Why PetPomo has no login and no subscription

“What’s the catch?” is a completely reasonable question to ask about a free app with no ads currently running and no account wall. The honest answer is technical, not marketing copy: there isn’t one, and the architecture makes that the easy path rather than a promise that has to be kept by hand.

Where your progress actually lives

There’s no database row anywhere with your name on it, because there’s no sign-up step that would create one. Your save — coins, equipped pet, stats, settings — lives in your own browser’s local storage, on your own device. Nobody on the other end of this ever sees it unless you choose to move it.

Optional cloud sync exists for people who use PetPomo across more than one device, and it works without creating an account either: your browser generates a random code, and that code — not your identity — is what the sync save is stored under. The server holds an anonymous blob keyed to a string of random characters. There’s genuinely no way to connect that blob back to a person from the server side, because nothing identifying was ever collected to connect it to.

Why this is a real constraint, not a slogan

This shapes what the app can and can’t do, which is the actual proof it’s architectural rather than promotional. There’s no “forgot password” flow, because there’s no password. There’s no way to recover a save if local storage gets cleared and you never set up sync, because there’s genuinely nothing to recover from on this end. A feature like leaderboards or friends-lists is much harder to build cleanly under this model — and hasn’t been, which is itself the trade-off being described, not a feature request being politely ignored.

What an account-based app can do	What that requires
Recover your save if you lose your device	A server-side record tied to your identity
Show a leaderboard or friends list	Knowing who everyone is, relative to each other
Email you a re-engagement nudge	Your email address, stored, indefinitely
Sell a subscription tier	A billing relationship, which requires an account to attach it to

None of those are evil on their own — plenty of apps do them responsibly. The point is narrower: PetPomo doesn’t do any of them, and the no-account design is why, not a coincidence sitting next to it.

What this costs you, honestly

The actual trade-off, stated plainly: if you clear your browser data and never turned on cloud sync, your progress is gone, permanently, and nobody can get it back for you — there’s no support ticket that ends in “we restored your account” because there was never an account to restore. That’s a real cost. For a lot of people it’s a fair trade against never being asked for an email address in the first place.

If you want the safety net, turn on cloud sync in Settings — it costs you one code to remember, not an account.