Privacy Policy
For the Skeye iOS app and skeye.dev · Effective 31 July 2026
The short version
- Skeye has no accounts and no sign-in. Nothing you do in the app is tied to an identity.
- There is no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking of any kind. The app contains no third-party SDKs.
- Skeye needs your location and compass heading to find aircraft near you. Your coordinates are sent to a public flight-data service to answer “what’s flying near this point?”
- I don’t run a server that receives or stores your location. Your coordinates go from your phone straight to that public service.
- Your settings stay on your device.
Who’s responsible
Skeye is an independent app. If you have a question about privacy, or want something deleted, email alex@skeye.dev.
What the app accesses on your device
Location and compass heading
Skeye asks for location access “While Using the App” only. It never requests background or “Always” access, so it cannot see where you are when it isn’t open on screen. While the app is open it reads:
- your latitude and longitude, to work out which aircraft are near you;
- your compass heading, to work out which of them are in front of you;
- your altitude, used only to compute an aircraft’s angle above the horizon.
These readings live in memory while the app is running. Skeye does not write your location to disk, does not keep a location history, and does not log it anywhere. Close the app and the readings are gone.
You can withdraw location access at any time in iOS Settings › Privacy & Security › Location Services › Skeye. The app will simply stop being able to find aircraft near you.
What the app does not access
Skeye does not request or use your camera, microphone, photo library, contacts, calendars, health data, motion sensors, Bluetooth, or local network. It does not request permission to track you across other apps and websites, and it collects no advertising identifier (IDFA).
What leaves your device
Skeye talks directly to a small number of public aviation services. There is no Skeye server in between. Every service below necessarily sees your device’s IP address, as any web request does, and handles it under its own privacy policy.
| Service | What Skeye sends | When |
|---|---|---|
| adsb.lol | Your latitude and longitude, plus a search radius | Repeatedly while the radar screen is open, at your chosen refresh interval |
| adsbdb.com | An aircraft’s callsign or registration — not your location | When an aircraft’s route or details are shown |
| Planespotters.net | An aircraft’s hex code or registration — not your location | When a photo of that aircraft is loaded |
| Apple Maps (MapKit) | Map region requests, to draw the map you’re looking at | While a map view is on screen |
The first row is the one worth understanding clearly: to answer “which aircraft are near me?”, your coordinates are sent to adsb.lol as part of the request, and repeated while the screen stays open. This is inherent to how the app works — there is no way to look up nearby aircraft without saying where “near” is. Those requests carry no name, account, device ID, or any other identifier from Skeye.
Reporting a bug
If you use Report an Issue inside the app, Skeye sends what you typed — the title and description — along with a short diagnostics block containing your device model, iOS version, Skeye version and build number, and your current in-app settings (field of view, search radius, refresh interval, card count). Your location is not included.
Please note: these reports are filed as issues in Skeye’s public GitHub repository, so anything you write in a bug report is publicly visible. Don’t put anything private in one. Submitting a report is entirely optional and nothing is sent unless you tap submit.
Your device keeps a local list of the reports you’ve filed — title, link, and date only, capped at the 20 most recent — so the app can show you your own history.
Beta testing via TestFlight
Skeye’s beta is distributed through Apple’s TestFlight. When you join, Apple gives me the tester information TestFlight is designed to share: your email address, install and session counts, and any crash reports or feedback (including screenshots) you choose to send through TestFlight itself. That data is collected by Apple under Apple’s privacy policy, not by Skeye, and I use it only to fix bugs and manage the beta. I don’t export it, add it to a mailing list, or share it.
The beta waitlist on this website
If you enter your email address on skeye.dev, it is used for exactly one thing: to send you an invite when the beta opens. It isn’t sold, shared, or added to a newsletter. Ask at alex@skeye.dev and I’ll delete it.
The website itself is served as static pages by GitHub Pages, which logs request data including IP addresses for security and abuse prevention under GitHub’s privacy statement. This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics.
What’s stored, and where
| Data | Where it lives | How to remove it |
|---|---|---|
| Your app settings | On your device only | Delete the app |
| Your bug-report history (title, link, date) | On your device only | Delete the app |
| Your location | Nowhere — held in memory while the app runs | Close the app |
| Waitlist email address | The form provider used by this site | Email alex@skeye.dev |
Deleting Skeye from your device removes everything the app stored. Because there are no accounts, there is nothing else of yours for me to hold or delete.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or port your personal data, or to object to its processing. Skeye holds almost nothing to begin with — but if you want to exercise any of these, email alex@skeye.dev and I’ll respond within 30 days. Where the law requires a legal basis for processing, Skeye relies on your consent for location access (granted through the iOS permission prompt, revocable at any time) and on legitimate interests for keeping the app working and fixing bugs.
Children
Skeye is not directed at children under 13, and I don’t knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has sent me data through a bug report, email alex@skeye.dev and I’ll remove it.
Changes to this policy
If Skeye’s data handling changes, this page changes with it and the effective date at the top is updated. During the beta, material changes will also be mentioned in the TestFlight release notes.
Contact
Questions, corrections, or deletion requests: alex@skeye.dev.