Emberveil
Legal
Privacy Policy
Effective 13 October 2026
The Emberveil app has no account, no server and no analytics. The map you uncover — every position, every photograph you let it read — is written to a database on your phone and stays there. We cannot see it, because there is nowhere for it to go.
What the app records, and where it goes
Your location
Emberveil records your position while you use it, and — if you allow background access — while it is closed, which is what lets the map keep filling in on a walk or a drive. Positions are stored in a database inside the app on your device, alongside the shape of the ground you have uncovered.
That data is never uploaded, never shared, and never sold. There is no Emberveil account to attach it to and no Emberveil server to send it to.
Your photographs
If you let Emberveil use your photos, it reads the location stamped into your photos and videos so that places you have already been are revealed on the map. It reads the coordinates and a reference to the item in your library. Your photographs themselves are not copied anywhere, not uploaded, and not sent off the device.
A Google location history you import
If you choose to import a Google location history file (a Timeline export from Google Maps, or an older Takeout file), you pick the file yourself and it is read on your phone. Nothing about it is transmitted.
Places you find and markers you drop
The landmarks you uncover, and any markers you drop on the map yourself, are saved in the same database on your phone. The list of landmarks ships inside the app, so finding one is worked out on the device and nothing is sent to say you were there.
Settings
Your preferences — units, whether the fog and completion ring are shown, whether you have finished the introduction — are stored on the device. They contain no location data.
The only things that leave your phone
Six, and each is listed here with what it can actually see.
| What | Who receives it | What it reveals |
|---|---|---|
| Map imagery | Mapbox | Drawing a map means asking for the tiles you are looking at, so Mapbox necessarily sees the approximate area on your screen and your IP address. It does not receive your recorded track. Mapbox's own usage analytics are switched off in Emberveil. |
| App updates | Expo | When the app opens, it asks Expo whether a newer version of Emberveil's code is available, so fixes can reach you without waiting for the App Store. The request carries a random number that identifies this installation of the app — not you — along with the app's version, your phone's operating system and your IP address. It carries no location and nothing from your map. |
| Crash reports | Sentry | If the app crashes, a diagnostic report is sent so the fault can be fixed. It carries no coordinates, no place names and no personal identifiers, and the app is configured not to send your IP address. |
| A backup you export | Wherever you send it | Backing up your map produces a file containing your exploration data and hands it to iOS to share. It goes only where you send it — Files, iCloud Drive, AirDrop — and only when you ask for it. |
| Directions you ask for | Apple Maps or Google Maps, whichever you pick | Long-pressing the map and choosing directions opens that maps app with the one point you pressed as the destination. Nothing else goes with it, and nothing is sent unless you choose an app. |
| Your phone's own backup | Apple, under your Apple Account | If iCloud Backup is on, iOS includes the app's data in your phone's backup, the same as it does for every other app. That copy is held by Apple for you, so a new phone can be restored with your map; Emberveil cannot read it. Turn it off for Emberveil in iOS Settings → your name → iCloud → iCloud Backup. |
What the app never does
- No advertising, and no advertising identifiers.
- No tracking across other apps or websites.
- No analytics or usage measurement of any kind.
- No selling or sharing of personal information, under any definition, to anyone.
- No account, no sign-in, and no email address collected.
This website
This website, emberveil.app, uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, to measure its traffic and how it is used: which pages are visited, roughly which country or city visitors come from, what device and browser they use, and which site sent them here. It runs on this website only. The Emberveil app does not contain it, and nothing from the app — no location, no map, no photo — ever reaches it.
Google Analytics uses cookies, small files your browser stores, and similar identifiers to tell one visit from another and a returning visitor from a new one. When you load a page here, Google collects this information and processes it to produce the reports we see. It does not receive your name or email address. How Google uses information from sites that use its services is explained at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites, and Google's own privacy policy is at policies.google.com/privacy.
You can stop it at any time by blocking or deleting cookies for this site in your browser, or with Google's opt-out add-on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. The site works the same either way.
Deleting your data
Because everything lives on your device, you control it directly.
- Erase what you have explored — Settings → Privacy → Delete explored data, inside the app.
- Erase everything — delete Emberveil from your phone. iOS removes the app's database with it. Nothing is left behind on our side, because there is no our side.
- Withdraw a permission — iOS Settings → Emberveil, at any time. The app keeps working; it simply stops recording.
If you have exported a backup file, deleting the app does not delete that file. It is yours to remove from wherever you saved it.
Your rights
Data protection law — including the GDPR in Europe and the UK, and the CCPA in California — gives you rights to access, correct, export and delete personal information held about you, and to object to its sale.
The app holds none on our side. No copy of your data reaches us — it is on your phone, and in any backup you choose to make — so there is nothing for us to hand over, correct or erase on request; the controls above put all of it directly in your hands. We do not sell or share personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of.
The visit information this website collects through Google Analytics is held by Google; the choices under This website let you stop it.
Children
Emberveil is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them. As with every other user, any data created by using the app stays on that device.
Changes to this policy
If the app's or this website's handling of data changes, this page changes with it and the effective date above is updated. Material changes will be noted in the app's release notes.
Emberveil is made by Emberveil LLC, a California company.
Questions about this policy, or about Emberveil's handling of data:
contact@emberveil.app