Delete your Next Step account

You can delete your Next Step Cloud Backup account at any time: in the app, or by email if you can't use the app. Deleting it is permanent and can't be undone.

If you never created an account, we don't hold an account or recovery data for you. Your data is only on your phone; see Erase the data on your phone.

Delete it in the app

1. Open Next Step and tap the gear button on Home to open Settings.
2. Tap Cloud Backup, then Profile. (You need to be signed in.)
3. Under Delete Account, tap the Delete Account button.
4. Enter your password, then tap Yes, Permanently Delete My Account.

The app tells you when your account has been deleted, and signs you out of Cloud Backup on that phone. Forgotten your password? We only send a reset link to a confirmed email address. If Profile asks you to confirm your email, do that there before you sign out: enter the code from our email, or, if you don't have one, choose Send a new code and enter the code from that email (see Confirming your email address). Then, in Cloud Backup, tap Sign Out (if your email still isn't confirmed, the app warns you first and offers Confirm Email), then I already have an account. If Cloud Backup says "Sign in again to keep backing up", the sign-in form is already open. Type your email address and tap Forgot password?. After resetting it, sign in again and then delete your account. Or ask us by email instead, whether or not your email address is confirmed.

Before you delete

• Want to keep your data? Export a backup file and your photos from the Backup tab first. Some data, like your messages, can't be exported in the app; email us if you'd like a copy before you delete. We can only send a copy to an email address you've confirmed (see Confirming your email address), so confirm yours first if Profile asks you to.
• If you use Next Step as a client, your conversations are deleted for your clinicians too. Deleting your account deletes your whole message history with each clinician, including their messages and meal comments, and the practice chats about you. Questionnaires you were sent, with your answers, are deleted too, and so are the notes your clinicians keep about you. Your clinicians aren't told, but you no longer appear in their portal. If they might want a record, let them know first.
• If you're a clinician, your clients keep your conversations. Each client you're connected with keeps their whole conversation with you, your messages and meal comments included, to read only, shown as from "a former clinician". Your messages in practice chats stay too (except in a practice you're the only member of, which is deleted with its chats), and questionnaires you sent stay with your clients, with their answers. Deleting a chat on your side first doesn't remove it from your client's side; deleting a single message you wrote removes its text for both of you.
• Clinicians: if you're the only owner of a practice that still has other members, make another member an owner first; until then, deletion is refused. A practice with no other members is deleted with your account.
• If the app can't confirm that your photos were removed from cloud storage, it keeps your account and asks you to try again. If it says deletion isn't confirmed yet, try again a little later.

Ask us by email

Email [email protected] from the email address on your account, with the subject "Delete my Next Step account". Include your username if you know it. We'll reply to that address to check the request really came from you. Nothing is deleted until you've confirmed from it. Then we'll delete the account within 30 days and let you know when it's done. It's deleted in exactly the same way as in the app. You don't need the app to ask. This works whether or not your account's email address was ever confirmed.

If you can no longer use that email address, write from another address and tell us your username. We'll need to be confident the account is yours before we delete anything, so we'll ask for details only the account holder would know, and we may not be able to act if we can't confirm it.

What's deleted

• Your account: name, username, email address, password, two-factor settings and sign-ins.
• Everything synced from your phone: check-ins with their answers and reflections, Nourishment Bridge check-ins, your meal and snack schedule, Challenge Ladder steps, recovery goals, check-in questions, settings, and anything in the trash.
• All your photos in cloud storage, including photos you removed in the app earlier. A second clean-up runs about six minutes later, to catch any upload that was still in progress. If our server restarts first, or the clean-up fails, it's normally tried again until it succeeds.
• Your connections.
• The record of clinician access to your data.
• Your confirmations: that you're 13 or older, that you agreed to our Privacy Policy and Terms, and your consent under our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy.
• If you're a client: your message threads and meal comments with clinicians, for both of you, and their reactions; the practice chats about you, including what clinicians wrote in them; questionnaires you were sent, with your answers and photo answers; and the notes and nicknames clinicians keep about you.
• If you're a clinician: your clinician profile and connection code, your practice memberships, your template and questionnaire libraries, the notes and nicknames you wrote about clients, your reactions to messages, and any practice you were the only member of, with its chats. Also deleted: your conversations with clients whose connection with you had ended or was never approved, and messages a client had already deleted on their side.

What's kept

• Data on your phone. Deleting your account doesn't touch it; see below.
• Database backups made by our hosting provider, Render. Deleted data can remain in any backup made before you deleted it, until that backup expires.
• Emails we sent you stay in your inbox. Our email provider, Resend, keeps its own records of them under its retention settings.
• Crash reports and performance samples already sent to Sentry, until Sentry deletes them. They don't include your name or email address, but occasionally a report about a failed photo upload contains your account ID.
• Our server logs, which don't include IP addresses or what you sent. For requests made in our System Console, the path can include the internal ID of the account or item concerned.
• Copies of photos already opened in the clinician portal can stay in that web browser's cache.
• If you're a clinician:
  • Your conversations with clients you were connected with. Each client keeps the whole thread, your messages and meal comments included, to read only, shown as from "a former clinician", until they delete the chat or their account. Nobody else can read it.
  • Your messages in practice chats, shown as from "A former clinician", for the client and the practice members who can read that chat, until the client deletes their account or the practice is deleted. If you were the practice's only member, the practice and its chats are deleted with your account.
  • Questionnaires you sent to clients, with their answers and photo answers, shown to them as "Sent by a former clinician".
  • Records that you opened a client's data stay in that client's access record, without your identity.
  • Check-in question sets you sent to clients stay with them, and items you added or changed in a client's account with Edit access stay in their account.
  • Questionnaires you added to a practice's library stay with the practice.
• A record that the account was deleted, so that restoring a database backup can't bring it back: the account's internal ID (a random ID), whether it was a client, clinician or staff account, how it was deleted and when. It doesn't hold your email address, name or any health data.
• Records of what our staff did in the System Console concerning your account (which staff account, what kind of action, and when), with your account's internal ID.

More about how we handle your data: Privacy Policy and Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy.

Erase the data on your phone

Your phone keeps its own copy of your data, with or without an account. To erase it:

1. Open Settings and scroll down to Data.
2. Tap Erase All Data on This Device.
3. Type ERASE, then tap Erase Everything.

This deletes the app's database (including its automatic copies), the photos saved in the app, your settings and your scheduled reminders, and signs you out of Cloud Backup on this phone. It doesn't delete your Cloud Backup account; use the steps above for that. Your settings go back to their defaults, except that your crash-reporting choice is kept. On iPhone, the app's data stays out of iCloud backups.

It doesn't clear the app's temporary files. Copies of exported backup files and some photos can stay there until your phone clears them, and so can the app's copy of a photo ZIP if the app closed while restoring it. To remove those too, uninstall the app. Files you've saved or shared somewhere else aren't affected.

Deleting some data without deleting your account

You can delete check-ins, schedule items, goals and Challenge Ladder steps in the app. They stay in Recently Deleted for 30 days and are then permanently removed from your phone. For check-ins and journal entries, everything you wrote or photographed is erased from your phone at 30 days; if you use Cloud Backup, a record with no content (just when it was made and deleted) stays on the phone until it next backs up. On our server, the deletion arrives the next time your phone syncs. Once 30 days have passed since you deleted them, they're permanently removed the next time your phone sends a change to our server. If that doesn't happen first, an hourly clean-up removes them about 32 days after you deleted them. Delete Forever, for schedule items, goals and Challenge Ladder steps, removes an item from your phone at once and from our server at your phone's next sync. If you changed the same item on another device after deleting it, or brought it back from a backup file, the newer version is kept. Once an item has been permanently removed, it doesn't come back.

Once the change syncs, we stop giving out links to a photo you remove, or to one on a check-in you delete. A photo you remove from a check-in is deleted from cloud storage about a day later. The photos of a check-in you delete stay in cloud storage, shown to no one, until the check-in is permanently removed (about 32 days after you deleted it), so that it keeps them if it comes back because you changed it on another device. A few photos stay until you delete your account. These are photos you removed before our October 2026 update, and photos on check-ins permanently removed before then. A photo removed from a Nourishment Bridge check-in on its own also stays. Rarely, so does a photo removed before its upload finished, or on a phone whose clock is behind. If you'd like those deleted without deleting your account, email us from your account's address with "Delete removed photos" in the subject line.

Questions: [email protected].