Privacy Policy
Mapstory iOS app — last updated 19 April 2026Mapstory turns your trips into shareable travel videos. The app runs locally on your device. This page explains what data Mapstory processes, why, and what leaves your device.
What stays on your device
All trip content — the text you dictate, photos you add, and the exported video files — is stored in an on-device SQLite database and the iOS Photos library. None of this content is uploaded to our servers unless you explicitly press Share or join a Live Session.
- Microphone audio is captured only during dictation, transcribed on-device via Apple Speech, and discarded after the words are saved.
- Photos you choose to include are read from your library and rendered into the video on your device.
- Location (if you grant permission) is used to center the map on where you are. It is optional — Mapstory works without it.
What leaves your device, and when
- Place-name lookups. When Mapstory detects a location name in your dictation, it sends that name to third-party geocoding services (OpenStreetMap Nominatim; optionally Apple MapKit) to get coordinates. Your precise location is not sent with these requests.
- Routing. Coordinates of start/end points are sent to the OpenRouteService API to draw a route between them.
- AI trip analysis. For some features we forward the text you dictated to Anthropic's Claude API via a Cloudflare Worker we operate. We do not store the text after the request completes.
- Live Sessions (opt-in). If you start a live session, the events that represent your trip (locations, routes, text edits) are relayed through our Cloudflare Worker to the peers you share the session URL with. Peer video/audio is transmitted via WebRTC directly between devices.
- Shared trip links. If you publish a trip as a share link, a snapshot of that trip is stored on our Cloudflare R2 bucket and served from our domain until you delete it.
Account data
Sign-in is optional. If you sign in with Apple, we receive an opaque user identifier and, if you allow it, your name and a private-relay email address. We store only what is needed to associate your future sessions with the same account: the Apple user identifier, the display name you provide, and the email address Apple issues. We do not sell this data.
Analytics
Mapstory collects basic product-interaction events (for example: app launch, number of trips created) for debugging and feature decisions. These events are not linked to your identity. We do not use third-party advertising or cross-app tracking frameworks.
Children
Mapstory is rated 4+ and does not knowingly collect data from anyone that would identify a child. We do not require an age on sign-up.
Your choices
- Revoke Microphone, Location, or Photo Library access in iOS Settings → Mapstory.
- Delete a shared trip link from inside the app — the snapshot is removed from R2.
- Delete your account by emailing privacy@mapstory.io. We will remove your account row and any stored shared trips within 30 days.
Contact
Mapstory ApS (Denmark) — privacy@mapstory.io
This is the privacy policy shown to Apple App Store reviewers and to users on the product page. It replaces any earlier privacy page hosted for previous versions of the Mapstory app.