Privacy policy
What AbelMaps does with your information.
The short version
AbelMaps has no accounts, no ads and no analytics. Your location stays on your phone, except where the app has to ask a map service something, as described below.
Your location
AbelMaps uses your phone's location to show where you are, plan routes from it and guide you while you navigate, including in the background during a trip. It doesn't keep a history of where you've been and never uploads your location on its own.
What leaves your phone
To work, the app asks these services for things:
- Map tiles (OpenFreeMap) and satellite imagery (Esri): the map area you're looking at, and, when you search for a kind of place, the few kilometers around where you're searching.
- Routing (Valhalla): the start and end of a route you ask for, and your heading if a route is recalculated.
- Search (Photon and Nominatim): what you type, with your approximate location so nearby places come first, and the OpenStreetMap ids of the places in a result list, to get their hours and cuisine.
- The AbelMaps relay (abelmaps.achenkunju.com, run by the developer on Cloudflare): when the app starts it asks the relay where these services are. The hours and cuisine lookups above go through it on their way to Nominatim, so it sees those OpenStreetMap ids. It keeps the answers to share with everyone, and keeps no record of who asked.
Like any website, these services see your phone's IP address. Each has its own privacy policy. Apart from the relay, nothing is sent to the AbelMaps developer.
What's stored on your phone
Your settings, saved places, Home and Work, and recent searches. They stay in the app's private storage, aren't backed up, and are deleted when you uninstall the app. You can clear recent searches from the search screen at any time.
Permissions
Location: for the map, directions and navigation. Notifications: to show turn-by-turn directions while you navigate. AbelMaps works without location too: you can still browse and search the map.
Children
AbelMaps doesn't knowingly collect information from anyone, including children.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, the new version will appear here with the app update. Questions: abel@achenkunju.com.