Privacy policy

Effective November 1, 2026

Who we are

Headwater is made by ADK Interactive ("we" or "us"). This policy covers the Headwater app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, and the website at getheadwater.app.

Headwater has no account server, no advertising trackers and no public social feed. ADK Interactive doesn't receive your logbook through an app account, and doesn't use your Health data for advertising.

Information stored on your devices

Headwater stores your profile, the crew and contact details you choose, boats, saved waters, paddle history, route coordinates, timestamps, notes, ratings, authorized health readings, photos and videos on your devices. These records power logging, discovery, recording, recovery and the other features you choose to use.

Recording journals, recovery copies and pending transfers protect a paddle when the app is interrupted or a paired device is briefly unavailable. Pending Apple Health exports may keep the workout and route data needed to retry a save. Saved map overviews, guidebook choices, preferences and cached forecasts are also stored on the device. Device backups may include app data, depending on your backup settings.

Location, maps and weather

With your permission, Headwater uses your location to record paddle routes, find nearby waters, and support maps and forecasts. Recording can continue while your device is locked or the app is in the background. You can change location permission at any time in your device's Settings app.

Forecast requests send the selected location's coordinates to Apple Weather. Apple also provides maps, place search, time zones and place names. These services follow Apple Weather's privacy information and Apple Maps' privacy information. Cached forecasts keep their location and time so the app can show how old they are. Weather guidance is informational only and doesn't mean conditions are safe for paddling.

Apple Health and Watch recording

With your Health permission, Headwater uses paddle workouts, workout routes, distance, speed, heart rate and energy burned for recording, workout summaries and recovery. Saving paddle workouts and GPS routes to Apple Health is on by default on iPhone and Apple Watch. You can turn it off in Headwater's Workouts settings on each device. The phone and Watch settings are separate, and the choice applies from the start of each paddle. This setting never overrides Apple's Health permissions.

Apple Watch runs a live HealthKit session during recording, even when workout saving is off, so health samples may still be collected during that session. Turning saving off doesn't delete existing Health information. You can review or revoke Health permissions in Apple's Health settings.

Watch recordings and their health readings transfer to your paired iPhone so they appear in your logbook. Health information may also appear in a data export you choose to create. Headwater never uses Health information for advertising and never sells it. Apple manages the Health store and its syncing under your Apple settings and Apple's privacy policies.

Photos, videos and nearby crew

Headwater uses the camera, microphone or Photos library only with your permission and only for features you choose. Optional paddle-time collection can gather eligible library media from during a paddle. Photos imported from your library stay private until you approve them for sharing.

When you link and verify nearby crew, Headwater exchanges your profile and paddle details with those crew members. Eligible in-app photos and videos from a shared paddle can transfer automatically, and may include the author, capture time and capture location. Bluetooth handles nearby invitations, and local networking handles media transfer, with no account server involved.

Crew members keep their own copies. Deleting a file, unlinking crew or deleting Headwater's local data can't remove copies another person has already saved or exported. Check who is in a shared paddle and which media you approve before sharing.

Guidebook requests

When you ask us to cover a new region, Headwater sends ADK Interactive the region or water name you type, the country you pick, and any optional detail you add. If you choose an area on the map and confirm it, the request also includes that area's center, rounded to about 1 km (0.01°), and its radius, rounded to the nearest kilometre. This is an area you choose, not your device's location. You can request a region by name without choosing an area. Map browsing and search are provided by Apple Maps under Apple's privacy terms.

Requests are sent to our service hosted by Cloudflare. They don't create an account, don't include your name, email, Apple ID, Health data, routes or photos, and don't sign you up for anything. We use them only to decide which guidebooks to build next, and sending one doesn't promise coverage or a date.

To keep requests genuine, Headwater uses Apple's App Attest to prove a request came from an unmodified copy of the app. This creates a random key on your device; the service stores that key's public half and a random key identifier. The identifier isn't linked to you or your Apple ID. It is attached to your requests for 30 days so we can limit each install to a few requests a day, and keys unused for 12 months are deleted. Abuse limits also use your network address briefly at Cloudflare's edge; we don't store IP addresses with requests or in our logs.

We keep the region name, detail and selected area for 12 months, then delete them. After that we keep only the country, the request's random ID and time, a fingerprint (hash) of what was sent, and our own planning notes, so totals stay accurate. Your unsent drafts stay on your device for up to 30 days unless you send or discard them. Nothing is sent in the background.

If you email us instead, we use your message and email address only to read and answer it.

Export, deletion and retention

Headwater keeps your logbook until you remove records or delete local data. Recovery files and pending transfers can keep copies beyond the visible log entry until a recovery or retry finishes. In Settings > Privacy & data you can export your records and media as a ZIP archive, or delete data held by the iPhone app. Exports can contain sensitive location, health and media information, so keep them private and delete them when you're done.

Local deletion removes the iPhone app's logbook, profile, crew links, boats, media, recording and recovery files, pending Health exports, saved maps and preferences. It doesn't remove Apple Health workouts or samples, Watch data, Photos library copies, exports, device backups, or copies held by other paddlers. Manage those through the relevant app, device or backup settings. After deletion, a small request counter with no forecast locations may remain to enforce weather service limits.

This website

getheadwater.app doesn't use cookies, analytics, advertising or embedded third-party content. It uses a small script only to remember your light or dark theme choice in your browser's local storage. Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, processes your IP address and basic request details (such as the page requested and your browser type) to deliver the site and protect it from abuse, under Cloudflare's privacy policy. We don't use that information to identify or profile visitors.

Children

Headwater isn't directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from children. Because the app keeps your logbook on your device, we don't receive children's logbooks, routes or health readings.

Your choices and rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or get a copy of personal information we hold about you, and to object to or limit how we use it. Your Headwater logbook lives on your devices rather than on an ADK Interactive server, so the in-app controls in Settings > Privacy & data are the direct way to see, export or remove it. We can't identify you from a guidebook request, so we can't look one up by person, but you can contact us with any question or request and we'll help where we can. We don't sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Changes to this policy

If we change how Headwater handles your information, we'll update this page and its effective date before the change ships. For significant changes, we'll also note them in the app's release notes.

Contact us

Email support@getheadwater.app with privacy questions or requests. If you send us a support attachment or export, it contains whatever is in that file, so share only what's needed.