Woven — Privacy Policy

Woven Walks for iPhone and iPad

Woven Walks is made in the United Kingdom by an independent developer. This page says what Woven does with your information. The short version: your walks, photos and sightings stay on your phone and in your own iCloud; Woven has no accounts, no advertising and no analytics; the only things that leave your phone are the ones you ask for, and they are listed here.

What stays on your phone

Walks (your route), sightings, display copies of your photos, bird recordings and your settings are stored on your device. If iCloud is on, they sync through your private iCloud database, which Apple encrypts and which Woven cannot read. Deleting the app, or turning Woven off in iCloud settings, removes them.

Woven has no account to sign up for and holds no list of users.

Identifying a photo

Woven first tries to name what is in your photo on the phone itself; nothing is sent anywhere for that.

When the phone is not sure, and only if you have allowed online identification, Woven sends the identification photos and any description you typed to Woven's own server (api.woventhread.app), which passes them to cloud AI services — currently Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude — and returns the answer. Your county or country goes with the photos so the answer can weigh what lives nearby; your exact location never leaves the phone.

Woven's server does not keep your photos or the answer. It keeps a count of answers against a random identifier for your installation (so that the service can be rationed fairly), which model answered, and how much text was processed. Google and Anthropic process the photos under their developer terms; Woven has not enabled any option that would let them keep or train on them.

You can turn online identification off at any time in Settings → Online identification. With it off, Woven only ever identifies on the phone.

Listening for birds

When you turn on bird listening, the microphone audio is analysed on the phone. Only the bird's name, the time and the place are recorded. Woven may keep a short clip of a call on your phone so you can play it back; clips are never uploaded.

Location

Woven records your route while a walk is running, including while the app is in the background if you have allowed that. The route is stored with the walk, on your phone and in your iCloud.

Map tiles come from Mapbox, so Mapbox's servers see which map areas your phone requests, as with any online map. Weather for a walk comes from Apple's WeatherKit, given the walk's place and time.

Health

If you allow it, Woven can read walks and rides you have already recorded in Health and use them as the route for a Woven walk, and can add a Woven walk to Health as a workout when you ask. Health data is used for nothing else, is never shared with anyone, and is never used for advertising or sold.

Photos and camera

Woven looks for photos taken during your walks and saves display-size copies with the walk. A photo taken through Woven's camera is saved to your camera roll like any other.

Community (optional)

Community is off unless you turn it on. When you share a sighting with the community, Woven sends the species, the date and time, the kind of creature, an area label about a kilometre across, the country, how it was identified, and an anonymous contributor identifier that is not linked to your name or Apple Account. You choose a public label that is not your name. Sightings of protected species are withheld or shown only as counts, by country. Anonymised community records may in future be shared with conservation bodies; they would carry nothing that could be traced to you.

You can stop sharing at any time. To have shared sightings removed, contact the address below with your community label.

Woven Pro

The first release of Woven has no subscription or purchase. If Woven Pro is offered later it will be a subscription handled by Apple: Apple takes the payment and holds your payment details; Woven never sees them, your name or your Apple Account. To confirm that a phone has Pro, Woven would send Apple's signed transaction receipt to Woven's server with online identification requests; it carries transaction identifiers, not personal details, and is not stored.

Exporting your records

When you export sightings for eBird, or as a backup or CSV file, Woven writes a file on your phone for you to send or upload yourself. Woven sends nothing to eBird or to anyone else.

Beta builds

If you use a TestFlight (beta) build of Woven, the app uploads diagnostic logs — what the app did step by step on a walk or an identification, the device model, a short device identifier, and a tester name if you typed one — so that problems can be found. App Store builds do not do this.

Nothing else

Woven contains no advertising, no third-party analytics or tracking, and does not sell or share your information with anyone for their own purposes.

Children

Woven is not directed at children under 13.

Your rights

Most of what Woven holds is on your phone and in your iCloud, under your own control. For the small amount held on Woven's servers — usage counts under a random identifier, and community sightings if you shared any — you can ask for a copy or deletion at the address below. Under UK data protection law you also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be at https://wovenwalks.com/privacy with its date.

Contact

Woven Walks · support@wovenwalks.com

Effective 12 October 2026.