Privacy Policy
The short version. Your routes never leave your phone. The hexagons you claim, and the name, tag and photo you choose, go to our server so that other players can see whose ground is whose. There is no account, no email sign-up, no advertising, no analytics and no sale of data.
What stays on your phone
- Your routes. Where you walked, in what order, at what speed, and the elevation profile of each walk. These are kept only on your phone (You → Your walks) and are never uploaded.
- Your walk history, the streets you lit first, and the counts on the pilot page (opens, walks, minutes, GPS quality, battery use).
- Health data. If you allow it, HexStride reads your steps and past walks from Apple Health and saves each walk as a workout. This data stays between your phone and Apple Health; it is never sent to us.
- Motion. Motion is used to pause a walk automatically when you stop. It is not stored or sent.
- Settings such as units, appearance and the tone of your daily nudge. Nudges and alerts are scheduled on the phone itself; there is no push service.
What goes to our server, and why
The shared map lives on a server we run on Supabase in the United States (Oregon). It receives:
- An anonymous player. When the app first talks to the server it creates a random player id for your phone. No name, email or phone number is asked for. So that a new phone can be the same player, the app also stores a credential for that id in your iCloud Keychain, a synthetic address built from the id plus a random password. It is never shown to you and never used to contact you.
- What you choose to show: your tag and colour, and if you set them, your name, a line about yourself and a small photo.
- Your ground. The hexagons you claim on a walk (each about 27 metres across), when you claimed them, and the result of the app's own checks that the claim was made on foot. Not the path you walked, your speed, or where you are between walks.
- Game events between players: when you walk through someone's ground or they walk through yours, the waves you send, and reports you file about another player.
- Place names. To name the neighbourhood, city and region you are playing in, the app sends the server a location and the neighbourhood name Apple Maps gives for it. The server looks the place up once for everyone; the lookup is not linked to your player.
- Pilot numbers, only if you tap Send on the pilot page: daily counts, never routes, places or times of day.
What other players can see
The ground you hold, drawn in your colour with your tag; your name, photo and line if you set them; your standing in each place's weekly board; the titles and badges you have earned; and, on your card, the tally of ground taken between you and the player looking. They cannot see your routes, your speed, your walk history or where you are right now.
Third parties
- Apple. Maps, 3D landmarks and place names come from Apple Maps, under Apple's privacy policy. TestFlight collects crash reports and the feedback you choose to send, under Apple's terms.
- OpenStreetMap. Neighbourhood borders come from OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service. The app asks it directly for the border around your approximate location, so it sees that location and your IP address, under the OSM Foundation privacy policy. Our server also asks Nominatim, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons for place names, borders and landmark pictures; those requests are about places, not about you.
- Strava, only if you connect it, imports your past walks onto your phone. It is not available in the current beta.
- No analytics, advertising or tracking SDKs are in the app, and nothing is sold or shared for marketing.
How long we keep things, and how to delete them
Server data is kept while you play. Ground that other players take over is reassigned; layers fade with time. To delete your player and everything attached to it, write to the address below from the phone you play on, or tell us your tag and name, and we will remove it within 30 days. Deleting the app removes everything on the phone; because of the Keychain credential, reinstalling brings the same player back unless you have asked us to delete it.
Children
HexStride is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly keep data about them.
Changes
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes and the app's What's New will say so.