Privacy Policy

Train of Thought is a focus timer. It doesn’t need to know who you are, and it doesn’t try to find out. This page explains, in plain words, what the app does with information.

In short

• There is no account and nothing to sign up for.
• There are no ads, no analytics and no tracking, in the app or on this website.
• The app never asks for your location, and it can’t: it doesn’t include the permission iOS requires. You choose your home station yourself.
• Your journeys live on your iPhone or iPad, and in your own iCloud when sync is on. Never with us.
• To draw maps and plan real rail routes, the app asks a few map services for data about stations and railway lines. Those requests don’t say who you are.

What stays on your device

Everything you make in the app is stored on your iPhone or iPad: your logbook (your journeys, your focus time and the notes you write), your traveller’s pass (the name and emblem you choose), your home station, your purposes and your settings. The app also keeps the routes it has planned, so past journeys open without a connection, and, when you board on Wi-Fi, the map tiles along your route.

The widgets and Live Activities read what they show from a space on your device that only the app and its widgets share.

iCloud sync

Sync keeps your logbook, your pass and your settings the same on each iPhone and iPad you use with your Apple Account. It is on unless you turn it off, in the app’s Settings under iCloud. Your logbook is kept in the app’s private CloudKit database, with a label for the device that last wrote it, and your profile (name, emblem, home station and your own purposes) and settings in iCloud key-value storage, all inside your own iCloud account. Apple stores that data under its privacy policy. The developer has no access to it.

Services the app talks to

To show maps and find real rail routes, the app sends requests to the services below. Each request carries only what the service needs to answer: an area of the map, the stations at either end of a route, or the words you type into station search. Like any connection on the internet, each request also reaches the service from your device’s IP address.

• Mapbox provides the maps: tiles, styles and imagery for the area on screen. The app switches Mapbox’s event collection off before any map appears. Mapbox still processes the requests it needs to serve the map and to bill for it. Mapbox privacy policy
• OpenRailRouting (routing.openrailrouting.org) works out the rail route between two stations from their coordinates.
• Photon, run by Komoot (photon.komoot.io), answers station search. It receives what you type. When you search for a destination, it also receives the position of the station you’re travelling from, so stations near you are listed first. Komoot privacy policy
• Overpass API servers (overpass-api.de, overpass.kumi.systems, overpass.private.coffee and overpass.osm.ch) supply station and railway data from OpenStreetMap around the stations on your route.
• Apple Maps tells the app which country a station is in, for the milestone that marks crossing a border by rail. After a journey arrives, the app sends the positions of its two stations, rounded to about 100 metres, and keeps the answer on your device.
• Apple also handles purchases through the App Store and, when sync is on, iCloud.

None of these services receives your name, your logbook or your notes.

Purchases

Payments are handled entirely by Apple. The developer never sees your payment details or your Apple Account. The app checks which plan or trains you own on your device, from the signed transactions the App Store provides.

Notifications

If you allow them, the app schedules its notifications on your device: the daily reminder you can set up, a note before a free trial ends, and, with Pro, a word when a break begins or ends and when you arrive. They are all local notifications, and no server is involved. Live Activities are updated by the app itself, without push notifications.

Motion sensors

Some pictures in the app lean as you tilt your iPhone or iPad, and the holographic finish on the pass catches the light. The app reads the device’s motion sensors for this while those pictures are on screen. The readings stay on your iPhone.

Children

The app collects no personal data from anyone, children included.

This website

This website is a static site served by Cloudflare. It sets no cookies and runs no analytics or tracking scripts. Cloudflare processes technical data such as IP addresses to deliver the site and protect it from abuse. Cloudflare privacy policy

Your choices

• Turn iCloud sync off or on at any time, in the app’s Settings under iCloud.
• Export your logbook as a file from Settings, with Export logbook.
• Erase everything from Settings, with Erase all data. It deletes every journey, your profile and your preferences from your device, and with sync on it marks those journeys as deleted in your iCloud too. Purchases are not affected.
• Deleting the app removes its data from your device. If you used sync, you can also remove the app’s data from iCloud in your device’s Settings, under your name and then iCloud.

The developer holds no personal data about you, so there is nothing to access, correct or delete on your behalf. If you have a question about your data or your rights, write any time.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new date.

Contact

David Noé. Write to [email protected].