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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 24 June 2026

CycleHUD ("the app") is a cycling heads-up display for iPhone and Apple Watch. This policy explains what the app accesses and how that information is used. The short version: your data stays on your device and in Apple Health. CycleHUD has no servers and collects nothing about you.

Information the app accesses

CycleHUD uses the following, only on your device and only to provide its features:

  • Location (GPS) — to measure ride speed, distance and your route, and to include the route in the workout saved to Apple Health. Location is used while you are using the app (including during a ride in the background). Your route and ride data are never sent off your device. The only exceptions are the optional rain nowcast and upcoming-junctions features below, which share your current location with their data providers while switched on.
  • Weather (optional) — if you turn on the rain nowcast, CycleHUD sends your current location to Apple Weather (WeatherKit) to fetch a short-term local forecast. This is handled by Apple under Apple's Privacy Policy; CycleHUD keeps no copy and you can turn the feature off in Settings.
  • Upcoming junctions (optional, off by default) — if you turn on the junction tile, CycleHUD fetches the road network around your route from OpenStreetMap's public Overpass service, which sends your approximate location to their servers (see the OSMF Privacy Policy). No account or identifier is sent, CycleHUD keeps no copy beyond a short-lived in-memory cache, and nothing is sent while the feature is off. Road data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
  • Route planning (optional, off by default) — when you plan a route, the points you tap on the map are sent to the BRouter routing service (brouter.de, built on OpenStreetMap data) to compute a cycling path along quiet roads. This happens while you edit a route in the planner and, if you pick a route while away from it, to plot a lead-in leg from your position to its start. Asking to ride a route in reverse also sends the route's bounding box to OpenStreetMap's Overpass service once, to check for one-way roads before allowing it. No account or identifier is sent; saved routes are stored only on your device, and sharing a route is a file you send yourself (AirDrop, Messages, …) — there is no route server.
  • Live tracking (optional, off by default) — if you turn on live tracking, each ride publishes your current position, path, speed, distance and riding time to the app's own iCloud (CloudKit) public database under an unguessable random link, so people you share the link with can follow the ride on this website. It is end-to-end encrypted: your phone seals every update with a key that travels only inside the share link itself (the part after the #, which browsers never send to any server) — what iCloud stores is unreadable ciphertext, so neither CycleHUD nor Apple can see where you are; only people holding your link can. The record updates every 15 seconds and is deleted the moment you stop the ride — nothing about the ride stays published, and no name or identifier travels with it. Anyone opening the share page also fetches map tiles from OpenStreetMap.
  • Motion & Fitness — the barometric altimeter is used to measure elevation gain (ascent) during a ride.
  • Bluetooth — to connect to your rear radar and to standard speed/cadence sensors and read their data.
  • Health (HealthKit) — with your permission, the app reads heart rate (from a paired Apple Watch) to estimate calories, and writes cycling workouts (distance, duration, active energy and GPS route) to Apple Health. You can grant or revoke these permissions at any time in the Health app or iOS Settings.

What we do not do

  • No user accounts and no sign-in.
  • No servers of our own — CycleHUD has no backend. The only network features are the optional rain nowcast (location to Apple Weather), the optional upcoming-junctions tile (approximate location to OpenStreetMap), optional route planning (tapped map points to BRouter) and optional live tracking (end-to-end encrypted position through your own iCloud, deleted when the ride ends); all can be turned off in Settings, and everything except the nowcast is off by default.
  • No analytics, advertising, tracking, or third-party SDKs.
  • We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information with anyone.

Where your data lives

Ride summaries (including the route and where vehicles were detected) and your settings are stored locally on your device so you can review past rides in the app. With iCloud sync on (Settings → Data, on by default), your ride history, planned routes and their best times are also mirrored into your own personal iCloud Drive — governed by Apple's Privacy Policy and under your control; CycleHUD has no server and cannot see this data. Turn the toggle off and nothing further is written to iCloud.

Workouts you choose to save are also stored in Apple Health, which is governed by Apple's Privacy Policy and is under your control. Data shared between your iPhone and Apple Watch travels only over Apple's encrypted device-to-device connection.

Data retention & deletion

Because the data lives on your device, you remain in control of it. You can delete individual rides from the Previous rides list in the app, remove saved workouts in the Apple Health app, and delete everything the app stores by deleting CycleHUD from your device.

Children

CycleHUD is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from children.

Changes to this policy

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

Contact

Questions about this policy or the app? Contact: paul@treadgame.com.

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