Skylark

Effective date: October 17, 2026

Skylark is made by Rubotic, Inc. (“Rubotic”, “we”, “us”). It is a private map for a family or a small group of people, called a flock: the people in a flock see where the others are, and nobody else does. Because Skylark is built on sharing your location, this policy explains exactly what the app collects, why, who can see it, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. Skylark is offered on the App Store in the United States.

The short version

Your location is shared only with the flocks you join, after you allow it on your own phone, and with anyone you send a guest link to, until that link ends.
No ads, no analytics, and no tracking. We don't sell your data or share it for advertising, and there are no advertising or analytics tools in the app.
Location history is kept for 2 days on the free plan and 30 days with Skylark Premium (plus one day), then deleted automatically. Other data has its own limits, listed below.
Our servers are Google Firebase in the United States. Apple handles purchases and delivers notifications.
You can go off the map, blur your position, download your data, or delete your account, all in the app.
Skylark is for ages 13 and up.

What we collect, and why

Your account. Your e-mail address and password, which you use to sign in. The password is handled by Firebase Authentication, which stores it in a form we can't read. We use your e-mail address to sign you in, to confirm it is yours, and to reset your password; it is not shown to the people in your flocks. We also keep your first name (required), your last name (optional), your units, time zone and language, and the version of the Terms of Use you accepted and when. Sign in with Apple is not offered at this time.

Your birthday. Before an account is created, Skylark asks for your birthday. Your phone keeps it only until sign-up finishes, and sends it once, with the sign-up request, so our server can check that you are 13 or older; we don't store your birthday or your age. If the date shows you are under 13, no account is created, and your phone (not our servers) remembers that for 24 hours.

Photo and phone number (optional). If you add a profile photo, the app shrinks it to 512 pixels and removes its metadata (such as where it was taken) before uploading it. If you add your phone number, it is shown to the people in your flocks so they can call or text you; we don't verify it or text it.

Your location. Once you allow it in iOS (“While Using” or “Always”), the app sends your position to our servers: coordinates, accuracy, time, and, when the phone reports them, altitude, speed, heading, the kind of movement (still, walking, driving or flying) and your battery level. We use it to show you to your flock, to send arrive and leave alerts for spots, to build your history of stops and trips, to detect drives and landings, and to answer guest links and help alerts. From it we also keep: your stops and trips, the spot you're at, “I'm here” check-ins (your position and an optional place name), the general area you choose when you blur, the last position your flock sees when you go off the map, and the centres of places you often stop at, so the app can suggest saving them as spots. If you turn off Precise Location for Skylark, the positions are approximate. When you're off the map for every flock, and no guest link or help alert is running, Skylark stops recording your location.

Motion and driving. With your permission, the app uses your phone's motion activity to tell when you're driving, walking or still, which saves battery and detects drives. During a drive the phone notices driving moments: hard braking, rapid acceleration, high speed, and phone use (the phone unlocked or handled while moving). The sensor readings stay on your phone. What is uploaded is the drive: its start and end times and places, its route, distance and speeds, and the time, place and kind of each driving moment. You can turn drive detection off in the app. If you and your flock's admin both turn on morning glance, your flock also sees when you first moved that day and when you last moved.

Crash check (off unless you turn it on). Crash check uses your phone's motion sensors and location on your phone. When it notices a possible crash, it creates an alert with your position and your speed just before it.

Help alerts. When you send a help alert (or a crash alert goes out), we keep a record of it: when it started and ended, where you were when it started, and your answer (for example “I'm OK”).

Phone status. Your battery level, whether it is charging, whether Low Power Mode is on, and sharing problems (for example “Location permission is off”), so your flock understands why a position may be old.

Your device. A random install ID the app creates, your iPhone model, iOS and app versions, the push notification token and Firebase installation ID, your notification settings, time zone and language. We use these to keep your account signed in on one phone at a time, to deliver notifications with the right local times, and to ask you to update when an old version can no longer work. We don't use them for diagnostics or advertising.

What you create in flocks. Flock names; spots (name, position, size, icon and an optional address, which can come from an Apple Maps search; a spot such as “Home” may in effect be your address); late alerts (who, which spot, what time and which days); the chirps you send (each is one of twelve fixed notes, such as “On my way”); your guest links; and your notification choices for each flock.

Emergency contacts. Skylark has a place for emergency contacts: people you choose (a name and phone number, picked from your contacts or typed in) who would get a text message when you send a help alert. They are readable only by you, never by your flock. Text messages are not switched on yet: at this time you can't add an emergency contact, and Skylark sends no text messages. Before texts are switched on we will update this policy, including the name of the company that sends them.

Purchases. Skylark Premium is bought through Apple; we never see your payment card. We keep the subscription's record: the product, its status, trial, renewal and expiry dates, the flock it covers, Apple's signed transaction information, and a random purchase ID that links it to your account.

Messages you send us. If you e-mail us, or use “Report a problem with someone in this flock” (which writes an e-mail from your own Mail app), we receive what you write and your e-mail address. A report names the flock and the person by an internal ID. We use it to answer you and to act on the report.

Server logs. Our servers log each request the app makes: which function was called, your account ID, your IP address and the time; never your coordinates. We use the logs to keep the service running and to limit misuse (for example, repeated wrong invite codes are counted per network).

What we don't collect

Skylark contains no advertising, no analytics, no crash-reporting tools and no tracking of any kind: we don't use the advertising identifier, and we don't combine your data with other companies' data. The app doesn't ask for access to your contacts, photo library, camera or microphone: when you pick a photo or a contact, iOS hands the app only the one item you chose. Searching for a spot and looking up place names and addresses use Apple Maps on your phone; those requests go to Apple, not to us.

One thing sits outside the app: if you have turned on Share With App Developers in your device's Analytics settings, Apple may share anonymous crash and usage statistics with us. Apple collects that under its own privacy policy, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings.

Who can see what

The people in your flocks. Nobody can join a flock without an invite code, and everyone in the flock is told when someone joins. Members of a flock can see:

your name, photo and phone number (if you added them);
where you are now, as you allow that flock to see it: your live position (with speed and heading while you move), a general area while you're blurred, or where you were when you went off the map;
your battery, charging and Low Power Mode, sharing problems, and the spot you're at;
your stops, trips, routes and drives (with their driving moments) within the flock's history window, and only from the time you and they were both members;
activity: arrivals and departures at spots, check-ins, chirps, landings, low battery, finished drives, and when you join, leave, blur or go off the map;
your help alerts and crash alerts, with your location.

Time you spend off the map or blurred for a flock is never shown to that flock, now or later. Anyone in a flock can lift your blur for that flock; you're told who did. A flock's admins can remove members, and the flock keeps a list of removed people (first name and date) so they can't rejoin without an admin's say.

Help alerts override your sharing choices. While your help alert is active, every flock you're in sees your live location, even if you're off the map or blurred, until you end the alert. If a crash alert goes out because you didn't answer, flocks you're off the map for see only where it happened.

Only you see your emergency contacts, your own data download, and your account details. A late alert is seen only by the person who set it and the person it's about.

Guest links. If you create a guest link, anyone who has it can open a web page that shows your first name, your true live position (even if you're off the map or blurred), how fresh it is, your battery, and how fast you're moving, until the link ends (at most 24 hours; you can stop it sooner). The page loads nothing from other companies. If the person viewing it taps “Open in Apple Maps” or “Open in Google Maps”, that company receives the coordinates.

Rubotic. We can technically access the data on our servers. We look at it only to keep Skylark running, to answer your requests, to act on reports of misuse, or when the law requires us to.

Nobody else. We don't sell your personal information, and we don't share it for advertising. We disclose it only to the service providers below, who process it for us, or if the law requires us to.

Service providers

Google (Firebase and Google Cloud) runs Skylark's backend for us: the database, the server functions and photo storage, in Google Cloud's us-central1 region in the United States; Firebase Authentication, which signs you in and sends the e-mails that confirm your address and reset your password; and Firebase Cloud Messaging, which sends notifications. We don't use Google Analytics for Firebase or Crashlytics.
Apple handles App Store purchases and subscriptions under its own terms and privacy policy, delivers notifications to your iPhone, and provides Apple Maps in the app.

Notifications pass through Google and Apple and contain what they say, for example “Alex got to Home”. No other company receives your data from Skylark. Text messages and other e-mail from Skylark (beyond the sign-in e-mails above) are switched off; before either is switched on we will update this policy and name the provider.

How long we keep it

Location history (positions, stops and trips): 2 days on the free plan or 30 days with Skylark Premium, plus one day, set when each position is recorded. After Premium ends, history recorded under it stops being visible at once and is deleted within 31 days.
Drives: the route and driving moments for 3 days (free) or 31 days (Premium); the drive's summary (times, distance, counts, start and end points) for 22 days (free) or 43 days (Premium), so weekly recaps can include it.
Places you often stop at (for spot suggestions): 14 days after your last visit.
Activity (arrivals, departures, check-ins, chirps and the rest): 7 days.
Help and crash alerts with their position: 90 days in your own record; 7 days in each flock, and removed from a flock when you leave it.
What a flock sees of you now: until you leave that flock. A battery reading older than an hour is no longer shown.
Your profile, spots, late alerts and settings: until you change or delete them, leave the flock, or delete your account. A flock is deleted when its last member leaves; a trip flock is deleted 7 days after it ends.
Guest links and invite codes: 7 days after they expire.
Device records: until you sign out, or 60 days after the phone was last in touch.
Your data download: 24 hours.
Subscription history (Apple's notifications about it): 365 days.
Server logs, with IP addresses: 30 days.
Misuse counters (kept under scrambled keys, not names): from one hour to 7 days.
Backups of the database: up to 7 days.

Deletion at the end of a period is automatic and can run up to a day late; the app stops showing the data as soon as the period ends.

Your choices

Permissions. Location, motion and notifications are each asked for on their own and can be changed in iOS Settings at any time. With “While Using” instead of “Always”, you still see your flock.
Off the map and blur. Go off the map or blur for one flock or all of them, any time. A line on the map always says who can see you.
Switches. Drive detection, crash check, morning glance, spot suggestions and each kind of notification can be turned off in the app.
Edit or remove your name, photo and phone number, delete spots you created, stop guest links, and leave any flock.
Download your data: You tab > Privacy > Download my data gives you one file with your profile, flocks, the spots you created, emergency contacts, the location history still kept for you, your stops and trips, drives and alerts.
Delete your account (next section).

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to know what we hold about you, to get a copy, to correct or delete it, and to opt out of its sale, sharing for advertising, or targeted advertising (we do none of these). Use the tools in the app or write to us; we may need to confirm the request comes from you, and we won't treat you differently for using these rights.

Deleting your account

In the app: You tab > your name > Delete account (also under You > Privacy). You sign in again to confirm, then type DELETE. Straight away, Skylark ends any open alert, takes you out of every flock (its members see that you left), and removes from our live database and storage your profile, photo, location history, stops and trips, drives, alerts, emergency contacts, guest links and device records. Spots and flocks you created stay for the other members, no longer linked to you.

What remains for a while: copies in our backups (gone within 7 days), server logs (30 days), a note that the account was deleted (its internal ID and the date, for 35 days, so that restoring a backup can't bring it back), and short-lived technical records under scrambled keys (up to 7 days). The record of an App Store subscription is kept without any link to you, because Apple keeps sending updates about it, and its history is deleted after 365 days. Deleting your account does not cancel Skylark Premium: cancel it in your Apple Account settings. If you can't use the app, write to us and we'll help.

Security

The app talks to our servers and to Apple only over encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS). Access rules on the server let only the members of a flock read that flock's data, and no app user can read anyone's raw location history directly. Your account can be signed in on one phone at a time, and signing in on a new phone ends the session on the old one. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your data and to keep as little of it, for as short a time, as Skylark needs.

Children

Skylark is not for children under 13, and they can't create an account: the app asks for a birthday before an account exists, and under 13 no account is created. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that an account belongs to a child under 13, we will disable and delete it; if you believe that has happened, write to us. Accounts for children are not offered at this time. If we offer them in the future, we will publish a children's privacy section before they are available.

Where your data is

Skylark is offered on the App Store in the United States, and your data is stored and processed in the United States.

Changes to this policy

If a future version of Skylark changes what data is handled, for example by switching on text messages to emergency contacts, e-mail from Skylark, accounts for children, Sign in with Apple, or a map on the guest link page, we will update this policy and its effective date before the change takes effect.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data, or a request about your rights: info@rubotic.io (Rubotic, Inc.). See also the Skylark Terms of Use and Skylark support.