Privacy Policy
The short version: Rainbow’s Arc collects no data. Nothing you enter, and no photo you take, ever leaves your device.
What the app stores, and where
Everything you put into Rainbow’s Arc — voyages, dead-reckoning legs, sights, fixes, your height of eye and camera settings — is stored only in the app’s local storage on your own device. It is never transmitted anywhere, because there is nowhere to transmit it: the app has no server, no account system, and makes no network requests.
Deleting the app deletes this data. If you back up your device, your backup may include the app’s data like any other app’s; those backups are managed by Apple under their own terms, and we never see them.
Camera and photos
The app asks for camera access so you can photograph the sun and the horizon, and for photo library access so you can use a picture you already took. Every photo is processed entirely on the device — the app measures angles from it and reads its embedded time stamp, then keeps only the numbers of the sight in your local log. Photos are never uploaded, analyzed remotely, or shared with anyone.
Location — practice and checking only
Two optional features compare the app’s answers against where you actually are: the sextant drill (which scores a practice sight taken with a real sextant) and the deck log’s “Check against GPS” (which grades your dead reckoning and shows the set and drift the gap implies). For those purposes, and only when you use them, the app asks for your location; each reading is used immediately for the comparison shown on screen and is not stored, logged, or transmitted. Decline the permission and the drill scores against your dead-reckoning position instead, while the GPS check simply reports that there is nothing to compare against. No other part of the app uses location — navigation itself works from the sky, which is the point.
What the app does not do
Rainbow’s Arc contains no analytics, no advertising, no tracking of any kind, and no third-party data-collection software. It does not track your location — the two optional, on-the-spot uses are the sextant drill and the GPS check described above. It does not read your contacts or anything else on your device beyond the photos you deliberately hand it. It works entirely offline — by design, because a boat is often out of signal.
Purchases
Buying the app is handled entirely by the App Store. We receive no payment details, no card numbers, and no personal information from your purchase.
Children
The app collects no data from anyone, children included.
Changes to this policy
If a future version of the app ever changes any of the above — for example, by adding an online feature — this policy will be updated first, with the effective date above revised, and the change described plainly rather than buried.
Changes so far
September 9, 2026: “What the app does not do” now names both on-the-spot uses of location — the sextant drill and the deck log’s GPS check — as the section above it already did. Nothing about what the app collects has changed: still nothing.
Contact
Questions about this policy: support@RainbowsEndMarine.com.
Rainbow’s Arc is for fun and for practice, not a substitute for judgment or for the navigation the law requires of you — see the notes inside the app.