Privacy Policy

GulfLine (“we”, “us”) is a Gulf Coast weather app published by RowLabs. This policy explains what the app uses, what our servers keep, and for how long.

Location

With your permission, GulfLine uses your device location to forecast for the specific place you’re standing rather than a city average. Unlike most weather apps, that means your coordinates are sent to our servers — that’s what produces a forecast for your side of town instead of a ZIP-code one.

Coordinates are rounded to four decimal places (about 11 metres) before they leave the app. That’s far finer than the 2.5 km forecast grid the answer resolves to, so the forecast is identical while the request is less precise than your device knows.

Forecast requests are not logged against your install. We count how many requests a device makes each day, for rate limiting and abuse prevention, and that count records no coordinates. If you deny location access, the app falls back to a default Gulf Coast location and says so.

You can grant or revoke location access at any time in your device’s Settings.

No accounts, and what identifies your install

GulfLine has no sign-up, no email, and no password. On first launch the app generates a random identifier for that installation and exchanges it for its own API key. The identifier is not derived from you or your device — it’s a random string whose only job is to attach your subscription and your saved watches to the right install. Deleting the app and reinstalling produces a new one, and the old install becomes unreachable.

What our servers store

We keep as little as the features allow. Tied to your install, that is:

• Plan watches — if you ask us to watch a window (“Saturday 6–10 a.m. at my spot”), we store that window’s coordinates, label, activity and time zone, plus the last verdict we calculated, so we can re-check it and tell you when the answer changes. Deleting a watch deletes the record.
• Notification registration — if you turn on alerts, we store your push token and the location the alerts are for, along with which triggers you chose and your pool and lightning distance settings. Turning notifications off removes it.
• Subscription history — plan changes, the product purchased and its expiry, so entitlements survive a reinstall and can be audited.
• Daily request counts — a number per install per day. No coordinates, no request contents.

Weather data we collect and archive — forecasts, observations, alerts and our own past predictions — is about the weather, not about you. It contains no personal information and is kept so that every forecast we publish can be checked against what actually happened.

Notifications

Alerts are opt-in and delivered through Expo’s push service to Apple’s notification servers. Safety alerts — lightning, severe weather — are never gated behind a subscription. You can turn any trigger off in the app, or notifications off entirely in your device Settings.

Ask

When you use “Ask”, your question and the current conditions for your location are sent to our server, which runs a language model we host ourselves to phrase the answer. Your question is not sent to a third-party AI provider. The engine decides the weather and safety answer; the model only puts it into words.

Purchases and subscriptions

GulfLine Pro is an optional subscription. Purchases are processed by Apple and subscription status is managed through RevenueCat, which is told your install’s random identifier so it knows which installation a purchase belongs to. We never receive or store your payment details.

Crash reporting

The app can send anonymous crash diagnostics to help us fix defects. It carries no account, no location and no personal data. You can turn it off in Settings › Appearance › Share crash reports, and when it’s off nothing is initialised or sent.

On your device

Your settings, saved places, home-screen layout, recent answers and cached forecast data live on your device, not on our servers. Deleting the app removes them.

Maps

Radar and storm-track maps are drawn with Apple Maps, which receives the map area you’re viewing in order to render it. That’s handled by Apple under its own privacy policy.

Website

gulfline.app uses no analytics, no cookies and no trackers. Visiting this site leaves nothing behind.

Third-party services

The app and its servers rely on these, each governed by its own privacy policy:

• Apple — app distribution, payment processing, push delivery and maps
• RevenueCat — subscription management
• Expo — push notification delivery and over-the-air app updates
• Sentry — crash diagnostics, when you leave them enabled
• NOAA / National Weather Service, NOAA CO-OPS and NDBC, and Open-Meteo — the weather, tide, buoy and lightning data behind every forecast. These are queried by our servers for a forecast grid cell, not by your device, and they are not told who asked.

Data sharing

We do not sell your personal information and we do not share it for advertising. Data goes to the providers above only as far as making the app work requires.

Children

GulfLine is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect their data.

Your choices

• Grant or revoke location access in your device Settings.
• Turn crash reporting off in Settings › Appearance.
• Delete a plan watch to delete the location stored with it.
• Turn notifications off to remove your push registration.
• Delete the app to remove everything stored on your device.
• Email us to have the records tied to your install deleted — send the install id from Settings › About so we can find it.

A note on safety

GulfLine reports what the weather is doing and is explicit about when it doesn’t know. It is not a life-safety system. Never rely on it in place of official National Weather Service warnings or the instructions of local emergency authorities.

Changes

We may update this policy as the app changes. Material changes appear here with a new “last updated” date.

Contact

Questions, or a deletion request? Email privacy@gulfline.app.