Privacy Policy

The short version

Patchly Gold works without an account, and Patchly operates no server that stores or processes your field history. Everything you record while prospecting, including GPS sessions, tracks, finds, pins, shapes, photos, detector history, search coverage and the Stash, is stored on your device and is never sent to a Patchly server or to any third-party server by Patchly. The app does use the network for infrastructure, such as downloading map tiles and layers, and this policy describes exactly what those requests involve.

Who is responsible

Patchly Gold, listed on the App Store and Google Play as Patchly, is published by Patchly Labs Pty Ltd, an Australian company. For anything in this policy, contact contact@patchly.gold.

Data that stays on your device

The app's purpose is recording your prospecting work, and that work stays local. Stored only on your device:

• GPS recordings of your sessions, including the movement classification built from them
• Finds, pins and shapes you log, including their photos and notes
• Your search-coverage map
• Detectors you configure and their usage history
• The Stash, including holdings, weights and photos
• Imported data, such as Trilobite or GPX files you choose to import
• App settings and preferences

Patchly has no access to any of it. There is no Patchly account, no sync service run by Patchly, and no Patchly copy of your data.

Location

Patchly Gold asks for location permission to show your position on the map and to record sessions, including in the background while a recording is running with the screen off. Location fixes are written to the recording on your device. They are not transmitted to Patchly. You can revoke location permission at any time in your device's system settings, which stops recording from working but leaves the rest of the app usable.

Backups and exports you control

The app can back up your data to your own cloud storage, iCloud Drive on iPhone or Google Drive on Android, and can export a portable .patchly file you share or store wherever you choose. These copies go to storage under your control, in your own accounts. Patchly cannot read them, does not hold the keys to them, and never receives them. Cloud backup is presented as a choice during onboarding and can be switched to manual or turned off. Deleting backups from your cloud storage is always available to you through that provider.

What does use the network

Patchly Gold is a map app, and maps need infrastructure. These requests happen without any Patchly account attached:

• Map tiles and imagery. Base maps and satellite imagery are served by Mapbox. Curated layers, such as geology or mining tenements, are downloaded from Patchly's content delivery service. Like every web request, these carry your IP address and which part of the map you are viewing, which are used transiently to deliver the content and protect the service from abuse, not to build a profile of you.
• App integrity checks. To grant the app short-lived map access tokens, Patchly's token service verifies that a request comes from a genuine, unmodified copy of the app using the platform's attestation feature (App Attest on iOS, Play Integrity on Android). These checks carry an identifier stored on your device. It stays the same for your installation of the app, is tied to no account, and is used only to check the app is genuine and to limit abuse. The curated layers described above are downloaded through the same check, so those requests carry it too.
• Gold price. The Stash fetches the current gold price. The request carries no personal data.
• Mapbox usage reporting. The Mapbox mapping software is able to report usage data, including location, back to Mapbox. Patchly switches that reporting off when the app launches, on both iPhone and Android, before any map is drawn. Mapbox still records the app as active for licence billing, using a device identifier that carries no location and is not linked to any account. Anything Mapbox does receive is governed by the Mapbox privacy policy.
• Google satellite base map. Patchly Pro offers a Google satellite base map, on both iPhone and Android. While it is the base map you have selected, the Google Maps software serves its tiles and reports its own usage back to Google, including a device identifier, app interaction and performance data. Unlike Mapbox, it offers the app no switch to turn that off, so the only way to avoid it is to choose one of the other base maps. The app gives that software no location feed of its own, and draws the dot showing where you are itself. Like every online map it does request the tiles under the view, so while the map is following you those tiles cover the ground around you. Anything Google receives is governed by the Google privacy policy.
• Apple satellite base map. On iPhone and iPad, Patchly Pro also offers an Apple satellite base map. While it is the base map you have selected, Apple's own mapping component draws it. It is part of iOS rather than software Patchly bundles, and it reads your position to draw the map, the way any map on the phone does. It reports its own use back to Apple, and offers the app no switch to turn that off, so the only way to avoid it is to choose one of the other base maps. Anything Apple receives is governed by the Apple privacy policy.

Purchases

Patchly Pro subscriptions are sold and processed by Apple's App Store or Google Play. Patchly never sees your payment details, billing address or store identity.

To unlock Pro layers for download, the app sends the store's own proof of purchase to Patchly's token service, which confirms the subscription is current. On iPhone that proof is the signed receipt Apple issues for the transaction, and it is checked as the request arrives and never stored. On Android it is the product name and the purchase token Google issues, which are checked against Google and the answer kept briefly under a one-way hash of that token, never the token itself. Neither carries your name, your account or your payment details, and nothing you have recorded in the app is sent with them.

No tracking, no ads, no sale of data

The app embeds no advertising software and nothing that tracks you across other apps or websites. Patchly does not sell, rent or trade any data, and holds no personal data that could be sold. The app contains no analytics software: nothing in it watches what you do and reports it back.

What Patchly does do is count its own service traffic, and it is worth being precise about it. When the app fetches a map layer it asks Patchly's servers for permission first, and those requests are counted so that Patchly knows roughly how many people use the app, which country and state or region they are in, which curated layers are popular, and which app versions are still in use. That counting is built only from requests the app already had to make, not from anything extra sent for the purpose.

This website counts its own visits too, using Cloudflare Web Analytics. It records page views and where a visit arrived from, sets no cookie, and stores nothing that identifies a visitor or follows one between sites. It measures the website only, never the app.

It is kept deliberately coarse. The records hold no name, no account, no IP address, no town or city, and no map coordinate. Nothing you record in the app — your tracks, finds, pins, photos, notes or search coverage — is part of it, or reachable from it. Requests for individual map tiles, which are the ones that would show where you were looking, are not recorded at all. Each install is counted under a random identifier the app makes up on its own when you first open it, which is not your device's identity, is tied to nothing else, and disappears if you delete the app. For everything except a simple count of how long installs keep being used, that identifier is replaced with a new one every month, so the records cannot follow one install from one month to the next.

The mapping software described above is the exception worth stating plainly, because it is not Patchly's to switch off entirely. Mapbox, Google and Apple each collect some usage, performance and crash information about their own map components for their own analytics. Mapbox's reporting is switched off as described above. Google's and Apple's cannot be, and each applies only while that vendor's base map is selected. That is a statement about what those vendors do with their own software, and it is not tracking you across other apps. Crash reporting for the app itself relies on the platform's built-in, user-consented mechanisms operated by Apple and Google, not on a third-party crash service.

What the store privacy labels say

The App Store and Google Play each require a data-safety label, and both of Patchly's list more than people expect. A label covers everything inside the app, including the mapping software built into it, so "collects nothing" is not an answer either store offers. The labels are accurate. They are also easy to misread, so here is what each line means.

Google Play shows two separate lists, and they are not the same list. One is headed "Data shared with third parties" and the other "Data collected". Patchly's shared list holds app interactions, crash logs, diagnostics, other app performance data, and device identifiers. Location is not on the shared list, and neither is purchase history. Those two appear under "Data collected" only, which on Google Play is the far broader bucket: anything the app sends off the device for any reason lands there, including a request to a server acting on Patchly's behalf.

Why location is on the collected list. Drawing a map means asking a tile server for the squares of the world currently on screen, and that request has to say which part of the map is being looked at. That is what puts location on the list. It is not your recording. Your tracks, finds, pins and search coverage stay on the device, as described above. Requests for individual map tiles are not recorded at all, and the service counting described above keeps the country and state or region only, never a coordinate.

Why purchase history is on the collected list. Confirming a Pro subscription means sending the store's own purchase receipt to a Patchly server, which answers whether the subscription is valid. On iPhone that receipt is checked as the request arrives, and on Android it is checked against Google, as described above. No card number, no billing address and no name is involved. Payment is handled entirely by the App Store or Google Play, and neither passes those details to Patchly.

What is actually shared, and with whom. The map components built into the app, from Mapbox and Google, report usage and performance information about their own software to their own analytics, and Google's map component also reports crash information. That is what the shared list describes. A store label covers what the software built into an app declares it is able to collect, not what it does on any given run, so the shared list still names the Mapbox reporting that Patchly switches off, as described above. Patchly embeds no advertising software, no analytics software and no crash reporter of its own.

On the App Store, Patchly has no "Data Used to Track You" section at all. Apple asks a different question, whether data is linked to your identity rather than whether it is shared, and lists location and purchases under "Data Not Linked to You". Two entries are listed as linked to you, Device ID and Other Data. Device ID is linked because Google's map component declares it that way, even though the same App Store entry also covers the device identifier Mapbox uses for licence billing, described above. Other Data comes from Google alone.

Retention and deletion

Because your data lives on your device, retention is in your hands. Deleting a recording, find, pin or any other record in the app removes it from the device. Deleting the app removes everything it stored locally. Backups you made to your own cloud storage are deleted through that provider, and the manual .patchly exports you created are files you manage yourself. Patchly holds no copy of your data, so there is nothing on a Patchly server to request deletion of. Transient infrastructure logs, such as IP addresses on tile requests, are kept only briefly for service operation and abuse protection. The service counts described above are aggregate totals rather than records about a person, so there is no individual record in them to identify, retrieve or delete.

Children

Patchly Gold is a general-audience app for recreational prospectors and is not directed at children.

Your rights and the law

Patchly Labs Pty Ltd handles personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and its Australian Privacy Principles, and, for users in New Zealand, the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020. Since Patchly holds no account data and no copy of your recorded data, most access and correction rights are exercised directly on your device. For any privacy question, request or complaint, contact contact@patchly.gold. If you are not satisfied with the response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au) or, in New Zealand, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (privacy.org.nz).

Changes to this policy

If Patchly Gold's data practices change, this page will be updated and the effective date above revised. Material changes will be highlighted in the app's release notes.