The short version
- Mapelle has no server. Nothing you do in the app is sent to us.
- Your map, your places and their photos, videos and audio are kept on your iPhone and in your own iCloud Drive.
- There are no ads, no tracking and no analytics in the app.
- A few features ask an outside service for information (the map, place search, routes, write-ups about places, music). Each one is listed below, with what it is sent.
- You can delete everything, at any time, from Settings in the app.
1. Who this is from
Mapelle ("Mapelle", "we", "us") is an iPhone app that starts the map under fog and clears it where you have walked, and lets you pin memories to places. It is made by an independent developer, who can be reached at antwijason55@gmail.com.
This policy says what the app keeps, where it keeps it, and who else is involved. If you do not agree with it, please do not use the app.
2. What Mapelle keeps, and where
Everything in this section is kept in two places only: on your iPhone, and in your own iCloud Drive (in a folder called Mapelle, which you can see in the Files app). It is your iCloud, run by Apple under your Apple account. We cannot see it, read it or reach it.
2.1 Your map
The parts of the map you have cleared (kept as a list of small squares of ground you have walked through), the last place the phone knew you were, and which stretches were joined along a railway track.
2.2 Your places and memories
The places you add and the places you mark as been to, with what you attach to them: photos, videos, voice recordings, the music you choose, captions and notes, the date, and whether you starred them.
2.3 Signing in
You sign in with Apple. Apple gives the app an identifier for you, and your name and email address if you choose to share them. These are kept on your iPhone, in its protected storage, and a small note that you have a Mapelle account is kept in your iCloud. None of it is sent to us.
2.4 Settings
Your choices in the app: how the fog looks, photo and video quality, your default songs, how many photos sit in a row, and so on.
2.5 A short diary of background clearing
So that it is possible to tell whether the map is growing while the app is off the screen, the app keeps a short list of times and counts (for example: "at this time, four positions arrived and twelve squares were cleared"). It holds no places. It is kept in your iCloud with the rest.
2.6 What Mapelle does not collect
- No analytics, and no record of what you tap or how long you use the app.
- No advertising identifier, and nothing for advertisers.
- No contacts, no calendar, no health data.
- No photos other than the ones you pick yourself.
3. What the app asks your iPhone for
- Location. To clear the map where you are. If you allow Always, the app also does this with the screen off or the app in the background. Your position is used on the phone. It is not sent to us.
- Photos. Only the photos and videos you pick. When you add photos, the app reads where and when each one was taken from the photo itself, so it can offer to put it in the right place.
- Camera. If you take a photo for a place from inside the app.
- Microphone. If you record a voice note for a place.
You can change any of these in the iPhone's Settings at any time.
4. Outside services the app talks to
Some features need information the app does not have. For those, the app asks another company's service directly from your iPhone. Like any service on the internet, each one sees your iPhone's internet address when it is asked. None of them is told who you are by Mapelle.
- Apple. The map itself is Apple Maps, so Apple receives the parts of the map you look at. Your data is stored in Apple's iCloud. Signing in is Sign in with Apple. Apple's own privacy policy covers these.
- Mapbox. When you search for a place, the words you type and roughly where you are (so nearby places come first). When you ask for a route, where it starts and where it ends.
- Wikipedia and Wikidata (the Wikimedia Foundation). When you tap a place on the map, its name and its position, to look for a write-up about it.
- OpenStreetMap (the Overpass service). When you tap a place on the map, its position, to find out what kind of place it is.
- Deezer. When you pick music, what you type into the search, and the songs you choose to listen to. The app plays short clips of songs from Deezer.
The railway and tube lines used to join a train ride are carried inside the app (they come from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors). Joining a ride sends nothing to anyone.
If Apple's map cannot be shown on a phone, the app falls back to a map from Mapbox with imagery from Esri and CARTO, which then receive the parts of the map you look at.
5. Selling and sharing
We do not sell your information and we do not share it with anyone. We could not: we do not have it.
6. Keeping it safe
What is on your iPhone is protected by your iPhone. What is in iCloud is protected by Apple, under your Apple account. Anyone who can unlock your iPhone or sign in to your Apple account can see what you keep in Mapelle, so look after both.
7. How long it is kept, and deleting it
- Your map and your places are kept until you delete them.
- Delete account, in the app's Settings, removes your map, your places and their photos, videos and audio from your iPhone and from your iCloud. It cannot be undone.
- Removing the app from your iPhone does not remove what is in your iCloud. That is how your map can come back on a new phone. To remove everything, use Delete account before removing the app.
- Reset Discovery clears the map only. The app first puts a copy of the old map aside, in your iCloud, in case it was a mistake.
8. Children
Mapelle is not aimed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. As this policy explains, we do not collect information from anyone.
9. Your rights
Laws such as the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR give you rights over information held about you: to see it, to correct it, to have it deleted. Mapelle holds none of your information on any computer of ours, so there is nothing for us to hand over or delete. What the app keeps is in your hands: you can see it in the app and in the Files app, and you can delete it yourself as described above. For anything Apple, Mapbox, the Wikimedia Foundation, OpenStreetMap or Deezer hold, their own policies apply.
10. This website
This website sets no cookies and has no analytics, adverts or trackers. Its pages are served by Cloudflare, which, like any web host, sees your internet address when you open one. The pages load their typeface from Google Fonts, so Google sees your internet address too.
11. Changes to this policy
If the app changes what it keeps or which services it talks to, this page will change with it, and the date at the top will be updated.
12. Contact
Questions about privacy: antwijason55@gmail.com.