Orbit SIPrivacy
What stays on your phone
- Your trips, recent places, settings, the spot where you parked and any parking photos.
- Your calendar, if you let Orbit read it for travel days. It's read on your phone and not sent anywhere.
- Orbit's own Natural voice runs on your phone.
Your location
Orbit uses your location while you navigate, including in the background during a drive so directions keep working with the phone locked or on CarPlay. To do its job it sends a location (never your name or account) to:
| Service | What for |
|---|---|
| TomTom | Search, routes, live traffic, EV charging stops and charger availability |
| Stadia Maps | Backup search and routing |
| Apple (Weather, Maps) | Weather where you are and along your route; some place details |
| Map and data servers | Map tiles (OpenFreeMap), radar (Iowa Environmental Mesonet), signals and rail crossings (OpenStreetMap), weather alerts (National Weather Service) |
Your account (optional)
You can use Orbit without an account. If you create one (with email or Sign in with Apple), Orbit's server keeps your name and email, your Orbit miles, what you've unlocked in the Garage, places you choose to save, and road reports and votes you make. Reports show where a hazard is and, only if you turn it on, your first name and last initial.
Sharing your arrival
When you share a trip, the people with the link see where you are, your destination and when you'll arrive, until you arrive or stop sharing. The link stops working after that.
The assistant
When you talk to Orbit, your iPhone turns your speech into words (Apple's speech recognition). With Smarter answers turned on, what you asked, plus the road you're on, your trip and the nearby places or weather Orbit looked up, goes through Orbit's server to Anthropic, whose Claude model writes the answer. Anthropic doesn't use this to train its models. Your name and account are not sent. With Smarter answers off, Orbit uses Apple's on-device model and nothing leaves your phone for the answer. Orbit counts how many questions you ask each day to keep the service fair.
Premium voices
When you use a premium voice, the words to be spoken (a direction or an answer) are sent to OpenAI to turn into speech. The sound is saved and reused for anyone who needs the same words, without who asked. Orbit counts how much each person uses each day.
Flights and trains
When you follow a flight, Orbit's server checks it for changes and can send you a notification and a Lock Screen update; it keeps the flight number and your notification token until the trip is over. Flight data comes from AirLabs; train times from public schedules.
Diagnostics
While Orbit is being tested it records timing information about the assistant and the car screen (for example how long an answer took), without the words said, to fix problems. This is turned off in the released app.
Who runs Orbit's server
Orbit's server and database run on Supabase, in the United States. We don't sell, rent or share your information for advertising, and we don't use it for anything but Orbit.
Your choices
- Location, microphone, speech recognition, calendar and notifications can each be turned off in iPhone Settings › Orbit SI.
- Smarter answers can be turned off in Orbit's settings at any time.
- Delete your account in the app (Settings › Account › Delete account) or by email. See what's deleted.
Children
Orbit is meant for drivers and isn't directed to children under 13.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes we'll update the date above, and tell you in the app if the change is significant. Questions: support@orbitsi.app.