flutter_privacy_doctor

pub.dev Dart CI

Audit Flutter dependencies for App Store PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy compliance and Google Play Data Safety form generation.

Every release, manually verifying which iOS SDKs ship a privacy manifest and filling out Apple's Privacy Nutrition Labels and Google Play's Data Safety form is slow, repetitive, and easy to get wrong — leading to App Store rejections or Play Store policy violations.

flutter_privacy_doctor automates the heavy lifting:

  • PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy checker — scans every native iOS/macOS dependency in your project
  • App Store privacy label draft generator — pre-fills Apple's Privacy Nutrition Label categories
  • Google Play Data Safety form generator — pre-fills Google's Data Safety categories
  • Android permissions cross-check — maps AndroidManifest.xml permissions to Data Safety disclosures
  • CI/CD gate — fail the build if manifests are missing before you ship

⚠️ This tool produces a best-effort draft — it is NOT a legal compliance determination. Always verify final answers against your app's actual behavior and each SDK's current privacy documentation before submitting to the App Store or Play Console.

Why does this tool exist?

Apple requires apps and the third-party SDKs they bundle to disclose data collection and ship PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy manifests if they use specific "required reason" APIs (NSUserDefaults, file timestamps, disk space, system boot time, active keyboard). The Flutter team has openly acknowledged there is no built-in system to collect and bundle privacy manifests from arbitrary pub.dev packages — this is a known, unsolved gap.

Developers currently must manually visit each dependency's pub.dev/GitHub page, check for manifest files, and manually fill out both store privacy forms by guessing what each bundled SDK actually collects. This tool automates that process.

Installation

# Global install (recommended — use on any Flutter project)
dart pub global activate flutter_privacy_doctor

# Or as a dev dependency
flutter pub add dev:flutter_privacy_doctor

Run flutter pub get in your project first so pubspec.lock and .dart_tool/package_config.json are up to date.

Usage

Run from your Flutter project root:

# Full report: manifests + draft labels + Android permissions
flutter_privacy_doctor

# Sub-commands (run one check at a time)
flutter_privacy_doctor manifests              # PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy checker only
flutter_privacy_doctor data-labels           # App Store & Play Store draft labels only
flutter_privacy_doctor android-permissions   # Android permissions cross-check only

Options

Flag Description
--export=<path>.md Write full draft report to a Markdown file
--json Machine-readable JSON output (for CI pipelines)
--fail-on-missing-manifest Exit code 1 if any native plugin lacks a manifest
--ignore=pkg1,pkg2 Skip specific packages
-p <dir> / --project <dir> Flutter project root (default: current directory)

Export to Markdown

Save the draft answer sheet alongside your release checklist:

flutter_privacy_doctor --export=docs/privacy_report.md

Pre-release CI gate

Add this to your CI pipeline to block releases when manifests are missing:

flutter_privacy_doctor manifests --fail-on-missing-manifest

JSON output for CI dashboards

flutter_privacy_doctor --json > privacy_audit.json

How it works

PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy checker

For each native iOS/macOS plugin, the tool checks in order:

  1. Tier 1 — Local file scan: inspects the package's source in your pub cache (~/.pub-cache) for any .xcprivacy file
  2. Tier 2 — Known database: checks a bundled known_privacy_manifest_status.json for popular plugins
  3. Tier 3 — Unknown: marks the plugin as ❓ with a link to its pub.dev page for manual review

Additionally, a Required Reason API heuristic scans native .swift, .m, and .h files for known symbols (NSUserDefaults, NSFileModificationDate, systemUptime, etc.) that require a manifest even if one isn't found.

App Store Privacy Nutrition Label draft

The tool cross-references your dependencies against known_sdk_data_collection.json — a community-maintained database of ~25 popular SDKs (Firebase suite, AdMob, Sentry, Google Sign-In, RevenueCat, and more) mapping them to Apple's exact privacy label categories.

Google Play Data Safety form draft

The same database maps each SDK to Google Play's Data Safety categories, covering linked identity, tracking usage, and data purposes.

Android permissions cross-check

Parses android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml and maps permissions like ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION, CAMERA, RECORD_AUDIO, READ_CONTACTS directly to their corresponding Play Store Data Safety categories.

Sample output

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  iOS / macOS Privacy Manifest Check
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  ✅ firebase_analytics @10.7.4  [database]
  ✅ shared_preferences @2.2.3  [local file]
      ⚠️  Heuristic: likely uses Required Reason API — manifest is mandatory
  ❌ flutter_facebook_auth @6.2.1  [database]
      ℹ  No privacy manifest bundled as of 6.2.x
      🔗 https://pub.dev/packages/flutter_facebook_auth
  ❓ my_custom_plugin @1.0.0
      ℹ  Not in database — verify manually.
      🔗 https://pub.dev/packages/my_custom_plugin

  Summary: 2 ✅ present  1 ❌ missing  1 ❓ unknown

Known SDK database

The bundled known_sdk_data_collection.json currently covers:

SDK Privacy Docs
Firebase Analytics firebase.google.com/support/privacy
Firebase Crashlytics firebase.google.com/support/privacy
Firebase Messaging firebase.google.com/support/privacy
Firebase Auth firebase.google.com/support/privacy
Cloud Firestore firebase.google.com/support/privacy
Firebase Remote Config firebase.google.com/support/privacy
Firebase Storage firebase.google.com/support/privacy
Google Mobile Ads (AdMob) support.google.com/admob
Sentry sentry.io/privacy
Google Sign-In developers.google.com
Sign in with Apple developer.apple.com
Geolocator pub.dev/packages/geolocator
Camera pub.dev/packages/camera
Image Picker pub.dev/packages/image_picker
Shared Preferences Apple required-reason docs
Path Provider Apple required-reason docs
Device Info Plus pub.dev/packages/device_info_plus
Facebook Login developers.facebook.com
Stripe stripe.com/privacy
Amplitude amplitude.com/privacy
Mixpanel mixpanel.com/legal/privacy-policy
Intercom intercom.com/legal/privacy
RevenueCat revenuecat.com/privacy
OneSignal onesignal.com/privacy_policy
Braze braze.com/company/legal/privacy

Contributing to the database

The long-term value of this tool is in keeping known_sdk_data_collection.json and known_privacy_manifest_status.json current. Both files are structured for easy community contributions — see the _readme and _schema fields at the top of each file.

To add a new SDK:

  1. Add an entry following the existing schema
  2. Include a citationUrl pointing to the SDK's own privacy documentation
  3. Open a pull request

Disclaimer

This tool generates a DRAFT starting point — it is NOT a legal compliance determination.

Before submitting to the App Store or Google Play Console you must:

  • Verify answers against your app's actual runtime behavior
  • Check each SDK's current published privacy documentation
  • Consult a qualified legal or privacy professional if needed

The authors accept no liability for submissions made solely on the basis of this tool's output.

  • flutter_spm_doctor — Audit your Flutter project for Swift Package Manager (SPM) compatibility issues. If you use flutter_privacy_doctor, you'll likely find flutter_spm_doctor useful too.

Resources

Libraries

flutter_privacy_doctor