Privacy.

Last updated: June 19, 2026

GoParks is built to keep the parks you've been to private. In short:

• Your photos stay on your device.
• Your visits, notes, stamps, and voice memories sync through your own iCloud.
• GoParks does not have its own account system.
• GoParks collects limited product-usage analytics tied to a pseudonymous app instance ID.
• Those analytics may include which screens or features are used, and which park or place records are opened or interacted with.
• GoParks does not collect your photos, notes, voice recordings, stamp images, or memory content.
• GoParks does not sell your data or track you across other apps.

What stays on your device

Everything you create in the app:

• Park visits and check-ins
• Favorites
• Achievements and stamps
• Visit notes and voice journals (text and audio)
• Photos you attach to visits or stamp captures
• Milestones and local app state

None of this leaves your device unless you choose to share it (via the iOS Share sheet) or iCloud syncs it across your other Apple devices. We don't have servers that store any of it.

iCloud sync

If you're signed into iCloud on your device (most iPhone users are), your visits, favorites, achievements, stamps, and photos sync across your Apple devices via your own iCloud account. We use Apple's CloudKit for this. The data lives in Apple's storage, encrypted end-to-end under Advanced Data Protection if you have it enabled, and is accessible only to you through your Apple ID.

We never see your visits, photos, notes, voice memories, or stamps. There's no GoParks account to create. Sync happens at the iCloud layer, scoped to your Apple ID by Apple itself.

You can disable sync any time by signing out of iCloud on the device, or delete all synced data from your iCloud account in iOS Settings → Apple ID → iCloud → Manage Account Storage → GoParks.

Voice journals

When you record a voice note at a park, the speech-to-text transcription runs on your device using Apple's Speech framework. If your device supports Apple Intelligence, the transcript is also polished on-device using Apple's Foundation Models, fixing punctuation and removing filler words, with no content changes.

Audio files and transcripts stay local (or sync via your iCloud if you're signed in). They never reach our servers. They never reach Apple's cloud servers either. The speech recognition is offline.

Location

If you grant location permission, we use it for two things: showing parks near you on the Explore tab, and verifying check-ins against the park's coordinates (so the app can mark a visit as GPS-verified vs. honor-system).

Location is fetched once per use, not stored, and not sent to GoParks. If you deny permission, the app still works. Near You is hidden and all check-ins are honor-system.

Camera and photos

The app asks for camera access to capture passport-stamp photos, and for photo library access when you attach a photo to a visit. Captures and attached photos stay on your device (and sync via your iCloud if signed in). Both are optional. The app works without them.

How analytics works

Product-usage analytics are handled by Google Firebase Analytics, tied to a pseudonymous app instance ID rather than your identity. Firebase also receives the standard device facts it collects by default: device model, iOS version, app version, approximate country (from IP), and session timing. GoParks does not send your photos, notes, voice recordings, stamp images, or other memory content to Firebase or anywhere else.

What we don't do

• No ads. Never.
• No selling data. Never.
• No tracking across other apps.
• No user profiling or behavioral models.
• No third-party data sharing beyond analytics. Firebase Analytics is the only external service, and it receives only pseudonymous product-usage events, never your memory content.
• No notifications without your explicit permission.

Your choices

• Disable analytics: iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements → turn off "Share with App Developers"
• Disable sync: iOS Settings → Apple ID → iCloud → GoParks
• Disable location: iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → GoParks
• Save a copy of your data: Profile → Settings → Backup → "Save a copy of my memories" produces a single file with your journal that you can keep anywhere.
• Delete everything: Profile → Settings → "Delete all my data" wipes your visits, stamps, photos, voice memories, and field notes from this device and from your iCloud. Uninstalling the app removes anything left locally.

Public park data

GoParks uses public and open park data from external sources to display park information in the app.

This source data is separate from your personal app data. GoParks does not send your saved parks, visit history, stamps, notes, or check-ins to those park data providers. For details on data sources, see Data sources.

Children

GoParks is intended for users 13 and over. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 13. If you're a parent and believe your child is using the app, contact us and we'll help.

Changes

If we ever change this policy, the new version appears here with an updated date at the top. Material changes (anything that affects what data is collected or how it's used) will be flagged in the app's "What's New" on update.

Contact

Questions, concerns, or anything else: hello@goparks.app.

GoParks is an independent project. Email goes to a real person, not a support queue.