Privacy Policy

Trace · version 1.5 · updated 25 September 2026

Trace measures your climbing on your phone and uploads none of it. This policy exists to say exactly what that means, and to be honest about the three places where something does leave the device.

What stays on your phone

Your video clips, the pose data extracted from them, every measurement, every finding, your route photographs, the holds found in them, your gyms, and your height, reach and weight. All of it is written to this app's own storage on this device.

None of it is uploaded, backed up to us, or shared with anyone. We cannot read it. There is no server that holds it, so there is nothing for us to hand over, sell, lose, or be compelled to produce.

It is included in an encrypted iPhone backup if you make one, because that is how iOS backs up app data. That backup is between you and Apple.

The analysis

Pose estimation runs on the device using Apple's Vision framework. No frame of your footage is sent to us or to any other company for analysis.

Trace does not use a large language model. Nothing you record is used to train anything, ours or anyone else's.

Your location

The Explore screen can sort the list of climbing gyms by how near each one is to you. To do that it asks iOS where the phone is.

That coordinate is used on the device to sort a list that is already on the device, and it is not stored, not written to disk, and not sent anywhere. Saying no leaves the list in alphabetical order and costs you nothing else.

What does leave the device

Your account. Signing in sends your email address and password to our authentication provider so we can tell whether the person opening the app is you. We store your email address, when the account was made, and nothing else about you. We do not store your password: the provider holds a hash of it.

Your subscription. Purchases are handled by Apple. Apple tells the app whether a subscription is active. We never see your card, your billing address, or your Apple ID. We do not receive a payment record with your name on it.

Searching for where you climb. The Profile screen lets you type the town or city you climb in, and offers completions as you type so you do not have to spell it. Those completions come from Apple Maps, which means the letters you have typed into that one field go to Apple to be answered. Apple handles them under its own privacy policy, we never see them, and the field works perfectly well if you ignore the suggestions and type the place yourself. Nothing else you type anywhere in Trace is sent anywhere.

That is the complete list. There is no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising identifier, no tracking pixel, and no third party SDK that phones home.

Filming other people

A gym is full of people who did not agree to be in your video. Because Trace never uploads footage, filming in a busy gym does not put a stranger's image on anyone's server. It remains your responsibility to film in line with your gym's rules and the law where you are.

When more than one person is in frame, Trace measures the largest tracked body and ignores the rest. It does not recognize faces and cannot identify anyone.

Children

Trace is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly create accounts for them. If you believe a child has made an account, write to us and we will delete it.

Your control

Delete any climb, route or gym at any time, from the item itself. Deleting removes the file from the phone.

Deleting your account, from Profile, removes every climb, clip, route, gym and body measurement from this phone and ends your session. Where an account record exists with our authentication provider, the same tap deletes that too, and it is gone rather than deactivated. If that one call cannot be made because you are offline, Trace says so and leaves the account alone rather than telling you it deleted something it did not.

Signing out leaves everything on the phone exactly where it is. It is a sign out, not a wipe.

Your rights

If you are in the UK or EU, the UK GDPR and GDPR give you rights over personal data we hold. Since the only personal data we hold is your email address and the date your account was created, a request to see, correct or delete it is quick to answer. Write to knrobinson1023@gmail.com.

If you are in California, the CCPA gives you similar rights. We do not sell or share personal information, and we never have.

Changes

This document ships inside the app, so it can only change when you install an update. The version number at the top changes with it, and a material change will be flagged in the app rather than made quietly.

Version 1.1 added gym logos. Version 1.4 removed them again, and the entry below says what that means.

Version 1.2 added the place completions, also described above. It is not a new thing Trace sends: the field and its suggestions were already in the app, and this policy had not said so. Saying so is the change.

Version 1.3 changed what the free tier is, in the Terms rather than here. Nothing about what leaves this phone changed with it.

Version 1.5 changed the contact address to knrobinson1023@gmail.com. The words about your data did not change; only where a question about it goes.

Version 1.4 removed gym logos. Trace used to ask a gym's own website for the icon it publishes, the first time you saw that gym. It no longer asks anybody: a gym shows the picture you gave it, or its initials. One fewer thing leaves this phone than did before, and the app now reaches the network for one thing only: your account, if you make one.