A pocket-sized biosphere
Life Under Cork: Jar Ecosystem lets you build a tiny world, seal it, and watch whether it can carry on without you. Only light gets through the glass. Everything else goes round and round inside.
Try a jar belowSee what's insideWipe the fogged glass with your finger or mouse to peek inside.
What you can do
Choose a pickle jar or a ten-litre demijohn, pick your soil, plants and tiny residents, set the light, and twist the cork until it clicks.
Sand, volcanic soil or rich garden earth. Waterweed, hornwort, java moss or duckweed. Ramshorn snails, water fleas, scuds or cherry shrimp.
Wipe the condensation away to peek in. Drag a loupe over the water and see bacteria, ammonium, nitrate and tiny oxygen bubbles at work.
Hold it and a whole season rushes past in a minute. Your jar keeps living even while your phone sits in your pocket.
Before you seal, the forecast plays your jar four months ahead and tells you how it might end.
From photosynthesis to carrying capacity, each page unlocks from what happens in your own glass, in plain words.
When a jar goes quiet it moves to your shelf with its lifespan, charts and the reason it ended. Then you begin again, a little wiser.
Day 1. Clear water, snails grazing the glass.
Day 3. Ammonia creeping up, bacteria still too few.
Day 6. A nitrite wave, then calm. The nitrogen cycle has closed.
Day 14. Leaves pearling with oxygen at noon.
Day 41. Too many snails. Oxygen dips before every dawn…
Two honest moves, just like the app: change the lamp, or crowd the snails. Wipe the glass to look inside.
Your jar is sealed. Let it breathe.
About us
🌱 We are a small team of biology nerds, designers and windowsill gardeners who never quite got over the first time we saw a snail glide across a pane of glass.
🫧 Our mission is simple: make living systems visible. We want anyone to see how oxygen, carbon dioxide, food and waste travel in circles, without needing a lab or a pond.
🐚 With Life Under Cork you build a jar, seal it, and meet a world that keeps going while you are away. You get a forecast, a loupe, an hourglass and fourteen pages of real biology that open as your own jar teaches you.
🌍 It matters because patience, curiosity and cause-and-effect are rare things on a phone. Every jar that fails explains something; every jar that thrives is a small, quiet miracle.
Seal it. Trust it. Learn from it.
Effective Date: October 2026
Life Under Cork: Jar Ecosystem does not collect, store or transmit any data. Everything stays locally on your device.
None. We do not collect personal information, usage statistics, device identifiers, location or any other data. The jars you build, their diaries and your shelf never leave your phone.
Because we collect nothing, we use nothing. The app only reads the choices you make inside it, such as your soil, plants, lamp and sealed streak, to run your jar simulation on your own device.
All progress, including active jars, charts and unlocked biology pages, is stored locally on your device. There is no cloud storage, no server and no backup copy held by us.
The app contains no analytics, no advertising networks, no social plug-ins and no trackers. No third party receives anything from you through the app.
Since no data is sent anywhere, there is nothing to intercept or leak in transit. Your locally stored jars are protected by your device's own security, such as its lock screen and system encryption.
The app is suitable for curious learners of all ages. Because we collect no personal information from anyone, including children under 13, it is consistent with the principles of COPPA. We never ask for names, ages or contact details.
You are fully in charge. There are no accounts to create or close. To delete all of your jars and progress, simply uninstall the app.
If we ever update this policy, the new version will appear on this page with a revised effective date. Our core promise of collecting no data will not change quietly.
Questions about privacy? Write to privacy@lifeundercorkjarecosystemapp.com.
Contact us
💌 Got a question, a jar story or an idea for a new resident? We would love to hear from you, so drop us a line.
⏰ We reply to every message within 24 to 48 hours.