GYST — Privacy Policy
Effective date: October 23, 2026
Last updated: October 23, 2026
GYST is a personal productivity app for iPad, Mac, and iPhone. It has no accounts, no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking of any kind. The developer of GYST cannot see your data. There is no GYST server; nothing you write is sent to us, because there is no “us” to send it to.
This policy explains where your information is actually kept, the few cases where the app contacts someone else on your behalf, and what you can do about it.
1. Information GYST collects about you
None. GYST does not collect, transmit, or store any personal information for the developer’s benefit. Specifically, GYST does not:
- ask you to create an account or sign in;
- include analytics, crash reporting, attribution, or advertising software;
- use tracking identifiers (such as the Advertising Identifier), cookies, or device fingerprinting;
- build a profile of you, or share, sell, rent, or trade information about you with anyone.
2. Where your content is stored
Everything you enter — tasks, projects, learning items, destinations, watch-list entries, wellness sessions, notes, tags, and Workshop sketches — is stored on your device.
If you are signed in to iCloud and iCloud Drive is enabled, that content also syncs through Apple’s CloudKit to your own private iCloud database, so your devices stay in step. This is your iCloud account and your storage. The developer has no access to it and cannot read, recover, or delete anything in it. Apple’s handling of that data is governed by Apple’s own privacy policy.
If you are not signed in to iCloud, GYST works exactly the same way; it simply does not sync.
GYST also indexes some of your content into Spotlight so you can find it from system search. That index stays on your device.
3. When GYST contacts someone else
GYST is not a silent app — several features work by fetching something from the internet. In each case below, the request is made on your device, at your instruction, and the app sends only what that feature needs. None of these services are given your name, your account, or an identifier for you, and GYST never sends them the rest of your content.
| Feature | What is sent, and to whom |
|---|---|
| Weather and golden hour | Your location coordinates, and the coordinates of destinations you have saved, rounded to about a kilometre, to Open-Meteo (open-meteo.com) — a third-party weather service — and, if that is unavailable, to Apple’s WeatherKit. Sent only while a weather feature is on screen. |
| Surf, tide and buoy readings | For a destination you have set up as a surf spot: its coordinates, rounded to about a kilometre, to Open-Meteo’s marine forecast (marine-api.open-meteo.com); and a station number only — no coordinates, nothing about you — to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for tide predictions (tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov) and the latest buoy reading (ndbc.noaa.gov). The stations are chosen on your device from lists built into the app. |
| Place names | When you use “use current location” in Settings, or a destination’s coordinates need a readable address, those coordinates go to Apple’s geocoding service to be turned into one. |
| Maps links you paste | When you paste a shortened Google Maps link (maps.app.goo.gl) into a destination, GYST requests that link from Google to expand it and read the place’s coordinates — the link you pasted, nothing else. |
| News | A request to each news feed you are subscribed to — the sources GYST ships with, plus any you add yourself. These are ordinary web requests to those publishers; no information about you is included beyond what any web request necessarily reveals (such as your IP address). |
| Shows & movies | The title you search for, to TMDB (themoviedb.org), to find the show and its streaming availability, and requests for the artwork it returns. |
| Books | The title, author, or ISBN you enter, to Open Library (openlibrary.org), to fill in book details. |
| Learning links | When you paste a video or web link, GYST requests that page (for example from YouTube) to read its title and thumbnail. |
| Workshop | ⚠️ The code you write in the Workshop is sent to third-party services to be compiled and previewed — CodeSandbox’s build services and public package CDNs such as jsDelivr, which also supply the libraries your sketch imports. This is how the Workshop’s live preview works: the build does not happen on your device. Anything you type into the Workshop editor should be treated as leaving your device. Do not put secrets, credentials, or private information in a Workshop sketch. |
Location. GYST asks for location access only while you are using the app (“When In Use”), and uses it to sort destinations by distance, to compute sunrise/sunset and golden-hour times, and to fetch local weather. Your location is never stored anywhere but your own device and your own iCloud, and is never sent anywhere except as described in the weather and place-name rows above. You can refuse or revoke this permission at any time in system Settings; the rest of the app continues to work.
Notifications. If you allow notifications, they are scheduled and delivered on your device. No notification content is sent to a server.
Links you open. When you tap a link — to a map, a trail guide, a streaming provider, a repository, and so on — your device hands it to your browser or to that app. GYST itself does not contact those services (the one exception is a shortened maps link you paste in, covered in the table above), and what happens next is governed by their policies and your browser’s settings.
4. Children
GYST is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from anyone. It has no social features, no user-to-user communication, and no way to submit information to the developer.
5. Keeping and deleting your information
Because the developer never receives your information, there is nothing for us to retain or delete. You are in control of all of it:
- On your device: deleting the app removes its local data.
- In iCloud: you can remove GYST’s synced data from your iCloud account through system Settings → your name → iCloud, or by turning iCloud off for GYST.
- Third-party services: requests made to the services in § 3 are handled under those services’ own privacy policies — Open-Meteo, Apple, NOAA, TMDB, Open Library, YouTube/Google, CodeSandbox, jsDelivr, and the publishers of any news feeds you subscribe to.
6. Your rights
GYST holds no information about you, so there is no data for you to request, correct, export, or have erased from us — the data is already, and only, in your hands. If you are covered by a privacy law such as the GDPR or the CCPA, the practical effect is the same: the developer is not in possession of your personal information, and does not sell or share it, because it never receives it.
7. Security
Your content is protected by your device’s own protections and, when syncing, by Apple’s iCloud security. Requests to the services in § 3 are made over encrypted connections (HTTPS).
8. Changes to this policy
If GYST gains a feature that changes any of the above, this policy will be updated before that feature ships, and the “Last updated” date at the top will change.
9. Contact
Questions about this policy or about GYST’s handling of information: publicservicebureau@gmail.com