Whenward - Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-08-09

The short version. Whenward exists to share where you are and when you will arrive, with people you choose. That is the only reason it collects anything. There are no accounts, no advertising, no analytics, and no third-party tracking of any kind.

What is collected

• Location, while a run is active. When you start a run, the app records your position, elevation, speed and time, roughly once a second, and uploads it to our server. This stops when you end the run. The app does not collect your location at any other time.
• A device identifier. On first launch our server issues your device an opaque random token, stored in your device's Keychain. It is how the server recognises your device across runs. It is not derived from any Apple identifier, and it is not linked to your name, email, phone number or any advertising identifier.
• A display name, if you set one. You choose it. It is shown to people you are connected to so they know whose run they are watching. It can be anything.
• Routes you import or draw.
• Your connections - who you have invited, and who you follow.
• A push token, if you enable notifications. Used only to tell a follower that a run has started, or that a runner has passed the spot they are waiting at.

What is not collected

No account, name, email address or phone number. No contacts. No health or fitness data from Apple Health. No advertising identifier. No analytics or crash-reporting service. The app contains no third-party libraries.

Who it is shared with

• People you choose. A run is visible to the people you invite, or to whoever holds a link you shared, and to nobody else. You control this per run, including whether your route is shown at all.
• Apple, to deliver push notifications, if you enable them.
• Fly.io, which hosts our server and stores our database in San Jose, California.
• api.opentopodata.org and overpass-api.de. When you import or draw a route, its coordinates are sent to these public services to look up terrain elevation and path data, so the arrival estimate can account for hills and for bridges and tunnels. This happens once, when the route is processed. Your live position during a run is never sent to them, or to any other third party.

Your data is not sold, and it is not used for advertising or shared with data brokers.

On-device intelligence

On supported devices, Whenward may use Apple's on-device language model to phrase a short status sentence. This runs entirely on your iPhone. Nothing is sent to Apple or to us for it.

How long it is kept

The raw second-by-second location trace from a run is kept for 30 days and then permanently deleted. What remains is summary information about the run and pace-against-gradient figures used to make your own arrival estimates more accurate. Those figures hold no positions - only how fast you moved along each stretch of a route you had already saved. Set beside that saved route they still describe your progress along it, so deleting the run deletes them with it.

Routes, connections and your display name are kept until you delete them.

To delete a particular run, or to have everything we hold for your device erased, email tkitchens@gmail.com and we will do it. In-app controls for both are coming; until they ship, asking us is the way, and we would rather say so than describe a button that is not there yet.

Children

Whenward is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new date.

Contact

Questions, or a request to delete your data: tkitchens@gmail.com