Privacy Policy for Elsewhere

Effective date: August 29, 2026

Elsewhere ("the app," "we," "us," "our") is a world-clock app developed by 229 South. We built Elsewhere to need as little of your data as possible. This policy explains, in plain terms, exactly what the app does and does not do with information.

The short version: Elsewhere has no accounts and asks for no personal information. It never requests your location, contains no ads, and includes no third-party analytics or tracking. Your list of cities and your preferences stay on your device. What leaves your device is a random, anonymous identifier — used to deliver city artwork, to validate an optional purchase with Apple, and to tell you when artwork you bought is ready — plus anything you choose to write in a report about a picture.

Information we do NOT collect

• No identity. We never ask for your name, email address, phone number, Apple ID, or any account. There is no sign-in, and no screen in the app asks who you are.
• No location. Elsewhere never requests location permission. Your "home" city is chosen by matching your device's own time-zone setting, entirely on your device; that setting is not sent to us.
• No advertising identifier (IDFA) and no ads.
• No third-party analytics, tracking, or advertising SDKs. We do not track you across apps or websites, and we do not sell or share your data with data brokers.

Information stored only on your device

The cities you save, your chosen home city, and your per-city visual-style choices are stored locally on your device (in the app's own preferences) and are never uploaded to us.

Information sent to our servers

To deliver city artwork beyond the images bundled inside the app — and to support optional purchases — the app communicates with our backend (operated on Cloudflare). When it does, the following is involved:

• An anonymous device identifier. The first time the app runs, it generates a random cryptographic key pair on your device. The private key never leaves your device (it is held in the iOS Keychain). The matching public key is sent to our server, which issues a random device ID. This identifier is not connected to your name, email, Apple ID, or any personal information. It exists only so the server can deliver the right artwork to your installation and remember any content you have unlocked.
• Which artwork you request. When the app downloads a city scene that is not already bundled in the app, the request tells the server which city, visual style, and time-of-day image to send. The server can therefore see which cities you download artwork for, associated only with the anonymous device ID above.
• A notification token, only if you allow notifications. If you buy artwork for a city, the app asks whether you would like to be told when it is ready. Only if you agree does your device hand us Apple's push token, which we store against the anonymous device ID and use for that message alone. Decline and no token is ever sent.
• Problem reports, only when you send one. See "Reporting a picture" below.
• Network metadata. As with any internet service, our hosting provider (Cloudflare) processes your device's IP address and standard request information in order to return responses and to protect the service from abuse. We use this solely to operate and secure the service.

For each device, we store only: the anonymous device ID, the public key, and timestamps for when the device was first seen and last seen.

Purchases

Elsewhere is free to use, and a large collection of city artwork is free. You can also buy artwork for a city that does not have any yet. All payments are processed by Apple through the App Store — we never receive or store your credit-card number or payment details. To unlock purchased content, Apple provides us a cryptographically signed record of the transaction, which we verify and associate with your anonymous device ID so that your content stays available to you.

How city artwork is made

Some city artwork is AI-generated, produced in multiple steps using multiple models.

Nothing about you is included. The AI services involved receive information about the city only — never your device ID, your saved cities, your IP address, or anything else about you or your device.

Reporting a picture

If a scene looks wrong, you can report it from inside the app. We store what you chose from the list, anything you type in the optional description, which artwork you were looking at (the city, its visual style, and the time of day), and your anonymous device ID. We use reports only to fix the artwork.

We do not ask for your name or email, and there is no reply — the fix simply arrives in the app. The description is a free-text box, so please do not type personal details into it: we store whatever it contains.

Children's privacy

Elsewhere does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children under 13. Because the app collects no personal information and contains no ads or social features, it is suitable for a general audience.

Data retention

Because we hold no information that identifies you, there is normally nothing personal to delete. The one exception is anything you chose to type into a report about a picture; if you would like a report removed, contact us at the address below. The anonymous device record persists so that any unlocked content remains available to your installation. If you delete the app, the key stored on your device is removed; reinstalling generates a new, unrelated anonymous identifier.

Your rights (GDPR / CCPA and similar laws)

We do not collect personal data that identifies you, we do not sell or share personal information, and we do not use your information for targeted advertising. If you live in a jurisdiction with data-protection rights and have questions about the anonymous data described above, contact us at the address below.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app evolves. Material changes will be reflected here with a new effective date.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Email [email protected].