Privacy Policy
Last updated 23 September 2026 · Applies to Waylight: the website and waitlist at waylightapp.site, the web app, the iOS app, and the API.
Waylight (formerly Waylight, and still called Waylight in some places while we rename) helps you plan walking and cycling routes that account for real, measured conditions such as lighting, surface, shade and traffic, not just distance and time. This page explains what personal data we collect to do that, why, who helps us process it, and what control you have over it.
1. What we collect
| Data | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | You create an account (an account is required to use the app) | Sign-in (magic link / password), account recovery, service emails |
| Display name | You create an account or set one | Shown to you in the app; shown to other users only if you enable presence sharing (see §3) |
| Saved places (home, work, starred), recent searches, route preferences and settings | You save, search or change them while signed in | Personalise routing and sync across your devices |
| Onboarding answers (e.g. preferences you choose during setup) | You complete onboarding | Personalise default route preferences |
| Accessibility needs you choose to set (e.g. step-free, avoid slopes, wheelchair or stroller) | Only if you set them | Avoid routes you cannot use. Because these can reveal information about your health, we process them only with your explicit consent (GDPR Art. 9(2)(a)), given by setting them; clear them at any time in the app. They are never used for advertising or shared with the ad network. |
| Current location (GPS coordinates) | While the app is open and you have granted location permission | Show where you are and compute routes from your real position; see §3 |
| Comfort and safety reports you submit (category, location, time) | You file or confirm a report | Improve route scores for everyone |
| AI usage counter (assistant requests used per day, ad-reward credits) | You use the assistant or watch a rewarded ad | Enforce the free allowance and credit rewards; see §4 |
| Subscription status (whether you have Premium, product, expiry, store transaction ID) | You buy or restore a subscription in the iOS app | Unlock Premium; see §6 |
| Sign-in metadata (approximate timing; IP addresses only in standard hosting logs) | Every sign-in | Security alerting and abuse prevention |
We do not receive or store your card or bank details. Subscriptions bought in the iOS app are paid through Apple; we only learn whether your subscription is active. We do not collect government ID or biometric data.
Saved places and recent searches for a signed-in account are stored on our servers (in our database), not only on your device, so that they follow you across devices.
2. Waitlist and referrals
You can join a waitlist at waylightapp.site. This is separate from having an account, and everything in it is optional except your email address and your consent.
| Data | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | You join the waitlist | Send the confirmation email, and tell you when the app opens |
| Where you walk (a city or place you type) | Optional, during signup | Decide which cities to build support for first |
| What matters to you (shade, light, quiet, step-free, populated, flat) | Optional, during signup | Understand which needs to prioritise |
| Phone platform and preferred app language | Optional, during signup | Decide what to build and translate first |
| Your referral code, and the code of whoever invited you | Automatically, at signup | Count how many people you brought, and apply the referral reward |
| Approximate country, plus hashes of your IP address and browser string | At signup | Abuse prevention and proof of consent (the IP itself is never stored) |
Double opt-in. Joining sends you a confirmation email. Until you click the link in it, you are not on the list and do not count as anyone's referral. Unconfirmed entries are deleted automatically after 30 days.
Referral links contain an opaque random code and nothing else. Only confirmed signups are counted. Referral rewards are described in our Terms.
Legal basis. Consent (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it at any time.
Leaving. Every email we send carries a one-click removal link that permanently deletes your waitlist entry, including your email address. You can also email privacy@waylightapp.site and we will do the same by hand.
3. Location data
Waylight is a location app; location is core to what it does. The iOS app asks for location permission only while you are using the app ("While Using the App"); it does not track you in the background. You can refuse or revoke permission at any time in iOS Settings and still search for a place and plan a route from a starting point you choose. Specifically:
- On your device. Your position is used on the device to show you on the map, follow you during turn-by-turn navigation, and score routes against the city data pack downloaded to your device.
- Route planning on our server. Your current coordinates (and your destination) are sent with route-planning, place-search, public-transport and weather requests so the server can compute a real route from your position. These requests are processed to return a result and are not stored as a location history.
- The AI assistant. When you type a free-text request, approximate location context (your current coordinates and city) is included; see §4.
- Reports. When you file a comfort or safety report, the location of that report is stored so it can inform routes near it.
- Presence sharing (opt-in, off by default). If you turn this on, your live coordinates are shared so other signed-in nearby users can see you are out walking or cycling. You can turn it off at any time in Settings. Published presence expires automatically (currently after about 12 minutes of inactivity) and is not retained as history.
We never sell location data, and your GPS location is never passed to the ad network (see §6).
Legal basis: performance of the service you asked for (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)); presence sharing is based on your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)).
4. AI-assisted route planning
When you type a free-text request ("somewhere calm, I have 40 minutes") instead of using filters and buttons, what is sent is the text you typed, plus approximate location context (your current coordinates and city) and the route preferences you have selected. It goes to our server, which forwards it to Infomaniak AI Services ("Euria"), operated by Infomaniak Network SA on Swiss/EU infrastructure, running open Mistral-family language models. Infomaniak acts as our processor. The model's only job is to turn your sentence into a structured route intent (destination, preferences, time budget). The routes, distances and comfort scores you see are computed by our own routing engine from real map and city data, not generated by the AI.
What is not sent: your email address, your name or your account ID.
Retention. We do not keep the text of your requests in a log tied to your identity, and we do not use your requests to train models. We keep only a per-account counter of how many assistant requests you have used today and how many credits you have earned. Our hosting provider may hold short-lived technical request logs (see §9). For how Infomaniak processes API requests, see Infomaniak's privacy policy. Switzerland has an EU adequacy decision.
Credits. Each account gets a small free daily allowance of assistant requests. In the iOS app you can earn more by choosing to watch a rewarded ad (§6), or get unlimited use with Premium. Everything else in the app works without the assistant.
5. Cookies, local storage and analytics
Strictly necessary. We use one essential cookie, wl_session, to keep you signed in (HttpOnly, Secure, 45-day expiry). It is never used for advertising or cross-site tracking and needs no consent under EU ePrivacy rules. We also keep non-sensitive preferences (like theme), your consent choice, and cached map data in your browser's or app's local storage. That data stays on your device.
Measurement that always runs, and sets no cookie. Visits to our website are counted in aggregate so we can see how many people arrive, roughly where from, on what kind of device, and which parts of the page they reach. This cannot identify you: no cookie is set or read, no visitor ID is created, your IP address is used only to look up an approximate country and city and is then discarded, and your browser string is reduced to "mobile", "tablet" or "desktop". The tools are Vercel Web Analytics and Vercel Speed Insights, plus our own server-side event log.
Optional analytics, only if you accept. The website and the app show a banner with equal-weight Accept and Reject buttons. Only if you press Accept do we load PostHog (EU region), which sets ph_* cookies/storage and records which elements you click, how far you scroll, product events (for example "route planned" or "navigation started"), errors, and a replay of your session as a reconstruction of the page with all text you type masked. If you are signed in, these events are linked to your account ID and email so we can understand problems you run into. If you choose Reject, PostHog is never downloaded, not merely disabled, and everything keeps working. You can change your mind at any time via "Cookie choices"; withdrawing stops collection immediately and clears PostHog's identifier from your device. We will ask again if this policy materially changes.
6. The iOS app: ads, tracking and subscriptions
Rewarded ads (Google AdMob)
The iOS app can show a rewarded video ad, only when you choose to watch one in exchange for extra AI assistant credits. We never show ads you did not ask for. Ads are served by Google AdMob (Google Ireland Ltd / Google LLC). When an ad is requested and shown, Google's SDK receives technical data from your device such as IP address, device model and OS version, app information, ad interaction data, approximate location derived from your IP address, and an advertising identifier as described below. To credit your reward, Google sends our server a signed confirmation carrying an opaque account reference; we use it only to add the credits.
- Consent (EEA, UK, Switzerland). Before any ad is requested, we show Google's consent form (User Messaging Platform, IAB TCF) where you can accept or refuse personalised advertising and related purposes.
- App Tracking Transparency. iOS will ask whether Waylight may track you across other companies' apps and websites. Only if you tap Allow does Google receive your device's advertising identifier (IDFA) and may personalise ads. If you tap Ask App Not to Track, or refuse personalisation in the consent form, the IDFA is not shared and ads are non-personalised (they may still use contextual information and data needed for frequency capping, fraud prevention and measurement).
- You can change your ATT choice in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking, and your ad-consent choice from the app's settings.
- We do not pass your email, name, precise location, routes or AI requests to Google.
See how Google uses information from apps that use its services. Legal basis: your consent for personalised ads and device access (Art. 6(1)(a) and ePrivacy rules); our legitimate interest in funding the free service for non-personalised ads (Art. 6(1)(f)).
Subscriptions (Apple and RevenueCat)
Premium is sold as an auto-renewing subscription through Apple's App Store. Apple processes the payment under its own privacy policy; we never see your card details or Apple ID. We use RevenueCat (RevenueCat, Inc., USA) to validate App Store receipts and keep your Premium status in sync across devices. RevenueCat receives your Waylight account ID, purchase and renewal history, store transaction identifiers, and basic device and app information. Legal basis: performance of the contract (Art. 6(1)(b)).
7. Who we share data with
We use a small number of providers to run Waylight. Each processes only what is needed for its function, under a data processing agreement or its own terms:
| Provider | Purpose | What it sees |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Account database and authentication | Email, display name, saved places, recents, preferences, onboarding answers, reports, AI credit counters, subscription status |
| Vercel | Hosting, edge network, serverless functions | Standard request/hosting logs (including IP address) for requests to waylightapp.site |
| Upstash | Rate limiting and short-lived caches | Short-lived counters keyed by IP address or account, expiring within minutes; cached place-search results |
| Infomaniak AI Services (Euria) | Free-text route request parsing (§4) | Your typed text, approximate location context and selected preferences, per request |
| Resend | Transactional email (magic links, security alerts, waitlist emails) | Your email address, when an email needs to be sent |
| PostHog (EU) | Product analytics, error tracking and session replay, only after you accept (§5) | Pages viewed, clicks, product events, masked session replay; account ID and email if signed in. Routed through waylightapp.site |
| Vercel Web Analytics & Speed Insights | Aggregate visit counts and performance (always on, cookieless) | Page path, approximate country, device class, load timings; never an identifier |
| Google AdMob (iOS app only) | Rewarded ads you choose to watch (§6) | Device and ad-interaction data; IDFA only if you allow tracking |
| Apple | App distribution, in-app purchase payments | Your purchase, under Apple's own policy |
| RevenueCat | Subscription receipt validation and status (§6) | Account ID, purchase history, transaction IDs, device/app info |
| Cloudflare Turnstile | Bot protection on some forms (sign-in, waitlist, feedback) | Standard bot-verification signals from your browser |
| OpenStreetMap Nominatim & Photon (Komoot) | Turning place names into coordinates and back | The place name or coordinates you search (sent from our server) |
| FOSSGIS OSRM | Turn-by-turn route geometry | Origin/destination coordinates for a route |
| CARTO | Base map tiles and style | Map viewport (standard for any map tile request) |
| Open-Meteo | Weather and elevation data | Coordinates along a route |
We do not sell personal data. We do not share your account details, location or routes with advertisers. The only advertising partner is Google AdMob in the iOS app, which receives the device and ad data described in §6, and your advertising identifier only if you allow tracking.
8. International transfers
We prefer EU and Swiss infrastructure (PostHog EU, Infomaniak in Switzerland, EU regions for hosting functions and caches where available). Some providers (for example Vercel, RevenueCat, Google, Apple, Cloudflare, Resend) are US companies and may process data in the US. Where that happens we rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, or on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. Switzerland has an EU adequacy decision.
9. How long we keep data
- Account data (email, saved places, recents, preferences, onboarding, credit counters, subscription status) is kept while your account exists and deleted when you delete it (§10).
- Session cookies expire after 45 days.
- Route-planning and AI requests are processed to return a result and are not retained as a log tied to your identity. Hosting providers keep short-lived technical logs (typically days, at most 30 days).
- Rate-limit counters expire within minutes.
- Presence data expires after roughly 12 minutes.
- Reports you file are kept while relevant to routing and are unlinked from your account when you delete it.
- PostHog analytics (only if you accepted) are kept for up to 12 months.
- Unconfirmed waitlist entries are deleted after 30 days; confirmed entries are kept until launch plus 12 months, or until you use the removal link.
- Subscription records required for tax and accounting may be kept by Apple and RevenueCat for the periods the law requires.
10. Deleting your account
You can delete your account and its data at any time inside the app: open your profile ("You"), scroll to Account controls, and tap Delete account. You can also email privacy@waylightapp.site. Deletion is immediate and permanent. Deleting your account does not cancel an App Store subscription: cancel it in your Apple ID settings (Settings → your name → Subscriptions) to stop future charges.
11. Your rights
If the GDPR (or a similar law) applies to you, you have the right to access the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it (see §10), export it in a portable format, restrict or object to certain processing, and withdraw consent for anything based on consent (analytics, personalised ads, presence sharing) at any time. To exercise any of these, email privacy@waylightapp.site. We will respond within one month. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority (in France, the CNIL).
12. Security
Traffic is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS). Session cookies are HttpOnly and Secure. Passwords, where used, are hashed by Supabase Auth and never visible to us in plain text. To report a vulnerability, email contact@waylightapp.site (see also security.txt and §9 of our Terms).
13. Children
Waylight is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.
14. Map and street data (OpenStreetMap)
Routes and comfort scores are built from © OpenStreetMap contributors data, licensed under the Open Database License (ODbL), plus municipal open-data sources credited in-app where used. This data describes streets and public infrastructure, not people. See our LICENSE for the ODbL derivative-database notice.
15. Changes to this policy
We update the date and version badge at the top of this page whenever this policy changes and, for material changes, notify signed-in users in-app and ask for analytics consent again. The version stamp (e.g. LEG-2026-09-23) is recorded against your account when you accept our terms.
16. Contact
Privacy questions or requests: privacy@waylightapp.site
General support: contact@waylightapp.site · Support page
Security reports: contact@waylightapp.site