Privacy Policy
1. Who We Are
Gild - listed on the App Store as Gild - Golden Hour - is developed and published by Jamie Newman ("we", "us", "our"). If you have questions about this policy, contact us at contact@jamie-newman.com.
2. Data We Collect
We collect nothing. Gild has no account system, no backend, and no persistence of any kind. It writes nothing to disk: no files, no database, no UserDefaults, no Keychain entry, no iCloud container. Close the app and everything it was showing is gone.
Location
- With your permission, Gild reads your device's location while you are using the app, at kilometre-level accuracy (
kCLLocationAccuracyKilometer) - which is as precise as sunrise gets - Your coordinates are used on the device to calculate the sun's position, the light boundaries, and the arc. That calculation never leaves the phone
- Your coordinates are not stored, not logged, and not transmitted to us - we operate no server that could receive them
- You can decline, and Gild still works: search for a city instead and it shows that city's light
City search
- When you use the search field, the text you type is sent to Apple's Maps service to return matching towns and cities
- Search results and the place you choose are held in memory for the current session only. Nothing is saved, and there is no search history
What we do not collect
- No analytics or usage events of any kind - no PostHog, no Firebase, no Google Analytics, no crash-reporting service
- No advertising or attribution identifiers, and no IDFA
- No name, email address, Apple Account, or device identifier
- No purchase data - Gild is free with no in-app purchases, and contains no StoreKit or receipt-checking code
3. How Your Data Is Used
- Your approximate coordinates and today's date are used to compute the sun path, the four light bands, the live sun marker and the eight times in the list
- Your coordinates are sent once to Apple to turn them into a readable place name for the row above the arc - so the screen can say "London" rather than only a pair of numbers
- Your search text is sent to Apple to return matching places, and the place you pick supplies its own timezone so its times are shown on its own clock
That is the complete list. We do not profile you, build audiences, or use anything about you for advertising - and because nothing reaches us, we could not if we wanted to.
4. Data Storage & Security
There is nothing to store and nowhere to store it. Gild holds the current screen in memory while it is open and discards it when it closes. It has no local database, no cache, no log file and no saved locations.
Gild has no backend, no account system and no login - so there is no database to breach and nothing for us to hand over to anyone.
Gild requests exactly one system permission: location, while using the app. It never asks for notifications, the camera, the microphone, contacts, the photo library, or anything else.
5. Third-Party Services
Gild contains no third-party SDKs, frameworks or libraries of any kind. The only network requests it makes are raised by Apple's own frameworks, built into iOS:
CLGeocoder- turns your coordinates into a place name for the row above the arcMKLocalSearchCompleterandMKLocalSearch- return suggestions and results for the optional city search
Both send data to Apple as the platform provider, and are governed by Apple's privacy policy. Nothing is returned to us, nothing is retained by us, and nothing is written to the device. There are no advertising SDKs, no attribution SDKs, no crash reporter, no CloudKit container and no analytics.
6. Data Sharing
We do not sell, rent or share your personal data with anyone, for any purpose. We have none of it to share.
We do not use advertising SDKs and do not request NSUserTrackingUsageDescription, so you will never see an App Tracking Transparency prompt from Gild. We do not cross-reference your activity across apps.
Gild's App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected. Under Apple's definition, "collection" means transmitting data off the device in a way that lets the developer or its partners access it beyond servicing the request in real time - and neither of the two flows in section 5 does that.
7. Notifications
Gild sends no notifications of any kind - local or push - and never asks for notification permission.
8. Your Rights & Data Deletion
- There is nothing for us to delete, because we hold nothing. We cannot look up "your" data, because none of it ever reaches us
- Deleting the app removes it and the permission grant along with it. There is no server copy to clean up afterwards
- You can withdraw location access at any time in Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Gild. The app keeps working - search for a city and it shows that city's light instead
- To stop the two Apple requests entirely, use Gild without a network connection. The sun path and every time in the list are computed on the device and are unaffected; only the place name and the search field need the network
If you are located in the EEA or UK and have questions about your rights under GDPR, or if you are a California resident with questions about your rights under CCPA, please contact us at the address below. We will respond within 30 days.
9. Children's Privacy
Gild is rated 4+ and contains no user-generated content, no web access, no chat and no advertising. It does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children under 13 - it does not collect personal information from anyone at all. If you believe a child has provided personal information through Gild, please contact us.
10. Changes to This Policy
We may update this privacy policy from time to time - in particular if a future version of Gild adds saved locations, which would introduce on-device storage for the first time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated effective date. Continued use of Gild after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.
11. Contact
Questions or concerns about this privacy policy? Please reach out:
- Email: contact@jamie-newman.com