday month and day, nicknames for your tusslings, and how a workout felt.
• Backup codes you save, with their labels.

1.6 Workout recordings. When you record an activity with the Tusslings Arena, your Garmin watch saves it as a normal Garmin activity, which Garmin syncs to your Garmin Connect account under Garmin's privacy policy. Tusslings adds its own fields to that activity: effort and feel, sets, reps, lifted weights, scores, jump counts, trainer power and similar measurements, and your tussling's name and level. If you use the Tusslings Wear OS app, its recordings store timestamped heart rate, location (only if you turn on routes and grant location access), speed, distance, calories, steps, laps, pauses and your effort rating on the watch, and transfer to your paired Android phone.

Stroller recordings also keep the profile used for that activity and, when available, calibration results, estimated pace and estimate coverage. Estimates are kept separate from actual recorded pace and distance.

1.7 Files you choose. Activity FIT files you import are read on your phone and the original file bytes are discarded. Activity summaries can be saved in your local journal. Earned Styles separately keeps up to nine unlock receipts (milestone and dates). GPX route files you import for indoor courses are reduced to distances, grades and a name, sent to your watch, and not kept on the phone.

1.8 Device identifiers. The watch derives a short code from its Garmin device ID to make your daily eggs unique and to identify your watch to nearby watches during battles and gifts. Each app installation also creates a random identifier so your own devices can recognise each other. Creatures record the model of watch they hatched on.

1.9 Purchases. If you buy Tusslings Plus or another paid item, the transaction is handled entirely by the Garmin Connect IQ Store, the Apple App Store, or Google Play. We never see your payment details. Those stores give us aggregate sales reporting.

1.10 Stroller calibration. If you choose to calibrate, the watch keeps up to three matched pairs of solo and stroller trial summaries and one pending solo trial. These include recording identifiers and times, mean and range of heart rate and speed, and the profile conditions used. The watch uses these summaries to calculate your personal pace estimate. Profile and calibration snapshots are kept with recovery records and saved activity history. No new health permission is requested for this feature.

2. How We Use Your Information

Because the information stays on your devices, "use" here means what the apps do with it on your devices:

• Grow your tussling from your activity and hatch your daily egg
• Set its mood from your heart rate, stress, Body Battery and bedtime, and its condition from what you log
• Coach your workouts, record them, and recognise achievements
• Configure stroller activities and calculate the personal pace estimate you choose to calibrate
• Calculate nutrition targets from the profile you enter
• Show your Health trends, history and progress
• Run battles, gifts and trades between watches, and drive your Edge display and smart trainer

The mood your tussling shows is a game effect, not a health assessment, and nothing in Tusslings is medical advice. We do not use your information to build advertising profiles, target advertising, or train shared models. Optional personal stroller calibration is calculated on your own devices. We never sell your data, and we never share health or fitness data for advertising, marketing, or data-mining purposes.

3. Health Data — What We Will Never Do

Stated plainly, because these are the commitments the platform rules and US health-privacy laws turn on. We do not:

• Sell your health or fitness data to anyone, ever
• Share it with advertisers, data brokers, or resellers
• Use it for advertising, marketing, or data mining
• Write false or inaccurate data to Apple Health or Health Connect (Tusslings never writes to Apple Health; optional Health Connect exports keep the values your watch recorded and name Tusslings as their source)
• Store your health information in a cloud of ours — we have none
• Use it for any credit, insurance, or employment decision

4. Where Your Data Goes

4.1 To us: nowhere. No Tusslings app sends anything to Butterknife LLC.

4.2 Between your own devices. Your watch and phone exchange game data: your watch sends your roster and a daily status (steps or pushes, goal, streak, floors, intensity minutes, logged meals and sleep, battle record and workout results), and your phone sends meals and sleep you log, guided workouts, indoor courses and game commands. On Android this travels through the Garmin Connect app, and on iPhone through Garmin's connection software. Wear OS watches use Google Play services to reach your phone. These services carry the data under Garmin's and Google's own terms.

When you tap Save and sync profile in Stroller Run setup, the phone sends the entered runner and load weights, model, surface and export preference to your selected Garmin watch. Reading watch status returns that profile and calibration progress. This private settings sync includes weights even when recording exports are turned off. On Wear OS, recording transfers and game snapshots omit stroller profile weights, calibration and estimate metadata unless you enable Export profile weights; enabling it includes those details in transfers to your paired phone.

4.3 Garmin. Activities you record are synced to your Garmin Connect account by Garmin, including the Tusslings fields described in 1.6. Values you type into Tusslings' settings in the Garmin Connect app, such as a birthday or a backup code, pass through Garmin's settings service.

Stroller activities include estimated pace, coverage and calibration status as separate Garmin activity fields. Total pushed weight is added only if you enable Export load to Connect. Runner weight and the separate stroller, passenger and gear weights are never added to those Garmin activity fields.

4.4 Other players, when you choose. Battles, gifts and trades use a short-range radio link (ANT) between watches. A battle sends your tussling's identity, level, stance and style. A gift or trade sends the whole creature, including any nickname you gave it and the watch model it hatched on, plus your watch's short identifying code. Your own name, birthday and health data are never sent to another player.

4.5 Your Garmin Edge. If you pair the Edge display, your watch broadcasts live workout data to it: time, distance, speed, heart rate and average heart rate, cadence, power, altitude, calories, ascent, Training Effect and your tussling's name. This radio link is not encrypted, so a nearby device listening on the same channel could receive it. A smart trainer receives only resistance, power and grade commands.

4.6 Health Connect. On Android, if you tap export, Tusslings writes your workout to Health Connect: the session with its title, laps, pauses and an effort note, plus distance, steps, calories, heart rate and speed, and the route only if you grant route permission separately. Other apps you authorise to read Health Connect may then copy it under their own policies.

4.7 When you share. Backup codes and the crash-diagnostics report leave the app only when you copy or share them yourself.

App-state backups and profile transfers you request can include stroller settings and calibration. Creature-only backup codes do not contain your stroller profile. Copies already exported or backed up are not removed when you later change an export preference.

4.8 The app stores. Garmin, Apple, and Google sell and deliver the apps and handle payment and refunds under their own privacy policies.

4.9 Legal process and business transfers. We hold no user data to disclose. If Butterknife LLC were sold or merged, there would be no Tusslings user database to transfer.

5. Analytics and Tracking

Tusslings contains no analytics, no advertising identifiers, no tracking pixels, and no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs. We do not know how many times you open the app, which features you use, or whether you play at all. The phone app keeps a small diagnostics log of recent errors on your phone, with personal values removed; it is never sent anywhere unless you share it. The only usage information we see is the aggregate download and sales counts the app stores report to every developer.

6. Data Security

Your data is protected by your devices' operating-system sandboxes and device encryption; Tusslings does not add its own encryption. Radio links between watches and to an Edge use ANT and are not encrypted, so keep in mind that what section 4 describes as sent over them could be received by nearby devices.

7. Data Retention and Deletion

• Game data stays on each device until you delete it or uninstall the app.
• Food diary entries are kept for 400 days, logbook entries for 180 days, and completed workout plans for 730 days, then removed automatically. Your nutrition profile stays until you delete it.
• Workout recordings and imported workouts on Android and Wear OS stay until you clear the app's data or uninstall it.
• Phone training journal entries and imported activity summaries stay until you remove them or delete app data. The journal holds up to 3,000 entries and does not silently evict older activities. Check-ins older than 365 days are removed when you save a new check-in. Training preferences and an unfinished phone session stay until changed or discarded. Settings lets you export this training data; it leaves the app only when you copy or share it.
• Stroller profiles stay until you replace or clear them or remove the app's data. Resetting calibration clears the current calibration; changing runner, stroller, load or surface settings also resets it. Saved activities and recovery records keep their own snapshots until those records are removed. Phone drafts stay until replaced or deleted with the phone's other local settings.
• On the phone, Settings → Clear companion records erases your synced crew, backup codes, nutrition, logbook, plans, coaching preferences, check-ins, phone activity journal, unfinished phone session, stroller profile drafts, achievements and diagnostics log. Routes, relay plans and race recovery backups remain in Routes & courses, where they can be removed individually. Clearing the app's data in your phone's settings, or uninstalling, removes everything else, including workout recordings, imports and device pairings.
• On the watch, uninstalling the Tusslings apps removes their data.
• iPhone backups made by iCloud or your computer may include Tusslings' data until those backups are replaced or deleted.
• Copies elsewhere — activities in Garmin Connect, exports in Health Connect, creatures you gave to other players — remain until you delete them there.
• We retain nothing, so there is nothing for us to delete on your behalf.

8. Your Rights and Choices

8.1 Access and deletion. Your data lives on your devices, so you have access to it there and can delete it as section 7 describes. We hold none, so no request to us is needed — but you may still write to us.

8.2 Permissions. You can withdraw health-data access at any time in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Health, in Android's Health Connect settings, in Wear OS permission settings, or on your Garmin watch. Tusslings keeps working with less information. Withdrawing access stops future reads; it does not delete data already stored.

8.3 Optional features. Nutrition, the logbook, workout export, routes, battles, gifts, trades and the Edge display are all optional.

8.4 Contact. If you believe we hold information about you, or you want to exercise a right described below, write to info@butterknifellc.com. We respond within 30 days.

9. International Data Transfers

Tusslings transfers nothing to us, so we make no international transfers. Garmin, Apple and Google may process data that passes through their services in other countries under their own policies.

10. Regional Privacy Rights

10.1 Consumer health data (Washington, Nevada, Connecticut and similar laws). Our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy explains which consumer health data Tusslings handles, how, and how to exercise your rights. It is published on our website alongside this policy.

10.2 California (CCPA/CPRA). We do not sell or share personal information, and we have never done so. Because we collect no personal information on our systems, there is nothing for us to know, delete, or opt out of; we honour requests to confirm this in writing.

10.3 European Economic Area and United Kingdom (GDPR). Where the GDPR applies, you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, portability, restriction, and objection, and the right to complain to your supervisory authority. Health data is special-category data under Article 9; Tusslings processes it on your devices, at your instruction, with your explicit consent given through your device's permission prompts, and transmits none of it to us.

10.4 Other US states. Where comparable state privacy laws apply, the same holds: no sale, no sharing, no targeted advertising, and no profiling with legal effects.

11. Children's Privacy

Tusslings is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. The app tells you on first launch that it is intended for people 13 and older. Because the game stores everything on your devices and transmits nothing to us, we hold no children's information in any case. If you are under 18, talk to a parent or doctor before setting a weight goal in the nutrition feature. If you believe a child has provided information to us, contact info@butterknifellc.com.

12. Cookies and Tracking

The Tusslings apps use no cookies and no tracking technologies. Our website may use only what is strictly necessary to serve the page.

13. Changes to This Policy

If we change this policy we will update the "Last updated" date above and describe any material change on our website and in the app. If a future version of Tusslings ever collects data on our own servers — for example if we add accounts, cloud backup, or online features — we will say so prominently and ask for your consent before it takes effect. We will not apply a material change to data handled under an earlier version without your consent.

14. Contact Us

Butterknife LLC General and privacy requests: info@butterknifellc.com Support: support@butterknifellc.com

We respond to privacy requests within 30 days.