How it works
Trace is a one-time beacon: you go live when you're heading out, the people you choose can see roughly where you are, and it all disappears when the activity ends.
Join a trace
No phone number and no account needed.
- Open the link. A friend sends you a trace link. It opens in any browser, with or without the app.
- See where to meet. You see their rough area and a rounded distance, plus the meetup point if they dropped one.
- Get notified, if you want. In the app, tap Notify me on the trace to get a push notification when they start moving or if it ends early.
- It disappears. When the broadcast ends, the link stops working.
Drop a trace
- Verify your phone once. Going live and adding friends both need a verified phone number.
- Add friends in person. Scan each other's QR code, or send an invite link they confirm. There are no friend requests and no search by name or number.
- Go live. Pick an activity and who can see you: Friends only, orPublic (people using Trace nearby see you too, under a one-off name used for that broadcast only). A broadcast lasts up to 2 hours. You can also schedule it to start up to 16 hours later, add a short description, or drop a meetup point.
- Share it. Friends get a notification. You can also send a trace link to anyone you like: they can join without the app, an account or a phone number.
- It ends. When you stop or the timer runs out, your live location, the trace link and its followers are deleted.
What we promise, and what that really means
Your location is only sent while you're live
Outside of a broadcast, Trace doesn't access your location in the background or while the app is closed. During one, it keeps updating with your screen locked, and your phone shows a persistent notification the whole time, so it's never silent. Using the map while the app is open can send the area you're looking at, to find broadcasts near it; it isn't stored.
Others see an area, not a point
Before your position is shared or even stored, it's snapped to a grid cell a few hundred metres wide. Other people see that area and a rounded distance, never your coordinates. Some viewers (like friends, when you're both verified) can also see roughly which direction you are and your general direction of travel. Two honest limits: a meetup point is shown exactly where you put it, since you chose to share that spot, and someone watching a long broadcast can follow your general route as the area moves.
Live location is temporary
It's kept only in short-lived memory, never in our database, and deleted automatically when the broadcast ends: at most 2 hours live, or 18 hours if you schedule a delayed start. We keep no location history, so there's none to leak, sell or hand over later.
Pseudonymous, not anonymous
No name and no email. You get a random pseudonym that changes on its own. Your phone number is checked by our SMS provider (Twilio) and then kept only as a one-way hash; other people just see a "Verified" badge. That number is also how you get your account back on a new phone, so whoever controls it controls your account.
No ads, no analytics, no selling your data
There are no ad or analytics SDKs in the app, and we will never sell your data to advertisers or anyone else. If Trace ever charges for anything, it'll be a subscription, not ads and not features held back to push you toward one.
What Trace still knows
"Private" doesn't mean "nothing". To run the service, we do keep:
- Your pseudonymous account, your friends, people you've blocked and nicknames you set.
- Request logs with your IP address, kept for a limited time by us and our hosting providers.
- A push token if you turn on notifications, which Apple, Google and Expo use to deliver them.
- Reports you file about other accounts, so we can review them.
And some things are out of our hands: a trace link works for anyone it's forwarded to until the broadcast ends, and a friend can always take a screenshot. Share with people you trust.
Every detail is in our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. You can delete your account at any time.