Groundsheet Privacy Policy

Last updated: 3 November 2026

Groundsheet is a map app for field work. This policy tells what the app keeps on your device, what can leave your device, and how you control it. In this policy, "we" means Nicholas Soden, the developer of Groundsheet.

Summary

• Groundsheet has no account, no advertising, no analytics, and no tracking.
• Groundsheet contains no third-party code that collects data.
• Your maps, tracks, pins, photos, voice notes, and settings stay on your device. We do not receive them.
• Data leaves your device only when you share or export it, when you open a place in another map app, when you open a page of our website or write to us, or when the app downloads an icon that a file you imported names (see Network requests and Our website and email).

What the app keeps on your device

• The maps that you import (PDF files, including geospatial PDFs), and the map images that the app makes from them to show them quickly.
• The layers that you import or make: KML and KMZ files, pins, lines, areas, and tracks, with their names and notes.
• The photos and voice notes that you add to pins.
• Your settings, for example units and appearance.
• The GPS log, only if you turn it on in Settings › Diagnostics. It is a file of your positions for a field test of the app. It is off by default.

Files that you share to Groundsheet from another app go into a folder on your device that only Groundsheet and its share extension can use. The app removes each file from that folder after it imports it.

Location

Groundsheet uses your location to show your position on a map, to sort your maps by distance in the Maps list, and to record a track. When you record a track, the app continues to get your location while it is in the background or the device is locked, until you stop the recording. iOS shows that the app uses your location during that time.

The app stores your position, with its altitude, only where you choose: in a track that you record, in a pin that you add at your position, and in the GPS log while it is on. Your location is not sent to us or to anyone else.

Camera, photos, and microphone

• Camera: used only when you take a photo to add to a pin.
• Photos: Groundsheet uses the system photo picker. The app gets only the photos that you pick, and it has no access to the rest of your photo library.
• Microphone: used only while you record a voice note for a pin. You start and stop each recording.

Network requests

Groundsheet does not send your data to us. The app makes one kind of network request on its own: a KML or KMZ file can name an icon picture on the web, for example on a Google server or the server of a map publisher. When you import such a file, or when the app shows a pin whose picture it has not stored yet, it downloads that picture from the address in the file, then keeps it on the device. If that server sends the request on to another server, the app follows it.

That server gets a normal web request. The request contains your IP address, the address of the picture, the name and version of the app and of the iOS network software, and any cookies that the same server set before. It does not contain your maps, your positions, or your other content. The company that runs the server handles the request under its own privacy policy.

Our website and email

This policy and the support page are on our website, groundsheet.app. Cloudflare hosts the website. When you open a page of the website, also from Settings in the app, Cloudflare gets a normal web request: your IP address, the address of the page, and the name and version of your browser. The website has no analytics, no tracking, and no cookies. Cloudflare handles the request under its own privacy policy.

Our email, support@groundsheet.app, is in Apple's iCloud Mail. When you write to us, Apple receives and stores your email, and Apple handles it under its own privacy policy. We get your email address and what you write. We use them only to answer you, and we do not share them.

When you share, export, or open another app

• Share and export: when you share or export a map, a layer, a track, a pin (its name, its coordinate, and an Apple Maps link), a photo, a voice note, or the GPS log, it goes to the app or the person that you choose.
• Copy: when you copy a coordinate, it goes to the clipboard of your device. With Universal Clipboard, Apple can move it to your other devices.
• Other map apps: "Open in Apple Maps" sends the coordinate of the map center and the name of the map to Apple Maps. "Open in Google Maps" sends the coordinate of the map center to Google Maps, in its app or on its website. Apple and Google handle that information under their own privacy policies.

Backups

A backup of your device, in iCloud or on a computer, can include the data of Groundsheet, according to the settings of your device. Apple handles iCloud backups under its own privacy policy. We do not receive these backups.

Crash reports

Groundsheet has no crash-reporting code of its own. If you let your device share analytics with app developers (iOS Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements), Apple can give us crash reports and usage statistics about Groundsheet. Apple states that this information does not identify you. You can turn this off at any time in the same place.

How long data stays, and how to delete it

• Your data stays on your device until you delete it in the app, or until you delete the app. Deleted areas, lines, and tracks are different: see the next item.
• An area, a line, or a track that you delete from its sheet goes to Recently Deleted, so that you can restore it. The app keeps a recovery copy of it on your device, with its name, its points, and for a track the times and the heights of its GPS positions. The copy stays after you restore the item, and after you delete its map, until you delete the app.
• To delete the GPS log, use Settings › Diagnostics › Delete GPS Log.
• When you delete the app, iOS removes all its data from the device. Copies that you shared, exported, or backed up are not removed.

We do not receive the data of the app, so we have no copy of it to give you, change, or delete. If you wrote to us, you can ask us to delete your emails.

Your choices

• You can allow or stop access to location, the camera, and the microphone at any time in iOS Settings › Groundsheet. A feature that needs an access does not work until you allow it again.
• You can turn the GPS log off at any time in Settings › Diagnostics.

Children

Groundsheet does not collect personal data from anyone, including children.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we publish the new version on this page with a new date. If a future version of Groundsheet sends data off your device in a new way, this policy will say so before that version is available.

Contact

For a question about privacy in Groundsheet, write to Nicholas Soden at support@groundsheet.app.