Sprite Catch

Age Rating & Suitability

Last updated: 11 September 2026

This page explains, in plain language, what is inside Sprite Catch, why it is rated for ages 13 and up, and exactly what keeps its social features safe. It is here for parents deciding whether the app is right for their child, and for App Store reviewers assessing its rating.

The short version. Sprite Catch is a free, unofficial fan-made tracker for Fortnite collectibles. The app's own content is cartoon collectible artwork — nothing violent, sexual, frightening or mature. It has no ads, no gambling and no simulated gambling, and nothing in it can be bought with money — there is no price on anything, no way for a child to spend money in this app, and nothing to top up (section 6). The app does have a currency, called Gems; it is earned by playing, or given by a free code, and cannot be bought, and nothing it can be spent on is random. It is rated 13+ for one reason: it includes optional user-to-user features — a public posts feed, trade listings, profiles, and request-gated direct messages that can include a photo. Those features are moderated: all text is automatically screened, and any user can block and report any other user or piece of content, including a photo. Before a post is sent at all, the app reads it on the child's own phone and says so if it breaks the feed's rules — it collects nothing and sends nothing, and the same screening runs again on the server when the post is sent. A safety program that reads whole conversations and looks at photos on the server — for strangers approaching children, and for one account presenting itself as different people to different children — ran for a day from 29 August 2026 and is switched off as of 30 August 2026; section 4 describes what it does, and says plainly that while it is off no program on the server reads a whole conversation. A separate check, added on 5 September 2026, does look at every photo sent in a conversation or a group, asking only whether the picture is sexual and whether the person appears to be a child — on Cloudflare's own service, so no photo goes to another company; it cannot recognise a face; and today it turns nothing away. Section 4 describes it.

There is also a web version, at spritecatch.com, and from 4 September 2026 it does what the app does — same account, same feed, same moderation, same under-13 protections, because those live on the server. What does not reach it is the Parental Controls passcode and Safe Mode, which are settings on the phone they were set on; section 5 explains what to do about that. This page otherwise describes both.

1. What Sprite Catch is

Sprite Catch is a collection tracker for the "sprite" collectibles in Fortnite Chapter 7. You mark which sprites you own, mastered, or want, and watch your completion progress climb. It is not a game, it connects to an Epic account only if your child chooses to link one and only to confirm the name they play under, and it cannot grant, transfer or change any in-game item. It is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Epic Games, Inc.

Used purely as a tracker, the app asks for nothing personal and requires no account — a child who only ticks off their collection is not exposed to any other user. What is recorded about them is what they ticked — their collection, their checklist of Fortnite's own codes, the locker of Fortnite cosmetics they say they own, and the wishlist of ones they would like — plus the country their phone connects from and which version of the app they use. No other user can see any of it. The locker is the same kind of thing as the codes checklist: the app is not connected to anyone's Fortnite account and cannot see it, so every entry is something the player told it, and a locker is private to the player who made it. From a future release a player who already keeps that list on a community site can paste a link to it instead of ticking every item, which their phone reads on the device — the app does not visit that site, keeps only the cosmetics, and signs in to nothing to do it; it never asks for an Epic password. The wishlist is the same list with one thing attached to it: once a day the app checks whether anything on it is in Fortnite's item shop and, if so, sends one notification saying so. It sends nothing until the player hearts something, never more than once a day, and there is a switch in Settings that turns it off. A second, separate switch — off unless the player turns it on — sends one notification a day saying what has gone into the item shop, which is the same message for everybody who wants it and is built from nothing about the player. Both are reminders about the game rather than adverts — the app sells nothing, and neither the wishlist nor anything else about the player leaves the app.

One thing on the Fortnite-cosmetics screen is public, and it is the only one. From a future release a player can react to a cosmetic with one of five faces — do they like the look of it — and how many people picked each face is shown to everybody. It is deliberately the narrowest thing that could be public: a count and nothing else. Which face a particular player picked is not shown to anybody, is not on their profile, and is not on the shareable web page; there is no comment, no free text and nothing to write, so nothing a child types can reach another player through it. It can be changed or taken back at any time, and taking it back removes it from the count. The sentence above still holds for everything else on that screen: a locker, a wishlist and a codes list stay private to the player who made them.

The codes list deserves a plain word, because it is the one part of the app that names something with a reward attached. Fortnite gives out codes players type into Fortnite's own Admin Panel; the app lists the ones Fortnite has published, explains what each is for, and lets you tick off the ones you have used, because Fortnite does not tell you. That is all it does. Ticking a box here redeems nothing and grants nothing — the codes list reads nothing from an Epic account and cannot, as above, change any in-game item — and nothing on the screen costs money or asks for anything.

Separately, the app has codes of its own, and they are always free. A short code given out on a stream, in a Discord post or on a card can be typed into the Rewards screen, and it hands over a profile decoration, some Gems, or both. These are not Fortnite's codes and have nothing to do with the game — they give things that exist inside Sprite Catch only, and the app still cannot grant, transfer or change any in-game item. There is no way to buy one: they are never sold, never bundled with anything, and never given in exchange for money, so nothing here makes anything in the app purchasable. What a code pays is fixed and named in advance — it is not a draw — except where the thing it hands over is one of the free reward boxes described below, which behave exactly as they do everywhere else in the app.

2. Who it is for

The social features — the feed, trades, profiles and messaging — are for ages 13 and up. From the version going out on 28 August 2026, the app says so where it asks: the ages on the setup screen start at 13, and under them a button saying My age isn't listed leads to an explanation and to Safe Mode, the limited version of the app for a younger collector — the collection, the scanner, Rewards and their own profile, with the community, messages and news switched off. A parent can undo it, or set the same restrictions themselves and lock them behind a passcode, from Parental Controls (see section 5). Writing in them — posting, replying, reacting, following, messaging, trading — requires signing in, with Apple, with Google, or with an email address and a password, so a child using the app without an account cannot post, message or follow anyone even before a parent touches those switches. Reading the feed and looking at a public profile do not require an account, so a child with the app installed can see what other collectors have posted whether or not they sign in — which is why the Parental Controls switch, and not the sign-in, is what actually turns the feed off. Signing in with an email address is refused outright for an under-13 result (see section 5), which leaves signing in with Apple or with Google, where the app declines the address the provider offers. The collection tracker is suitable for a general audience: a younger child can track their collection without any social features and without sharing anything. The app is not submitted under Apple's "Made for Kids" category, because it contains open user-to-user communication that is not appropriate for the Kids Category.

Accounts already on the app that say they are under 13 are being told what changes, and when. The age screen only started at 13 on 28 August 2026, so accounts created before it hold younger ages. Those accounts now see a notice naming 1 October 2026, the date from which the community, direct messages and news are switched off for them — with the collection, the scanner, Rewards, the arcade and their own profile left exactly as they are. The notice offers two ways out, and either ends it: redo the age check if the age is wrong, or confirm that it is right. A separate group of accounts is asked the age question again rather than warned, because an older version of that screen could record an age without anybody choosing one; those accounts are unchanged while they are being asked, and unchanged by the answer. Since 2 September 2026 that question is only put to accounts collecting as a guest — on an account signed in with Apple, Google or an email address the answer could not reach the server, so the screen kept coming back, and those accounts are now left alone with the same protection they had. The privacy policy describes all of it in section 8.

What happens on that date is that three switches move, and a parent controls them. The community, direct messages and news are switched off through the same Parental Controls described in section 5 — so they can be switched back on there, unless a parent has set the passcode. Nothing on the server starts refusing the account, and the collection, the scanner, Rewards, the arcade and the child's own profile are untouched. It is applied once: a family that turns the three switches back on does not find them switched off again the next day. The passcode is the part that makes it stick, which is the same way every other restriction in this app works.

You can also report an account for appearing to be under 13, from the same reporting form as anything else. It brings the account to me to look at; it does not restrict anyone by itself.

Selling Sprites for real money is a reason you can pick when reporting, as of 4 September 2026. It has always been against the rules and has always been acted on; what it did not have was its own line in the form, so a child seeing it had to file it as a scam and hope the description was read. Nothing about the app changes: there is still no way to spend money in it, and no Sprite, code or account has ever been something the app itself sells.

A collector's trading record now appears beside their name on their posts, not only on their profile. From a future release, the star rating from somebody's completed trades — and the warning an account carries once enough other collectors have marked it for scamming — is drawn on their posts and replies as well. Nothing new is collected and nobody new can see it; it is the same public record, put where a child is actually deciding whether to answer a stranger rather than one tap away on a screen they may never open. It is deliberately not shown to the person on their own posts, and it hides nothing: a post from a warned account is still readable and still reportable, and choosing not to see those accounts in the trading feed stays a switch the collector turns on themselves.

3. What the app itself contains

Everything Sprite Catch creates and displays on its own is suitable for a general audience:

Each game keeps four leaderboards — twenty in all — and it is worth knowing where a name can turn up. They are the best today, this week, this month and of all time, the same list drawn four ways, and a game's boards are its own: a score at one game never appears on another's. Each lists the fifty highest scores with the same display name, character and decorations a collector's profile already shows anywhere in the app — and only for public profiles. A profile belonging to somebody under 13 starts private, so it is not on any of them unless it has been deliberately made public; a child who is on one can be taken off simply by going private in Settings, which does not delete their scores, and which also means they earn no decoration for a placing. They are read inside the app only and appear on no web page. Each game's screen also shows a short list of a collector's friends — people they follow who follow them back — with their scores; that list holds only the accounts already on the leaderboards under the rule just described, so a private profile is not on it either. A challenge card is the one place a private profile's score can be seen by somebody else, and only by the people in the one conversation it was played in.

4. Why the rating is 13+, not 4+ — the social features

The rating is driven entirely by user-generated content and user-to-user communication, which are optional and off by default until you choose to use them:

Because these let users communicate and share content with people they may not know, we answer Apple's age-rating questionnaire honestly as containing user-generated content, user-to-user communication, and user-shared photos. That is what produces the 13+ rating. We do not, and would not, hand-lower it.

5. How the social features are kept safe

Every user-facing feature is moderated. Apple requires four safeguards for any app with user-generated content or messaging; Sprite Catch has all four, and they are active:

SafeguardHow it works in Sprite Catch
Automatically filter objectionable content All text — posts, replies, trade notes, profile descriptions, chat-request notes, community names and the tag a community hands out, and every direct message — is automatically screened for banned content before it can be posted or sent. From 6 September 2026 a post or reply is also refused if it offers or asks for something that costs real money in Fortnite — a skin, an emote, a bundle, the battle pass, V-Bucks, a gift card or anything else from the Item Shop — and if it offers to sell Sprites or an account, or to hand out Sprites in exchange for a good review. Sprites are free in the game and are meant to be traded for other Sprites; a post asking a stranger to buy something is where nearly every scam in this app starts, and it now does not go up at all. The app says so in the composer, before the post is sent, so the writer can change it rather than wonder what happened. From 2 September 2026 a photo attached to a public post is checked for explicit content before it is published, by Google's Cloud Vision: the picture is sent to Google, which answers how likely it is to be explicit or graphic, and a confident yes means the upload is refused and the photo is never stored or shown. From 6 September 2026 the same check also covers the picture on a community and the photo on a group — the pictures that sit next to a name in a list for everybody in that place, which a child sees without opening anything — and there it does refuse: a confident yes means the picture never becomes the community's or the group's, and whoever set it is told and can pick another. Three things are worth knowing about it. It covers those three pictures and nothing else — never a photo in a direct message, never one your child sends me on a support ticket, and never the photos sent inside a group, none of which are sent to Google at all. Google is asked that one question and is never asked to recognise a face, keeps nothing and trains on nothing, and no copy of the picture is kept here either. And on posts it still refuses nothing: there it is recording its answers rather than acting on them while I learn how it behaves on real photos, and the privacy policy will say so plainly on the day that changes. It is not a check for illegal images of children and is never treated as one — reporting is still how that reaches me. Photos attached to messages can only be sent inside a direct message the recipient already accepted, and they are moderated on report like any other content — and from 29 August 2026 they were also looked at automatically, for the small number of accounts the checks below have already singled out. That is a change from before that date, when they were never scanned on the server; the program that does the looking has been switched off since 30 August 2026 (see below). And from 5 September 2026 a separate check does look at every photo sent in a conversation or a group, as it is sent. It asks one question — whether the picture is sexual and whether the person in it appears to be a child — and it exists because of the one thing I am obliged to report (section 7). It runs on Cloudflare's own service, so no photo of your child's goes to another company; it cannot recognise a face and is not allowed to learn how; it never looks at a photo sent to support and never touches a voice message; and today it turns nothing away — it is recording its answers rather than acting on them while I learn how it behaves on real photos, and the privacy policy will say so plainly on the day that changes. What is kept is two words about the picture and a fingerprint of the file, never the picture and never a description of it. A photo can be covered before your child sees it, and that is worth setting up. If you switch on Communication Safety in Screen Time, your child's iPhone checks a photo for nudity on the device itself: an incoming one arrives blurred behind a warning until they choose to see it, and they are asked to think again before sending one. It works in Sprite Catch exactly as it works in Messages. Two honest limits: it is off until you switch it on, so a photo with no warning has not been checked — it has only not been looked at; and the answer never leaves the phone, so it is a warning for your child and never a report to me. It also has no Android equivalent — no app on Android can call a check like it. Where a particular account's pictures turn out to be the problem, that account's photos can be stopped from being stored at all — nothing it sends in a message is kept, and nothing it sends with a picture attached reaches anyone. Since 1 September 2026 that covers a photo attached to a post in the feed as well as one sent in a message — the feed gained photos on that date, and a measure aimed at pictures should not stop at the private half of the app. It still deliberately stops short of one thing: a photo sent to me on a support ticket is always kept, because it is the way somebody shows me a problem. It reaches nobody else, with one exception since 9 September 2026 — a screenshot sent to claim a reward is also opened by the assistant described in the box above, because settling that claim is what the picture is for. A photo on any other kind of ticket is still seen only by me. Separately, the app recognises on the sending device — without the message leaving it — a few specific things a message asks a stranger for: their age, whether they are a girl or a boy, a picture of themselves, to carry on somewhere else like Snapchat or Discord, and to meet up or get on a call. Only the kind of question is reported, never the message, and asking one person once means nothing; the same questions put to several different collectors will automatically hold that account's messages back for a day, for a person to look at. Only the first three of those can ever add up to that — the other two are recorded for me to read beside something else and never count on their own. This is aimed squarely at an adult working through a list of children, which is the risk a trading app of this kind carries.

A safety program that reads whole conversations on the server ran for a day from 29 August 2026, and it is switched off as of 30 August 2026. While it is off, no program on my server reads a whole conversation. (The per-photo check described further up is a different thing and it does run.) Everything above and below this paragraph is unaffected and still running, including the automatic screening of text described above. It has not been removed — it is still built into the service and I can switch it back on — so what it does is described here in full, and this page will say so on the day it runs again. What follows is what it does while it is running.

What it does when it is running: it reads whole conversations on the server. The screening above is a word list, one message at a time; it cannot tell a collector asking for a picture of your child's locker — which is how a trade is agreed here — from a stranger asking for a picture of your child. So, while it is running, a few times an hour it reads whole conversations, both sides, along with public posts and the note attached to a message request, on a small number of accounts that stand out: ones that have opened conversations with several people who do not know them, ones somebody has reported for something serious, or ones the on-device check above has flagged. It is aimed at exactly one thing — a stranger approaching a child — and it writes down what it thinks and why, for me to read. It looks at the photos too, and this is the part worth understanding. The thing it is looking for is not a bad picture — it is one account showing different people to different children, which is the commonest way an adult builds a child's trust in an app like this, and which has happened here. It answers simple questions about each picture (is there a real person in it or is it a screenshot of the game, roughly how old they look, is it sexual) and compares those answers between conversations; it also notices when the exact same image file has been sent to several people, which is what a stolen photo looks like. It cannot recognise a face and is not permitted to learn how — no faceprint is made, nothing measures your child's features, and no picture is matched against a named person. It never looks at a photo sent to support, and a voice message is never touched at all: nothing turns a recording into words. On its own it can do one thing, which is hold an account's messages back for seven days, and only when something independent — a report, or the on-device check — points the same way. It cannot delete anything and it cannot make anything permanent; I read every judgement it makes and can undo it, and anyone affected can ask me to.

A child's own phone also warns them about what arrives. When a message asks for a picture of them, asks them to move to another app, or asks to meet or call, the app puts a short caution under it. That reading happens on their device, on a message already there, and nothing about it is sent to me or stored — I have no way of knowing it was ever shown.

And a public post can be held back to protect the child who wrote it. A post saying how old they are and asking strangers for a relationship — or handing out an address, a phone number or an account name elsewhere alongside that — is kept out of the feed automatically. It is not refused and not deleted: they still see it in their own feed, and it reaches nobody else. Deliberately narrow — two collectors working out a timezone so they can trade are not this.

Before a first conversation, every collector is shown the safety rules — don't share where you live or go to school, never send pictures of yourself, people can say they are someone they are not — and has to tick a box saying they have read them. It is a screen they pass through, not a lock: nothing is taken away, and reporting and blocking are never behind it. There is a copy for parents beside it, which links to the controls described below.

A short version of it sits above each conversation with somebody new, and from 2 September 2026 it can be switched off. Closing it asks whether that means this conversation or all of them, and offers the rules again. Two things are worth a parent knowing. The answer is kept on the phone and nowhere else, and it comes back on from Settings → Privacy & Safety → New Chat Reminders — so a note switched off on a child's phone can be switched back on there, without a passcode and without an account. And it is not shown to collectors of 18 and over, which the app works out on the device from the age already given: the note is written to a child, and an adult who reads it above every new conversation stops reading the next one. Neither changes what anybody can do — reporting, blocking and closing a conversation stay in the ⋯ menu of every chat at every age, on or off. (From the version going out on 7 September 2026 that same 18-or-over answer is also sent to the server, for the one purpose described in section 7: a community marked for adults. The note itself is still decided on the phone.)
Report objectionable content and users Any user, post, trade, or message can be reported from an in-app menu, with a reason. Reports are reviewed and acted on — content is removed and accounts that break the rules are suspended or removed. That stays true of a report filed against one of the moderators described below, and deliberately so: a public scam mark aimed at one of those accounts is discarded from 2 September 2026, because marking whoever paused you is the obvious retaliation, but the report itself is written down and reaches me exactly as any other does. From 5 September 2026 the same two rules cover the people who help run the Sprite Catch Discord server: no public scam mark can be put on them, and a report about one of them still reaches me, still counts, and costs the person who filed it nothing. Nobody in this app is unreportable except me. An account that keeps sending abuse can also have its posts, or its messages and chat requests, withheld from everyone else while it goes on seeing its own: harassment that rephrases itself to get past the automatic screen is stopped by stopping the person, not the words. A warning or suspension follows the person to a new account made on the same phone, so it cannot be shrugged off by starting again; if that catches a second child sharing the device, one message from the app's Support menu lifts it. From 11 September 2026 a scam warning I have put on an account is shown to everybody except that account: other collectors see it on the profile, beside the name on posts, and on the public web page for that profile, exactly as before, and the account it is about is no longer shown it. It is there to warn whoever is about to trade with them, and telling the person warned had mostly taught them to start again under a new name. Nothing about what that account can do changes, nothing is hidden from anybody else, and writing to Support about a warning still reaches me and is never answered automatically. A post that is deleted stays readable by me for 90 days, though by nobody else and not in the app: the posts worth reporting are often taken down within minutes, and deleting one used to destroy the evidence behind a report about it. After 90 days it is erased automatically. From 29 August 2026 a small number of trusted collectors, chosen by hand, can also remove a public post — or, from 2 September 2026, a single reply under one — and pause its author from posting for between an hour and seven days. They see only what is already public — never a private message, a photo or a child's account details — they cannot do any of it silently, a post they remove can be restored by me, and a record of every such decision is kept for review. A child whose posting is paused is told so, told why, and told when it ends. From 2 September 2026 those same accounts can read that record, one collector at a time, so that two of them cannot pause the same child without either knowing — the categories, the dates and who acted, and never the private notes, your child's messages, photos, collection or their own standing screen. The same change lets them undo what they did: lift a pause, or take back a scam mark they filed, and where they say the decision was wrong the entry on your child's standing screen is marked as removed and stops counting. From 2 September 2026 each of those decisions is also written on a screen your child can open themselves — Settings → Account Standing — showing a colour, a plain sentence, and what has been decided about the account — what happened, what it was for, the date and when it stops counting. Nothing on it is permanent: every entry falls away on its own, and an account that stops goes back to good standing without anybody having to ask. As it fills up the app pauses posting, then replying, then starting new chats and posting trades, and the screen says when each comes back. It is private to the account — no other collector can see it — and there is an appeal link on it that reaches a person. Most of what appears on it is a decision a person made; two things count without one, and the screen names which — being reported by several separate people for something serious, and an automatic check for a single narrow thing, asking different collectors for gift-card codes or free V-Bucks. That check looks for nothing else, and one ordinary report on its own puts nothing there. Most children who open it will read “good standing”, which is the point: the screen exists so that being moderated is something they can see and contest rather than something that happens to them.
Block abusive users Any user can block any other user. A block is mutual — it hides both people from each other everywhere in the app and stops further messages, in either direction. One exception, from 1 September 2026: blocking one of the moderators described in the row above does not hide your child from that account. Their profile and public posts stay visible to it, because a block that hid them put those posts beyond the only people who can take one down while every other collector went on reading them. It works one way only — a moderator your child blocks is still gone from your child's app — and it lets that account read, not reach: the block still stops them following, messaging or replying to your child. It does not remove the right to report, and since 29 August 2026 it does not take the evidence away either: a conversation somebody blocks your child out of stays in their list, readable, with no way to reply and a Report button where the message box was. A conversation your child blocks away disappears, and those are listed by name so they can still be reported.
End a conversation without blocking From 1 September 2026 your child can close a chat. It is the smaller instrument beside the row above, and it is there because blocking is a heavy thing to ask of a child who simply wants the messages to stop — after a trade finishes, or after deciding they no longer want one. Closing ends that one conversation for both people: neither can send another message, a photo, a voice message or a trade request into it, and nothing that was already said is deleted. Nothing else changes — the other collector is not hidden and is not accused of anything — and reporting them, or marking them as a scammer, works inside a closed chat exactly as it did before. Two things are deliberate. The other person is told, by a line in the conversation naming who closed it, so it can never look as though the messages simply stopped arriving. And only whoever closed it can reopen it: the person on the other end has no way back in, not even by asking to chat again. Your child is offered it in three places — the safety notice above a conversation with someone new, the menu at the top of every chat, and straight after they rate a finished trade.
A published way to contact the developer age@spritecatch.com, published in-app and on this site's Support page. Writing in from the app's Support menu always reaches a person: the developer. A report about somebody's safety is always read, from any account, with no exception at all. For ordinary questions there is one: from 5 September 2026, if a collector writes in over and over about something already answered in full, I can set that person's tickets aside for a set time — three months usually, a year at most, never permanently — so one person cannot hold up the queue. It takes nothing away from them, they are not told, nothing about their account changes, and it never applies to a safety report. (Between 6 and 20 August 2026 a small number of volunteer moderators helped answer ordinary questions through Discord; that arrangement has ended, and nothing about a support conversation passes through Discord any more.) An automatic reply can answer an ordinary question about how the app works — it says on the reply that it is automatic, there is no artificial intelligence in it, it cannot decide anything about an account, and anything about safety, a warning, money or a photo goes straight to a person. That reply is produced on the same server as the rest of the app. Since 9 September 2026 something else does read what arrives: an assistant — Claude, made by Anthropic — opens the support queue every few hours and works through it alongside me, because one person in one time zone meant a child's question could wait for a weekend. It is never allowed to answer or close a report about somebody's safety: the app refuses to let it, so the promise at the top of this box is unchanged and is enforced rather than intended. The one thing it does settle under that same heading is a child tapping Appeal this review on a review another collector left them — a message the app writes for them, word for word, which is how it can be told apart with certainty from anything a child writes themselves. It takes the review off and says so; nothing happens to the other collector, and anything a child writes in their own words still reaches a person. It is never shown a voice message, and never shown a photo on a ticket that is not claiming a reward. It cannot ban, mute, hide or restrict any account — where it thinks an account should be paused it records that as a request, and the same rules as before decide it. Its replies say they are from an assistant, and a record is kept of what it opened. The privacy policy sets all of it out in section 4. A ticket the automatic reply answers is closed, and the reply says how to open a new one.

Further protections reduce unwanted contact and put parents in control:

Automated moderation is not perfect, and it is not a substitute for a parent's involvement — but it runs on everything, all the time.

Since 4 September 2026 there is a web version of Sprite Catch, at spritecatch.com, and a parent should know two things about it. It is the same service in a browser: the same account, the same posts, the same trades, the same conversations, and the same moderation — every automatic screen, every block, every report and every one of the server's under-13 protections works there identically, because they are attached to the account rather than to the phone. Read without signing in, it is a collection tracker and a public feed, with no way for anyone to contact anyone.

The exception is the switches in the paragraph above, and it is the important one. Parental Controls, the passcode and Safe Mode are held on the phone they were set on — that is what makes the passcode a lock rather than a preference — so they do not apply to the same account signed in on a browser. If you have switched Community, Messages or News off for your child, that switch is off on that phone, and it is not off at spritecatch.com. There is no way for me to reach across from the app to a browser to enforce it, and I would rather say so here than let you discover it. Preventing a browser from reaching a website is done the way you would do it for any website — Screen Time's own web restrictions on an iPhone, the equivalent on Android, or your home network — and it is the same control that governs every other site your child can open.

One more thing about a shared computer. So that opening a conversation is instant rather than fetched again every time, the web version keeps the messages that have already been read in that browser. Nothing new is collected by it and nothing extra is sent to me — it is a copy of messages the page already shows — but it does mean a signed-in conversation is on that computer until it is cleared. Two things clear it and both happen on their own: signing out deletes it, and so does signing in with a different account in the same browser, so what one person read is never left for the next person who opens it. Clearing the browser's data for the site removes it too, and loses nothing — the conversations are on the server and come back at the next sign-in. The privacy policy lists it in section 3 and the Cookies page names it.

One thing sits outside all of this, and it is on the website rather than in the app. Since 26 August 2026 there has been a box asking for an email address — today it is in the footer of the web version at spritecatch.com — so that somebody waiting for the Android version can be told when it comes out. It has no account behind it, which means none of the protections above reach it: it asks the reader to be 13 or older and cannot check. It is used for a single email on release day, the address is deleted as that email is sent, there is no newsletter and nothing else is ever sent to it, and the whole list is erased within 30 days of the release date whatever happens. If you find your child's address on it, email me and I will take it off. The privacy policy describes it in full.

6. No ads — what can be bought, and what is shared

Sprite Catch is a free hobby project. There are no advertisements, no subscriptions, no advertising and no advertising identifier, and the app does not ask for your location or your contacts.

The app never uses your child's location — it asks for no location permission, reads no location from the phone, and could not draw a map of anybody if it wanted to. The one thing that comes close is described in the switches above and is worth naming here: a conversation can show the other person what time it is where your child is, and what is kept for that is how far their clock is from UTC — a number dozens of countries share, taken from the clock the phone is already set to rather than from any location service, shown in a one-to-one conversation and nowhere else, and switched off (and deleted) under Show My Local Time. It does record which country their connection comes from, worked out from the internet address the way any website can, so that I can see which countries the app is used in and which languages are worth translating it into. It is never finer than the country — no town, no area, no map — it is written down once and not updated afterwards, and no other user ever sees it. Kept the same way, and just as small, is which version of the app they use — the iPhone app, the Android app or the web version, one of three words, so that I can tell whether a launch on a new platform is reaching anybody. There are two: the version their account was made in, written down once and never changed, and the version they last opened, which is overwritten each time rather than added to — so there is no list of devices and no record of when they switched. Not the phone, not its model, not the version of Android or iOS it runs; and seen by no other user. From a future release, the flag a collector can wear beside their name is a different thing and is not this. It is one they pick from a list themselves, it is public the way a display name is, and nothing about the phone, the connection or the location has any part in it — a child can fly any flag they like, or none, and change or remove it at any time. It says where somebody says they are from and never where they are. The language of a post is a separate thing and it is shown beside what they write, so other collectors can tell whether they will understand a reply. It is worked out on the phone itself, from the words they typed, using the language recogniser built into iOS — nothing is uploaded to do it, and what leaves the phone is the answer rather than anything about what was written. Your child can also choose which language they read the community in, which narrows the feed, the trade board or a list of collectors, stands in as the label when a post is too short to tell, and is what decides which language an announcement from Sprite Catch itself is written in.

It does ask for the photo library, and only to attach a picture to a message. When your child attaches a photo — to a chat, or to a message to support — the app shows the most recent pictures on the phone so they can pick one without hunting. That is the whole of it: nothing is read except the picture they tap, nothing is uploaded until they send it, and the app never adds anything to the library or takes anything out of it. iOS also lets you grant access to selected photos only rather than all of them, and the app works normally that way. Photos are also covered by the safeguards in section 3 — they can be reported, and an account that misuses them can have the pictures it sends in messages stopped from being stored at all.

A conversation can have more than two people in it. Collectors can make a group of up to thirty-two, so a message, a photo or a voice message sent to one goes to everybody in it. Anyone in a group can add other collectors, which means a group can grow to include people your child has never met — so the same rule applies to it as to everything else here: people you do not know cannot simply add you. They have to ask, and the invitation sits unanswered in Chats until your child accepts it; until then they are not in the conversation and cannot read any of it. Joining shows them the group from that moment on, never what was said before. Every member's profile is one tap away from the conversation, which is where reporting and blocking that person live, and Parental Controls still switches messages off entirely.

A community is a public place your child can walk into, and it is the one thing here where another collector — not me — can make a decision about them. Anyone can start a community, and by default anyone can find it and join. From the version going out on 7 September 2026 a community also has a web page anyone can open, which shows its name, what it is for, its picture and how many people are in it — never who they are. It holds an Announcements channel everybody in it is in, and smaller rooms they join for themselves; a room can hold up to 256 people, so a message sent in one goes to all of them. Everything above about a group applies to every room bar one thing: a community's rooms can be set to keep their past messages, so your child can read what was said in a room before they joined it. Whoever runs the community chooses that, for all of its rooms at once, and a community started from 7 September 2026 begins with it on. It can only ever look forwards from the moment it was switched on — nothing said in a room before that is shown to anybody who joins later, whatever anybody sets afterwards — and the room is told when it changes, so nobody's messages quietly start being read by a wider group than they were written for. One more thing applies to the community itself: whoever runs it can take somebody out of it. If that happens to your child they are told so, and told which of a short fixed list of reasons was given — nobody can type a sentence onto their screen. Being removed ends their place in that community and nothing else: it is not a warning on their account, it does not touch anything else in the app, and it specifically does not stop them reporting the person who did it or writing to support. From a future release, somebody in a community can also invite your child into it, and an invitation adds them to nothing — it is an offer sitting at the top of their communities list, joining is still a tap they have to make, and turning it down is silent and leaves no trace. Nobody can send one if either of them has blocked the other. The person who started a community can also close it, which ends it for everybody in it at once — nobody is warned, because nobody in it could do anything about it, and there is no way to bring one back. They can also hand it to one of the people they made a moderator, which changes who runs it and nothing about what your child said there. Nothing said there is erased by that: it stops being reachable, and your child's own messages go when their account does. From the version going out on 7 September 2026, whoever starts a community can mark it for collectors aged 18 and over. The mark is drawn on the community's card for everybody to see, and the server — not the app — refuses to let an account it does not know to be an adult start, be invited into or join one, off the 18-or-over answer described in section 6. A child's account is therefore refused at the door of such a community and told why. The mark permits nothing inside it: the same rules, the same reports and the same checks apply there as in any other community. Communities are switched off by either the Community or the Messages switch in Parental Controls, so a family that has turned off either one never sees them at all.

It also asks for the microphone, and only to record a voice message in a conversation. Your child can talk instead of typing: they start a recording, it runs only until they stop it, and nothing is sent until they choose to send it. (On an iPhone that means holding a button; on an Android phone, starting and then sending or cancelling.) A recording they cancel never leaves the phone. There is no listening in the background and nothing is recorded while the app is closed — and say no to the microphone and everything else in the app works exactly as before. Two things are worth knowing as a parent. Nothing writes down what was said: no software of mine or of anyone else's turns a voice message into text, which also means a recording is not screened automatically the way a written message is — it is listened to only if somebody reports it, and then by me. And a voice message is deleted from the server after 30 days, which is shorter than anything else the app keeps, because a recording of a child's voice deserves a shorter life than the words around it. The one thing that stops that clock is the child-safety preservation described at the end of section 7, which the law requires and which I cannot switch off. Voice messages are covered by the safeguards in section 3 in every other respect: they can be reported, and an account that misuses them can be stopped from sending them.

There is nothing to buy with money, so there is nothing for a child to spend. Nothing in the app costs money, nothing is locked behind a payment, there is no top-up, no bundle, no pack and no subscription, and no purchase has ever been made in it by anybody. The whole collection tracker, every social feature and all of the sprite information are free — and so are the decorations a profile is dressed up with: an effect on a name, a frame around a picture, a background behind posts, a look for a profile card. Every one of them is given out, earned by answering a questionnaire, earned by inviting friends, claimed by sending a screenshot of something done outside the app, earned with Gems, or simply free for everybody, and so is designing the character a profile picture is made of. A child can make their profile look like theirs without spending anything, because spending anything is not possible.

There is a shop, and it takes Gems rather than money. This is the part of this page that changed most recently, so here is exactly what it is. Gems are the app's own currency. A child earns them by using the app — trading with people, posting, coming back on consecutive days, filling in their collection, being around a while — and spends them on the same profile decorations described above, from a small shop. Coming back is the plainest of those, and since 11 September 2026 it is the whole of the daily reward: claiming a day pays a fixed number of Gems, which the app shows before it is claimed and which is worked out from how long the run is — so a longer streak is worth more per day, up to a ceiling, and every seventh day is worth a multiple of that day's figure. Four things about it are worth a parent's attention, and each is enforced by the app rather than promised:

Being honest about why this section is longer than "there is nothing to buy". The app was once built able to sell those decorations through the App Store, and that was switched off before anything was ever offered for sale — nothing was ever listed, nothing was ever sold, and no card, billing address or payment of any kind has ever reached me. Earlier versions of this page said it was written down rather than left unsaid because the ability still existed and could be switched on one day. On 1 September 2026 the ability was removed — taken out of the app and off the server, not switched off — and every decoration that had been given a money price was given a Gem price instead, which is what stocked the shop described above. There is now no code in Sprite Catch that can charge anybody. Putting it back would be a new version of the app, and this page would say so on the day.

The iPhone's own controls are still worth knowing about, and they are better than anything I could offer: Ask to Buy in Family Sharing makes any purchase a child attempts in any app ask you first, and Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions switches in-app purchases off entirely. Neither has anything to stop in this app, and both are worth setting up regardless of it.

Decorations can also be earned by inviting friends, and a child can take part. That is a deliberate decision rather than an oversight, so here is exactly what it involves. Your child shares their username — the same handle that is already the address of their public profile page — and unlocks a decoration as more people join with it, at a published list of milestones that starts at one friend. Sharing happens through the iPhone's own share sheet, to people your child picks: the app never sends anything on their behalf, never reads their contacts, and never suggests anybody to invite. There is also a decoration for entering somebody else's username, so a child who was invited gets something as well — it can be done at any time, once, and never changed afterwards. There is no money in it anywhere — nothing to buy, nothing to spend, and no way to pay for progress. The milestones are fixed and published, and nothing won this way can be traded or sold. One milestone is a box, and it is one of the free draws described in section 1: it opens into a single decoration out of a published set, nothing can be bought to change the chances, something already held is never drawn again, and the set and the real odds are shown before it is opened.

Two things about it are worth knowing as a parent. The count is private: it is shown to your child and to nobody else — there is no leaderboard, no ranking, and nothing on their profile that tells other collectors how many people they brought in, so there is nothing to compete over. And nobody is contacted by the app: an invite is a link your child hands over themselves, the person who receives it signs up on the same terms as anyone else, and neither of them is told anything about the other beyond the code. If you would rather your child did not take part, they simply do not share the code — nothing in the app is behind it, and it never nags.

A child can attach a photo to a message or to a note to the developer, and that is the only way a picture ever leaves the device: they pick one picture and the app receives only that one — it is never given the run of the photo library, and it is never asked for permission to browse it. One kind of note asks for a picture on purpose: a reward can be claimed by doing something outside the app and sending a screenshot of it, which the developer looks at before handing the decoration over. That screenshot goes to one person — the developer — is never published, and is never sent to Epic Games or anyone else. Claiming is optional and nothing in the app is behind it.

The app does record how it is used — which screens are opened and which features are used — so it can be improved. That information goes only to Sprite Catch's own server: there is no third-party analytics SDK in the app, it is not shared with advertisers or data brokers, and none of it can follow your child into another company's app or website. It records actions, never what your child writes or who they message. It can be switched off in Settings → Privacy & Safety.

From 5 September 2026 the app also records the network address your child connects from, and keeps it for 90 days. Until that date it never did — the address was scrambled into something nobody can read back and then discarded — so this is a real change and worth understanding. It is recorded when they create an account, sign in, upload a photo or voice message, post, or send a message, and one record covers a whole hour of doing any of it. It is not used to work out where your child is, it is not shown to any other collector, it is not shared with advertisers or data brokers, and it is not part of the usage information described above — it cannot be switched off in Settings, because it is not there to improve the app.

It is there for one reason, and it is the one in section 7. When apparent child sexual abuse material has to be reported, the report is close to useless without an address: it is what lets the authorities identify the adult involved, and a device or an email does not. Sprite Catch had none to give, and that was a real gap in protecting children here. After 90 days the address is erased and only the scrambled form remains, and deleting the account removes them outright. No law required this; it is a choice, and the privacy policy sets out the whole of it in sections 2, 6 and 9.

A Discord account can be linked to a Sprite Catch account, and only on purpose. Sprite Catch has a bot on Discord that any server can add, and someone can type a command to connect the two — which stores the identifier Discord uses for their account and the username it had at the time. One other thing is read back, only from the Sprite Catch community server and only about the handful of people who help run it: whether they wear the role that says so, which is written down so that nobody can put a public scam warning on them for having said no to somebody. Nothing else about Discord is stored: not their messages there, not the servers they are in, not their friends. It is not on their profile and no other collector can see it inside Sprite Catch. It exists so that the person asking a question in the server and the collector it is about are recognisably the same person, which is also what makes it possible to deal with somebody causing harm in both places rather than in neither. Finishing a link does up to five things on Discord's side, and the roles only in the Sprite Catch community server: the app sends them a direct message confirming it, gives their Discord account a "Verified Collector" role — which, like any Discord role, everybody in that server can see, though it shows them nothing about the collection behind it — gives them a "trader" role matching how their trading in the app has gone, gives them a role for any past season they have completely mastered, and gives their Sprite Catch account a profile decoration. Those middle two are the ones that say something about them: they are the same badges the app already shows under their name, carried onto Discord where everybody in the server can read them. A child with no trades gets no trader role, and a record carrying a warning is never published to Discord at all. Most importantly, a private profile is given neither — a profile kept private keeps its collection and its record off Discord too, and one made private later has both roles taken back. It has to be asked for, it can be disconnected at any time from the same screen that made it (which takes both roles away again), and deleting the account deletes it.

Someone who has linked can also type a command in a Discord channel to post a picture of a collection there. Five commands draw one: the Sprites they are still hunting, the ones they have caught, the ones they have mastered, the ones they have caught but not mastered yet, or their trading record in stars. It is the same image the app's own share button makes, it carries the display name and username their public profile already shows, and it appears only when the command is typed — never on its own, and never because a collection changed. They can ask for another collector's picture instead of their own, and that works only if that collector's profile is public; a private profile refuses, and the refusal is shown to the person who asked and to nobody else. A child's own picture is theirs to post either way, which is the same decision the share button in the app has always offered. Once posted, the picture is a message in that channel, and Discord keeps its own copy of it under its own rules. Discord itself is a separate company with its own rules and its own minimum age, and nothing in Sprite Catch — reporting, blocking, the safety tools in section 5 — reaches into it.

The bot also lets someone track Sprites inside Discord, with no Sprite Catch account at all — and this is the part worth reading twice. Typing a command opens a private panel where they tick off the Sprites they have caught, and those ticks are stored against their Discord account rather than a Sprite Catch one. Two consequences follow. Other members of a server they have used the bot in can find them when searching for a Sprite they have — by their Discord name, with what they have and what they need — which is the whole purpose of it, and which is limited to servers the bot has been added to and they are in; there is no search across servers and no way for a stranger to look them up from outside one. If they have connected a Sprite Catch account, the bot can also list them in such a server without their having typed anything in it, by matching the server's member list against the accounts that have connected — but a profile kept private is still never listed, nothing at all is stored about anyone who has not connected an account, and /spritecatch privacy hides them or deletes the lot from inside Discord. A server's admins may also choose one role the bot gives for finishing a season; it says that and nothing else, and the bot cannot touch any other role. And the bot can open a private trade thread between two collectors, in a channel that server's administrators chose. Everything said in that thread is on Discord, under Discord's rules and that server's own moderators — Sprite Catch does not store it, does not read it, and its blocking and reporting tools do not reach into it. The bot says so in the first message of every room, along with the same warning the app gives: never send money, gift cards or V-Bucks for a Sprite, and never share an Epic login. Either person can close the room at any time without the other agreeing. Typing /spritecatch privacy shows everything the bot holds, hides them from a server's search, or deletes the lot — from inside Discord, immediately, without asking anybody. Discord has its own minimum age and its own rules, and a child who is not old enough to be on Discord is not old enough to use any of this; Sprite Catch's own safety tools, described in section 5, work on Sprite Catch and not on Discord.

Notifications go through Apple or Google, depending on the phone. There is no other way to deliver one: on an iPhone the notification passes through Apple's notification service, and on an Android phone through Google's, which also creates an identifier for that installation of the app while notifications are switched on. When the notification is about a direct message, it carries that message. Neither company receives your child's collection, and neither receives anything at all if notifications are left off — which is how they start. Turning them off, or uninstalling, ends it.

Nothing about your child is sold, and nothing ever has been. The app can offer a questionnaire about the games somebody plays, in exchange for a decoration for their profile. Those answers are read by me, to work out what to build next, and they go nowhere else — not to game companies, not to studios, not to anybody outside the service.

Something this page used to say is gone, and it is worth saying why rather than letting it disappear. Between 1 and 31 August 2026 the app carried the ability to run a questionnaire whose answers were sold to game companies as market research, and this page described it as one of the ways a free app with no ads might one day pay for itself. It was never used — no such questionnaire was ever offered to anybody, and no answer was ever sold to anyone. On 31 August 2026 the ability was removed from the app and from the server, along with the consent screen it would have shown. iOS's own "allow tracking" request was kept, and on every account it now applies to nothing — the questionnaire it was added for is gone, nothing in the app tracks anybody, and no part of the app reads the answer, so answering it either way collects nothing at all. It is put to everyone, a child's account included, because hiding it made an app that genuinely implements the permission look to Apple like one that does not; on an Apple Account set up as a child's, iOS declines to show it at all. What is stored, and who it goes to, is set out in full in the Privacy Policy.

None of the usage recording applies to an account the app has established is under 13. For those, the server records no usage information at all and keeps no email address — neither one Apple or Google offers nor one typed into the sign-in screen, which is refused for an under-13 account — whatever the device sends, so a child's account contributes nothing to any of this.

One thing to know before your child disputes a copyright complaint. Anyone who owns a picture, a video or a piece of music can ask me to take down a copy of it somebody posted here, and I do. Your child is told what went and why, and that is usually the end of it. If they want to argue the point, though, the law that governs this gives them no anonymous way to do it: a reply disputing a takedown has to carry a real name, postal address and phone number, and it is sent to the person who complained. That is a decision for you rather than for them. The whole procedure is in section 9 of the Terms of Use, and nothing is lost by leaving a complaint unanswered — the post stays down and nothing else follows.

7. For parents and guardians

If your child uses Sprite Catch purely to track their collection, they are not sharing anything or talking to anyone. The parts to be aware of are the social features in section 4 — posts, trades, and direct messages with strangers. Sprite Catch has a built-in Parental Controls screen (in Settings, protected by a passcode you set) that switches those off — individually, or all the way down to a collection-only app. Set it before handing the app over: it is what decides what your child can reach, and the age answer does not do it for you. You can also switch the profile to private — an account the app has established is under 13 starts private, otherwise new profiles start public so collectors can be found, and posting or listing a trade turns it public again — and ask them not to post, trade, or accept message requests. Apple's built-in Screen Time & Content Restrictions and Communication Limits can restrict things at the device level too.

Two of those controls do different jobs, and since the web version arrived the difference matters. Sprite Catch's own Parental Controls screen is the stronger one inside the app, and it reaches only that app on that phone. Making the profile private, by contrast, is a setting on the account, so it holds everywhere the account is used — including in a browser, where it is what keeps the profile off the public feed listings and off the leaderboard. And if what you want is for your child not to reach Sprite Catch in a browser at all, that is Screen Time's web restrictions rather than anything in this app; section 5 says why.

If you believe your child has entered personal information anywhere in the app, or you would like the account removed, email me and I will delete it promptly. Deleting an account — whether you email me or your child taps Delete Account in Settings — hides it from every other collector immediately, and the data itself is erased within 30 days. If you only want the account off a particular phone, Settings also has Log Out, which deletes nothing: it ends the session and the notifications on that device, and offers to clear the collection marked on it so the app opens empty for whoever has the phone next.

There is one thing I am obliged to report, and one situation in which erasing waits. United States law requires any service like this one to report apparent child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which may pass a report to law enforcement. It is not a decision I get to make and there is no version of the report that leaves the account out. Once such a report has been made, the same law requires the material and the records around it to be kept for at least one year — longer if the authorities ask — so for that period nothing belonging to that account is erased on its usual schedule: not the 30 days after a deletion request, not a voice message's 30 days, and not an unsend. Because a report is about a conversation, the other person's messages in it are held for the same period, and if they have asked for their account to be deleted the erasing waits with everything else; nothing about the app looks different to either of them while it lasts. The account can still be deleted and still disappears from the app at once. This is the only situation anywhere in Sprite Catch where a request to erase is met with a delay longer than 30 days, and it is the only reason anything here is ever handed to an authority without a court order compelling it. The privacy policy sets it out in full, in sections 6, 8 and 9.

8. Contact

Mateo Duran — Uruguay
contact@spritecatch.com