Your privacy

What the app uses

Location and motion help meantime record your visits and journeys, including in the background if you allow it. Calendar events, contacts, and photo information add context to your day on your device.

While recording, meantime also notes which Wi‑Fi access point and network your iPhone is connected to, and whether audio is playing through CarPlay or a Bluetooth device. This tells it when you’re still at the same place and when you’re travelling by car. It keeps only codes that can’t be turned back into network names, device names, or hardware addresses. They stay on this device, aren’t included in iCloud Backup or journal export, and Delete All History removes them.

If you enable Health access, meantime reads what you turn on: workouts with their distances and routes, steps during your journeys, and heart rate during workouts. It doesn’t write to Apple Health. Imported workouts and Apple Health step counts stay on this device and aren’t included in meantime’s iCloud backup. Heart rate is read while you view your workouts and isn’t stored.

Links and text you share to meantime from other apps go into the note of the visit you choose, and photos become attached copies. When you share a link, meantime loads the page’s title and preview image from that website; for a public Instagram post, it also loads the caption and photos to add to the visit. Link previews stay on this device.

You choose which permissions to grant and can change them in iOS Settings. Pause Recording in meantime stops location and motion recording.

Free lets you view today and the previous seven days. Older entries remain on this device. Pro unlocks unlimited history, search, notes, photo attachments, Apple Health workouts, steps, and heart rate, place insights, iCloud backup, and manual journal export. Subscription expiry never deletes your journal. Pause, live weather, and deletion remain free.

Purchases and subscriptions are handled by Apple’s App Store. meantime reads verified subscription status to unlock Pro; it does not receive your payment card details. Optional destination suggestions use recorded patterns on this device; they do not create timeline entries. Live weather is not attached to historical days.

Maps, weather & air quality

Maps and place searches use Apple’s services. Place searches send the search text and the relevant area to Apple. To draw a journey across gaps in recorded GPS, meantime asks Apple Maps for directions between the points on either side of each gap.

When weather is available, meantime sends the location used for the weather display to Apple WeatherKit. Air quality requests send coordinates rounded to two decimal places to Open-Meteo, which supplies the current US air quality index using CAMS data.

These services receive the information needed for each request, including your IP address. Open-Meteo says its server logs may include requested coordinates and are deleted after 90 days. Their own privacy policies apply.

Apple’s privacy policy
Open-Meteo’s privacy policy

Air quality data by Open-Meteo and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS).

iCloud backup

iCloud Backup is off by default. With meantime Pro, you can turn it on in Settings; while it’s on and you’re signed in to iCloud, meantime automatically backs up your journal to your private iCloud database. Before upload, the backup is encrypted on your iPhone with a key kept in your iCloud Keychain, so neither Apple nor I can read it. To restore it on another iPhone, Passwords & Keychain must be on in iCloud settings. Without that key the backup can’t be opened, and starting a new backup replaces it. Restore iCloud Backup in Settings merges it into this device, for example after reinstalling or on a new iPhone. If you turn iCloud Backup off or Pro ends, backups stop and your existing backup is kept.

The backup includes your preferences, selected contact profile, home and saved addresses, visits and journeys with their locations and times, notes, corrections, deletion records, contacts you’ve assigned to visits, and imported journey data.

Raw location and motion samples, calendar events, photo-library images, attached photo copies, and Health data aren’t included. Attached photos remain on this device. Pro’s manual journal export includes attached photos, recorded location samples, and workout summaries, but not Apple Health steps or heart rate.

Restoring a backup merges visits, journeys, corrections, and preferences. If the same item has been edited in two places, the newer edit is kept. Saved contact names and avatars are restored, but their links to your address book may not work on another device. Apple’s privacy policy applies to iCloud.

Deleting your history

Delete All History in meantime’s Settings removes recorded samples, your timeline, imported workouts, and step counts from this device. It also deletes your iCloud backup, turns off iCloud Backup, and pauses Health imports.

Saved addresses and preferences remain. Data in Apple Health, Photos, Contacts, and Calendar is left untouched. Journal history is retained until you delete it; subscription expiry does not erase it. Exported or shared files are separate copies and must be deleted from their destinations separately.

Diagnostic logs

The app keeps a small log of fixed tracking events, counts, and numeric error codes on this device to help investigate problems. Logs never contain locations, journal text, or raw error messages. Up to seven days and 10,000 event groups are kept in a cache excluded from backup; the system may clear it sooner. Delete All History also clears these logs. Nothing is shared automatically.

Crash reports are a separate option that starts off. When iOS supplies a crash diagnostic, meantime keeps its call stacks, binary UUIDs, app version and build, device type, OS version, reporting period, and numeric exception codes in a local cache for up to seven days, limited to 20 reports and 5 MB. Binary UUIDs identify app and system builds, not you or your device. Raw exception messages and signpost contents are excluded. The cache is excluded from backup and may be cleared by iOS. Delete All History also clears these reports. If selected, all available recent crash reports are attached, regardless of the selected history dates. Nothing is sent automatically; iOS may delay or omit a crash report.

If you get in touch

If you email me, I receive your email address and whatever you choose to include. Send Debug Report lets you review app and device diagnostics, permission states, and record counts before emailing. History summaries and diagnostic logs are separate options that start off, and can be limited to a day or date range.

Optional history summaries round times to five minutes. Tracking Data adds a JSON attachment with exact relative sample timing, GPS accuracy and speed, Wi‑Fi and audio connections as numbered labels, motion, step counters, visit signals, journey state, and sample links. Routes are shifted away from real locations by default; route shapes may still reveal places. Real locations and 30 minutes of boundary context each require a separate option. Diagnostic logs include precise group timing where available and numeric error codes. Names, addresses, notes, contacts, photos, calendar events, Health data, stable identifiers, and raw error text are excluded. Temporary attachments are removed when the report closes; abandoned files expire on the next export after 24 hours.