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Delete your account

If you want to permanently leave Forktastic, you can delete your account directly from inside the app. Deletion removes your data from Forktastic’s systems entirely (after a 30-day grace period).

Cancelling your Pro subscription is different from deleting your account — see Cancel for subscription-only changes.

Before you delete

A few things to consider:

  • Export anything you want to keep first. Make a PDF cookbook of your favorite recipes. Once the grace period ends, your data is gone.
  • You’ll be removed from family groups you’re a member of. If you’re the family creator, the family group is dissolved 30 days after you start deletion (other members keep their personal cookbooks).
  • Your Pro subscription is automatically cancelled on deletion. No partial refund of the current billing period (refunds require contacting Apple/Google/Stripe — see Cancel).
  • Public cookbooks you’ve shared are removed from Explore. Followers lose access. Saved copies in other users’ cookbooks are unaffected (those are independent copies).
  • Family activity feed history is removed; your past contributions to shared cookbooks remain in those cookbooks (since they belong to the cookbook owner, not you).

Delete the account

Account Settings scrolled to Delete Account button

  1. Open the Options tab.
  2. Tap Account settings.
  3. Scroll to the very bottom.
  4. Tap Delete account (red button).
  5. Confirm step 1: you’re shown what’ll be deleted (recipe count, cookbook count, family memberships). Read it.
  6. Confirm step 2: enter your account email to confirm.
  7. Confirm step 3: enter your password (or confirm with Apple/Google if social auth).
  8. Tap Delete account permanently.

The account enters a 30-day grace period state.

The 30-day grace period

For 30 days after starting deletion:

  • The account is suspended — you can’t sign in, recipes can’t be viewed, Pro features are off.
  • The data is retained but inaccessible to anyone (including Forktastic staff).
  • You can come back by signing in within the grace period — Forktastic sends a one-time link to your email allowing you to cancel the deletion. Sign-in restores the account fully.
  • Family members who had access via you lose access immediately at deletion start (not 30 days later). The 30-day window is for you, not for them.

After 30 days, the data is permanently deleted.

What “permanently deleted” means

After the grace period ends:

  • All your recipes, cookbooks, meal plans, grocery lists, family group memberships, ratings, reviews, notes, photos: deleted.
  • Backups and replicas are purged within 7 days of permanent deletion.
  • Your account email is freed for a new signup, if you (or someone else with the same email) wants to use it.
  • Forktastic retains only: anonymized usage statistics that can’t be linked back to you, and any transaction records required by law (typically tax/financial records for a few years).

If you change your mind

During the grace period:

  1. Sign in normally with your email and password (or Apple/Google).
  2. Forktastic detects the pending deletion and shows: “Your account is scheduled for deletion. Cancel?”
  3. Tap Cancel deletion.
  4. The account reactivates fully — recipes, cookbooks, everything.

After the grace period: there’s no way to recover. You’d need to start fresh with a new account.

Deletion vs leaving family groups

If you just want to leave family groups (not delete your whole account):

Leaving a family doesn’t affect your personal account or your private cookbooks.

Privacy of data during the grace period

During the 30-day grace period:

  • Forktastic doesn’t process your data for any new purpose.
  • Internal staff don’t have access to your data even with admin tools (a deletion-pending flag locks the account).
  • Backups continue to include your data until day 37 (30-day grace + 7-day backup purge cycle), at which point they’re scrubbed.

This is GDPR-compliant for users in EU jurisdictions. Forktastic applies the same standard globally regardless of where you live.

CCPA, GDPR, and data export

Before deleting, you can request a full export of your data:

  1. Options → Account settings → Privacy → Export my data.
  2. Forktastic generates a ZIP containing your recipes (JSON + images), cookbooks (JSON), meal plans (JSON), and account metadata.
  3. The ZIP is emailed to your account email within 24 hours.

This export is independent of deletion — you can request it at any time, and you can do it before deleting to have a permanent personal copy.