Emberveil
Legal
Privacy Policy
Effective 16 September 2026
Emberveil 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 turn on photo syncing, Emberveil 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 Takeout file, you pick the file yourself and it is read on your phone. Nothing about it is transmitted.
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
Three, 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. |
| 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. |
What Emberveil 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.
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.
Emberveil holds none. There is no copy of your data anywhere but your own phone, 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.
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 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.
Questions about this policy, or about Emberveil's handling of data:
contact@emberveil.app