Privacy Policy

Effective 10 October 2026

PookaTrek is made by Joseph Bowser, Ireland. Contact: [email protected].

The short version

PookaTrek turns your real workouts into progress along famous routes. Your health data and your location stay on your device. Some copies of the app send a small amount of anonymous usage data (which screens are opened, for example) that can't be tied to you. We don't sell data, show ads or track you across apps.

What stays on your device

Health data. With your permission, PookaTrek reads your workouts, step counts, wheelchair pushes and distances (walking and running, cycling, swimming, wheelchair, skiing, rowing, skating and paddling) from Apple Health, to move you along your route. It only reads and never writes to Health. This data is never sent anywhere, never used for advertising and never shared with anyone.
Your location. With your permission, PookaTrek uses your location to show where you are on the map when you draw a route or ask to find yourself. It isn't stored or sent anywhere.
Your routes, journal and settings are kept on your device.
Journal and guide text for routes without a published guide is written on your device, by Apple's on-device AI.

What PookaTrek sends, and to whom

Anonymous usage events, to us. A small share of App Store installs, picked at random, and the copies of the app given to beta testers send short events about how the app is used: for example, the app was opened, an onboarding screen was finished, a tab was viewed, a setting was changed, a route was drawn (its length only), chosen, finished or deleted, a famous route was imported, a workout was added to a route or taken off it, or a story was collected. Famous routes and their stories are named; routes you draw yourself are only ever called "custom", never by their name. For a changed setting we send which one it was, and only for units, Guide Mode and places per walk its new value; never your movement goal or whether wheelchair mode is on. Each event comes with the app and iOS version and a random session number that's new every time the app starts, so sessions can't be linked to each other or to you. No location, health data, name, email or device identifier is included, and we don't log IP addresses with the events. They're stored on our server, hosted by Railway, used only to improve the app, and deleted after 90 days.
Famous routes, from us. When you browse or import a famous route, PookaTrek downloads the route, its guide and its photos from our servers (pookatrek.com, hosted by Cloudflare and Railway). As with any download, these services see your IP address in order to answer the request. We don't store it.
Places, to Wikipedia. For routes without a published guide, PookaTrek asks Wikipedia and Wikidata (run by the Wikimedia Foundation) for places near the stretch of route you're on. This sends that area of the route. See the Wikimedia Foundation's privacy policy.
Weather and place names, to Apple. For journal entries, PookaTrek asks Apple Weather for the weather, and Apple's maps service for the place name, at a point on your route (not your own location). See Apple's privacy policy.
Maps, from Apple. The map is Apple Maps.

What we don't do

No accounts, sign-in or profiles.
No advertising, ad tracking or data brokers.
No sale or sharing of personal data.
No tracking across other companies' apps and websites.

Your choices

You can turn off Health and location access at any time in iOS Settings. Without Health access PookaTrek can't add your workouts; without location access it can't show you on the map.
Deleting the app deletes everything it keeps on your device.
Because usage events are anonymous, we can't find or delete the ones that came from your app. They're deleted after 90 days anyway. Write to [email protected] with any questions.

Children

PookaTrek isn't directed at children under 16, and doesn't knowingly collect their personal data.

This website

pookatrek.com sets no cookies and has no ads or trackers. It's served by Cloudflare, which sees your IP address in order to deliver the pages. We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits to each page; it uses no cookies, doesn't store your IP address and doesn't follow you across sites.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new effective date.

Contact

[email protected]