Privacy
What Waywell records, what it never records, and what you can ask us to delete.
Last updated 19 September 2026 · Applies to the Waywell beta
The short version. Waywell has no accounts and never asks for your name, email or address. Your saved journeys and settings stay on your phone. To plan a route it must send where you are going to transport and mapping services. To improve the routes it suggests, it records what it offered you and what you chose — under a random id, with places rounded to rough areas rather than exact addresses. You can ask us to delete all of it.
Who we are
Waywell is a London journey planning and navigation app. For UK data protection law, Waywell is the data controller for the information described here. Contact: [email protected].
What stays on your phone
This is stored on your device only. It is not sent to us and we cannot see it:
- Journeys you save, and the names you give them
- Your recent destinations
- Your settings — spoken directions, Lime preferences, transport filters
- A cached copy of your most recent route search
- A random rider id, described below
Deleting the app removes all of it.
What is sent when you plan a journey
Planning a route means asking other services how to get from one place to another, so your start and destination are sent to them. These are precise, because routing cannot work otherwise. They are not attached to a name or an account.
| Service | What it receives | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Transport for London | Start and destination coordinates, stop identifiers | Transit routes, live times, line status, fares |
| Waywell's routing server | Coordinates of walking and cycling legs | Street-level walking and cycling paths |
| OpenStreetMap routing | The same coordinates | Used only when our own server is unreachable |
| Photon, postcodes.io | What you type into search, or a postcode | Turning a search into a place on the map |
| Stadia Maps | Which map tiles your screen needs, and your IP address | Drawing the map |
| Cloudflare | Requests for Waywell's own place data | Shops, stations and landmarks on the map |
Each of these is an independent company with its own privacy policy. We do not send them your name, your rider id, or anything that links one journey of yours to another.
What we record about how you use the app
With your agreement, given on the notice shown when you first open Waywell, we record how journeys are chosen and how they go. This is what lets the app learn which routes are worth suggesting.
It is handled by PostHog, on servers in the European Union, and covers:
- A random rider id generated on your phone. It is not your name, email, phone number or your device's own identifier, and it says nothing about you.
- Rough areas, not addresses. Locations in these records are rounded to cells of roughly 500 metres. We can tell a journey started somewhere in Streatham. We cannot tell which building.
- The journeys you were offered and the one you picked — times, changes, modes of transport, and the fares shown.
- How the journey went — whether you arrived, how long it took, whether the app had to reroute.
- Your review answers, if you fill one in. This includes any comment you write, word for word, so please do not type anything there you would not want us to read.
- Technical context — app version, which build you are on, your platform and operating system version.
What we never collect
- Your name, email address, postal address or phone number
- Your contacts, photos, calendar or messages
- Exact home or work coordinates in our records
- Payment details — Waywell never takes a payment
- Anything through an account, because there are no accounts
Location
Waywell asks for location so it can show where you are and guide you as you travel. During an active journey it can keep receiving your location while your screen is locked — this is what lets walking directions keep up when the phone is in your pocket. It stops when the journey ends. Your location guides you and is used to work out the rough area recorded with a journey. It is not tracked in the background when you are not navigating.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or stop using it. You can withdraw your agreement to analytics at any time.
Email [email protected] and we will act on it. Because there are no accounts, please send the request from a device with Waywell installed and tell us roughly when you started using the app, so we can find the right records.
Deleting the app removes everything held on your phone immediately. Records already sent to us are deleted when you ask.
If you think we have handled your information badly, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
How long we keep it
Analytics records are kept for up to 24 months and then deleted. Anything on your phone stays there until you delete the app.
Children
Waywell is not aimed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the notice in the app is updated too, and you are asked again rather than assumed to agree.