Gift It
A gift list that doesn't ask who you are
Gift It works with no account at all. Open it, add the people you buy for and the ideas you have, and everything you write stays on your phone — no email, no sign-up, nothing sent anywhere. Signing in exists for exactly two things: backing your lists up, and sharing one person's list with someone else. Until you do either, there is nothing to back up and nothing to share.
What “no account” actually means here
It means the app is fully functional on first open. Not a trial, not a limited mode, not three free entries before a wall. Every part of the planner — the people, the occasions, the ideas, the budgets, the four states each idea moves through, the reminders — runs with no email address involved.
This is worth being specific about because “no account required” is often used loosely. Here it means that if you never sign in, there is no record of you anywhere, because none was ever created.
Why a gift list is more revealing than it looks
Consider what is actually in one. Every person who matters enough to buy for, and what they are to you. Their birthday. What they are into, their sizes, notes you have made about them. What you are willing to spend on each of them — which is a ranking, whether or not you would ever phrase it that way. And the private dates: the day she got the studio, the night of her first sale.
That is a fuller picture of someone’s relationships than most of what sits on a phone. The default should not be that it lives on somebody else’s server.
The two reasons to sign in
Backup. On-device means on that device. A lost or replaced phone takes the lists with it. Signing in puts a copy somewhere that survives.
Sharing one person. When more than one of you buys for the same person, you can share that person — not your whole app. You send it to a username they picked themselves, so you never need their email, and everyone else you have saved stays where they were.
The other side has to accept before anything is visible to them. Then claiming goes live: every idea carries an “I’ll get this”, and the moment one of you taps it the other one’s phone says who is getting it. That is covered fully in one gift list on everybody’s phone.
The three moments something does leave the phone
We would rather list these than claim a blanket that is not quite true.
Pasting a shop link. The address is fetched once so the title, image and price can be filled in for you. If you type the idea yourself instead, nothing is fetched.
Asking Sparks. Sparks is the idea generator — a one-time unlock with a monthly fair-use limit, not a subscription. When you ask it for ideas for someone, what you have written about that person is sent to Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, at that moment, and is not kept afterwards. If you never open Sparks, this never happens.
Turning reminders on. A notification token for your phone, so the nudge can reach you a week out and the night before.
Each of these is something you do deliberately, and each is off until you do it.
Deleting
You can delete your data from inside the app. No support ticket, no email to a studio address, no waiting on a reply. The full detail of what is held and when is in Gift It’s privacy policy.
The trade, stated plainly
No account means nothing to lose and nothing to leak — and also nothing to recover. Signing in means a backup and the ability to share, at the cost of an email address on file.
Neither is the right answer for everyone, which is exactly why it is a choice made at the point where it starts to matter, rather than on the first screen before you have decided whether you like the app at all.
Questions people ask
Do I need an account to use Gift It?
No. The whole planner — people, occasions, ideas, budgets and reminders — works without one, and everything you save stays on your phone. Signing in is optional.
What does signing in actually add?
Two things and no others. Your lists are backed up, so they survive a lost phone. And you can share one person's list with someone else who is buying for them. If you want neither, there is no reason to sign in.
If I never sign in, is anything sent anywhere?
Only if you ask for it. Pasting a shop link fetches that address once so the title, image and price can be filled in. Asking Sparks for ideas sends what you have written about that person to Claude at the moment you ask, and it is not kept afterwards. Nothing else leaves the phone.
What happens to my lists if I lose my phone and never signed in?
They are gone. That is the honest trade — on-device means on that device. If losing them would matter to you, sign in so they are backed up.
When I share a list, what can the other person see?
Only that one person's list, and only after they accept. Everyone else you have saved stays where it was. Until they accept there is nothing visible at all — not the ideas, not the budget, not what anybody has spent.
Can I delete everything?
Yes, from inside the app. You do not have to email anybody to be forgotten.
Why does a gift app care about privacy at all?
Because a gift list is a record of who matters to you, what you know about them, and what you spend on them. It is one of the more revealing things on a phone, and it is nobody's business by default.