Privacy

Last updated 12 October 2026.

Tipscale weighs the time you spend in vehicles against the steps you take. That is movement data, and it is the most personal thing the app touches. So the design starts from one rule: your movement stays on your devices and in your own private iCloud, and we never see it.

What stays on your devices and in your iCloud

Your steps, your ride minutes, your walking and running time, the days you won and the days you lost, your streak, your weekly scores, your badges. All of it is weighed on your iPhone and your Apple Watch, stored on them, and backed up with them. With iCloud sync on, it is also kept in your own private iCloud, so a new iPhone picks up where you left off; that copy is in your Apple account and we cannot read it. None of it is sent to us or to anyone else, except one thing you choose: in a friend challenge, whether you won each of its seven days goes to the one friend you are playing. See "Friend challenges" below.

There is no account and no sign-in. There is nothing to log in to, so there is no profile of you anywhere to log in to.

There is no location. Tipscale does not ask for Location Services and cannot use them. It tells a car from a walk by how your phone is moving, not by where you are. A ride recorded in Tipscale has a length and a time, and no place.

There is no advertising identifier, no IDFA, no IDFV, and no tracking of any kind. Tipscale does not measure you across other apps or websites, because it has no way to.

There are no third parties. Tipscale uses no analytics service, no crash reporter, no advertising network and no software development kit from another company. The only server it ever speaks to is ours, apart from your own iCloud when sync is on.

iCloud sync

Tipscale keeps your history, badges, scales and settings in the private part of your iCloud account, which only your devices signed in to it can read. We have no access to it. Turn it off in Settings › iCloud sync and everything stays on your iPhone only.

The one thing that is sent, once a day

Once a day, when the app next has something to do, Tipscale makes a single anonymous check-in to our server. It carries exactly nineteen things and nothing else, the last two of them only on Mondays:

• A random identifier this device made up for itself, so that one phone is counted once rather than twice. It is not your Apple Account, not your phone's serial number, not an advertising identifier, and nothing calculated from your hardware. It is a random number kept in your device's keychain.
• The app version and the build number.
• The iOS version.
• The device family, for example "iPhone17". The exact model is not sent.
• Which plan you are on: trial, ended, monthly, annual or lifetime.
• How many days since you installed the app.
• Whether an Apple Watch is paired.
• Whether you have allowed notifications.
• The week you installed the app, for example "2026-W39".
• Whether a Tipscale widget is placed on your Home Screen or Lock Screen.
• Whether the Watch app is installed.
• On how many of the last 7 days you opened the app, a number from 0 to 7.
• A coarse vehicle-time group: none, light, medium or heavy, or unknown when there are too few days to say. It is a group, not a time.
• Which difficulty you play on: easy, standard or hardcore.
• The Coach card's state, as one word, while you have Pro or the trial: learning, early, advice, in progress, ahead, closest day or out of reach.
• Whether Coach's advice rests on a ride time, a day group or neither. Never which ride time and never which days.
• On Mondays only, whether last week was won, lost or level.
• On Mondays only, whether you had set an intention for last week: yes or no. Never which one.

That is the whole of it. It never carries your steps, your rides, your ride times, your minutes, your on-foot time or your location. The only things worked out from your movement are the vehicle-time group, last week's won, lost or level, and the Coach card's state, and none of them carries a number. It is what tells us how many people are using Tipscale, on which versions of iOS, and whether a release has broken something.

The last ten are counted, not kept. Each one only adds one to a daily total on our server, such as "this many check-ins today had a widget placed", and your individual answer is not stored anywhere, not even next to the random identifier. They are usage data that is not linked to you, and they are used for one thing: aggregate statistics that show whether the app is working for people, such as how many come back after a week. A group of fewer than 10 devices is never shown, not even to us.

Notifications, and the token behind them

If you allow notifications, and only then, Tipscale registers an anonymous push token with our server so that app news, and a friend challenge's notifications, can reach you. A push token is issued by Apple and identifies a copy of an app on a device. It does not identify you and it carries nothing about your movement.

Turning off News & updates in Settings, or turning off notifications for Tipscale in iOS Settings, removes your device from that list. Nothing is kept behind. Turning off Challenges clears the token from your challenge.

Friend challenges

A friend challenge is something you start or join, and nothing is sent until you do. While you are in one, our server holds:

• A nickname you type, 1 to 12 characters, shown to your friend. It need not be your name.
• Your time zone, so your seven days are your own local days.
• For each of the seven days, one word: won, lost or not measured. Never your steps, your rides, your minutes or your location: only who won the day, on your own scale.
• A random challenge code, and a fingerprint (a hash) of a random key your phone keeps in its keychain. The key itself is never stored on our server.
• A push token, only if you have allowed notifications and left Challenges on; and, for diagnosing delivery, when your phone last fetched and reported, and whether each notification was accepted by Apple.

None of it is tied to the random identifier of the daily check-in, to your Apple Account or to your device. Your friend sees your nickname and your days; nobody else can, and none of it is used for anything but the challenge. Everything is deleted 30 days after the challenge ends, or 48 hours after an invite nobody accepted runs out. If either of you leaves, the challenge ends for both of you, with no winner.

Health data

If you allow it, Tipscale reads your step count from Apple Health, and on the Watch it reads the steps it can see on your wrist. On the iPhone it also checks your workouts, active energy and walking distance, only to notice that you have been moving so the scale stays up to date; it does not count or keep them. For Walk it off the Watch asks to save workouts, because Apple Watch runs a walk as a workout, and the first time you tap Walk it off on your iPhone, the iPhone asks to start workouts so it can start the walk on your Watch. The iPhone saves nothing to Health; the Watch saves a walk only if you turn on Save walks to Health in the Watch app, which is off until you do. Nothing read from Health is ever sent anywhere.

If you do not allow it, Tipscale counts steps with your iPhone's own pedometer instead. The app works either way.

Motion & Fitness

Ride detection needs Motion & Fitness. Without it Tipscale cannot tell a car from a walk, so it says so rather than pretending your days are car-free. The motion history it reads is held by iOS on your device and is never sent anywhere.

How to turn things off

• Notifications, all of them, and News & updates on its own: Settings inside Tipscale, or Tipscale's own page in iOS Settings.
• Challenge notifications: Settings, Notifications, Challenges. A challenge: leave it from the challenge screen; it is deleted 30 days later.
• Health: iOS Settings, Health, Data Access & Devices, Tipscale.
• Motion & Fitness: iOS Settings, Privacy & Security, Motion & Fitness.
• iCloud sync: Settings inside Tipscale, iCloud sync. The copy already in your iCloud can be deleted in iOS Settings, your name, iCloud, Manage Account Storage, Tipscale.
• Everything, including the daily check-in: delete the app, and its iCloud copy as above if sync was on. Nothing of yours is held by us, so there is nothing else to ask us to delete. A challenge you were in is deleted by itself 30 days after it ends.

When you write to us

The support page has a form, and so does the app under Settings, Help, Contact. If you use either:

• What you type is sent to our server, along with your email address, which is there so we can answer you. A name is optional and the form does not insist on one.
• From inside the app, three more things are attached: the app version, the iOS version and the device family, because the first thing any answer needs is which build you are on. Not your steps, your rides, your minutes or your location. The app tells you it is attaching them, on the form, before you send.
• It is kept to answer you, and then it goes. Once we have replied, the message and your address are deleted 90 days later. If we never manage to reply, they are deleted after 180 days. A nightly job does it, so it does not depend on anyone remembering. While it is there it is never used for anything else, never sold, and never sent to a third party.
• Ask us to delete it through the same form and we will, along with the message it came in.

Nothing here happens unless you write to us. If you never do, there is nothing of yours to keep.

Children

Tipscale is not aimed at children and collects nothing that could identify one.

If this ever changes

If a later version of Tipscale ever sends something new, this page will say so before that version ships, and the list of nineteen fields above will change with it. The app enforces its own list in code: a field added without a decision fails our tests rather than reaching a phone.

Asking us anything

Use the form on the support page, or the one in the app under Settings, Help, Contact. One person reads it.