Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-08-21

This policy explains what the Weathering Android app (name.gpm.weathering) does with data. It covers the app only.

The short version: Weathering asks public weather services about the places you chose, and nothing else. There is no account, no server belonging to us, and nothing about you is stored anywhere off your phone.

Who is responsible

Gabriele Proietti Mattia is the data controller for the processing described here. Contact: apps@gpm.name.

What leaves your device, and where it goes

A weather app has to ask somebody about the weather somewhere, and that request necessarily says where. Here is every service it asks, and what the request contains.

Each of those is an independent service with its own privacy policy, and each one governs what it logs about the request — as any web request is logged by whoever answers it. No identifier of yours, no device information and no account travels with these requests: there is no account to travel.

Nothing else is transmitted. Not your alerts, not your settings, not which places you watch, not how you use the app.

There is no push notification service. Alerts are worked out on your phone from data it fetched itself, and no server of the author’s is involved in them at all. That is a deliberate trade: it costs some battery and it means nothing about your alerts exists anywhere but on your device.

This used to say “Weathering has no server”, which stopped being true the day the app gained a way to report a problem — see Writing in, and reading the answers below. That service is reached only when you choose to write in or to read what came back; it has nothing to do with your alerts, your places or your settings, and none of those ever reach it.

Writing in, and reading the answers

Weathering has a report screen — something is wrong, or an idea — and a messages screen where you can read what was written back. Both are optional and neither runs on its own: nothing is sent until you write something and press send.

What a report carries

• What you wrote: whether it is a bug or an idea, the title and the description.
• What makes it fixable: the app’s version, your Android version, the phone’s manufacturer and model, and your language tag. Typed into the message by the app — none of it is read from an identifier.
• A screenshot, only if you pick one. Nothing is captured for you. The picture is shrunk and re-encoded on your phone, and what you see before sending is exactly what leaves it — so if part of the screen has nothing to do with the problem, remove it first.
• Your email address, only if you type one. Without it a report is anonymous and cannot be answered; with it, it is how you get a reply.
• A random identifier for that single report, so that sending twice on a bad connection is not counted as two. It is not a device id, it is not stored on your phone, and a second report gets a different one.

It goes to apps-management.gpm.name, a service run by the author. It is not shared with anyone, not used to build a profile and not published: reports are read, given a state and answered by hand.

No advertising id and no install id, ever — in a report or anywhere else.

Reading the answers, and the key that costs

A report is answered by email, to the address you typed into it. That is the whole of what is needed, and if you never open the messages screen nothing below applies to you.

That screen shows what you sent and everything written back, without going to find the mail. Since your reports are yours, it has to be sure it is you: it asks for the address and sends a six-digit code there. Once the code is checked the app keeps a key, and it is the one thing here that resembles a login, so it is worth being exact about it:

• it hangs from the address you proved, never from your phone — nothing about the device goes into it, two phones that prove the same address get two separate keys, and removing the app throws the key away rather than recovering it;
• it works for Weathering only, and opens nothing in any other app;
• the service stores a one-way hash of it, not the key itself;
• it stops working after a year without use, and Sign out withdraws it at the service and not only on your phone.

Sending a report needs none of this. You can report something having proved nothing, and that report carries no identifier of any kind.

Feature requests and votes

The same screen lists what people have asked for in Weathering, and lets you ask for something and vote. Reading that list costs nothing and needs no address. Asking and voting do, for one reason: one vote per person is a promise, and without something to hang it on the count would mean nothing.

What is published is the request itself, once it has been read. Never your address, and never who voted for what.

What stays on your device

• Your places. The locations you added, by name and coordinates.
• Your alerts. What you asked to be told about, and when they last fired.
• Your settings. Units, radar source and colour scheme, the default model, which notifications may do what.
• A cache of map and radar tiles, bounded and cleared on a schedule — radar imagery is worthless an hour later.

Uninstalling removes all of it, as for any app. Places and alerts are included in Android’s backup so a new phone keeps them; the tile cache deliberately is not.

Location permission

Optional. The app is fully usable with places you pick by name — home, work, wherever — and that path needs no location permission at all.

If you choose “use my location”, the app asks for approximate location, which is several kilometres of precision and plenty for a radar. Precise location is offered separately in Settings and only sharpens the nowcast at your exact spot; the app never demands it.

Background location is never requested. Alerts watch the fixed places you chose, so there is no reason for the app to know where you are when you are not looking at it — and no way for it to find out.

Notifications

Alerts, and the optional permanent notification showing the current temperature, are posted by the app on your phone. Each kind has its own notification channel, so you can silence one without silencing the others from Android’s own settings.

The app checks for rain more often as rain gets closer and less often when there is none, and it shows you which rate it is on. Nothing about that schedule leaves the device.

Diagnostics

The version distributed on Google Play contains optional crash reporting and usage statistics, both switched off unless you turn them on. When enabled they report crashes and anonymous feature counters — never a place, never coordinates, never the contents of an alert.

The version distributed through the F-Droid repository and as a direct APK download contains no such code at all.

What the app never does

• No account and no sign-up, and no password anywhere. An email address only if you type one in yourself — to be answered about a report, to read those answers in the app, or to vote for a request — and never for anything else.
• No account, sign-up or email address.
• No advertising, and no sale or sharing of data with anyone.
• No tracking, across this app or any other.
• No background location, no movement history.
• No reading of your contacts, messages, call history, photos or files.

Legal basis (GDPR)

For readers in the EU/EEA and the UK: Gabriele Proietti Mattia receives no personal data from this app, so there is no processing on that side to which a legal basis under Article 6 would attach. The requests described above are ones the app makes on your instruction, to services that are independent controllers of what they then hold.

Optional diagnostics in the Play build, where you switch them on, rest on your consent, which you may withdraw at any time by switching them off again.

Retention

A sign-in key stops working a year after you last use it, and is withdrawn the moment you press Sign out. Deleting the app removes the copy on your phone.

Reports are kept while they are useful — an open one until it is answered, a closed one as the record of a decision. A screenshot is part of the report it came with and goes when it goes. Ask and yours is deleted, including the address you sent it from.

Gabriele Proietti Mattia holds nothing. On your device, places and alerts remain until you delete them or uninstall the app; the tile cache is bounded and rotates.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data. Because Gabriele Proietti Mattia holds no data about you from this app, there is nothing to access, correct or delete on that side; deleting the local data is done by removing a place or uninstalling the app. You retain the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

Write to apps@gpm.name for any request.

Children

Weathering is not directed at children under 13 and knowingly collects no data from them — or from anyone.

Changes

Material changes will be published on this page with a new date at the top, and significant ones will be noted in the app’s changelog.

Last updated: 2026-08-21