Privacy policy

The short version

Above has no accounts, no ads and no analytics, and it does not track you. We do not sell data, because we do not collect data about you to sell.

Above does need to know roughly where you are to work out what is overhead. Most of that stays on your phone. This page lists the few things that leave it, and where they go.

Who we are

Above is made by Studio Ropewalk, LLC, a North Carolina company (“we”, “us”). You can reach us at support@viewabove.app.

What Above uses on your phone

These stay on your phone. iOS asks your permission for each one that needs it:

• Location (while you use the app), to work out what is above you. Your exact position is never sent to us.
• Camera, for the live view behind the labels. The camera feed is not recorded, stored or sent anywhere.
• Motion and compass sensors, to know where the phone is pointing. These need no permission and their readings never leave the phone.
• Bluetooth, to hear the Remote ID broadcasts that nearby drones transmit. What it hears is shown in the app and not stored or sent.
• Photos (add only), to save the sky photos and videos you choose to take. Above can add to your library but cannot read it.
• Notifications, if you turn on pass alerts. They are scheduled on your phone; no push server is involved.

Above also keeps your settings and some downloaded data (satellite orbits, for example) on the phone, and the last half hour of aircraft positions in memory, so rewind can work. Deleting the app deletes all of it.

What leaves your phone

To show live data, the app asks a few services for it. Here is each one, and what it is told.

Above’s own server (api.viewabove.app)

• Your location rounded to about a kilometre, to find weather balloons near you and the aurora forecast for your area.
• When you open an aircraft: its callsign and position (not yours), to look up its route, and its ICAO address, to look up its photo.
• Requests for satellite orbits, the satellite catalog, launches and comets carry no location at all.

The server runs on Cloudflare, which handles your IP address to deliver the response and may keep short-lived operational logs of requests. We do not link them to you, build profiles from them or share them.

adsb.lol

Live aircraft come straight from adsb.lol, a community flight-data network. Your phone asks for aircraft around the centre of a roughly 28 km grid square that contains you, not your position, and adsb.lol sees your IP address as with any website.

planespotters.net

When you open an aircraft, its photo loads from planespotters.net, which sees your IP address.

Apple

Cloud cover comes from Apple Weather (WeatherKit), which receives your location to answer. Subscriptions are handled entirely by Apple through the App Store; we never see your payment details. See Apple’s privacy policy.

Those services have their own privacy policies, which apply to what they receive.

What we never do

• No account, name, email address or phone number is asked for.
• No advertising, and no advertising identifier is used.
• No analytics or crash-reporting libraries, and no tracking across apps or websites.
• No microphone access.
• No sale or sharing of personal information.

Your choices

• Turn location, camera, Bluetooth, photos or notifications off any time in iOS Settings, then Above. The sky view needs location and camera to work; other features degrade gracefully.
• Ask us a question, or for anything we hold about you, by email. Because the app has no accounts, we generally hold nothing that identifies you.
• Delete the app to remove everything stored on your phone.

Children

Above is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone.

Changes to this policy

If what Above does with data changes, we will update this page and its date, and say so in the app’s release notes. Questions: support@viewabove.app.