Whimsy Weather is developed and published by Candan Weng, an independent developer. Contact: candanweng@gmail.com. In this policy, “we” means that developer, and “the app” means the Whimsy Weather iOS app.
The short version
There is no account, no analytics, no advertising, no tracking, and no third-party SDK in the app that reports anything to anybody. We do not build a profile of you and we have nothing to sell.
A weather app cannot be entirely silent, though, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise: to tell you what the weather is where you are, the app has to say where that is. This policy is mostly about that one coordinate — who sees it, what for, and what does not go with it.
What is stored, and where
Everything the app remembers is kept in its own container on your device:
- your settings — units, language, the scene you picked, whether advisories are on, whether notifications are on;
- your saved places, as coordinates and names;
- a note of which Pro product you bought, so the app knows to stay unlocked;
- a snapshot of the latest conditions, in a container shared with the home-screen widget, so the widget and the Live Activity can draw without launching the app.
That is the whole list. There is no account, no sign-in, no history of where you have been, and no copy of any of it on a server of ours.
Location
The app asks for location while in use only. It never asks for background location and cannot read your position when it is not on screen. You may decline and use the app normally — pick a city instead, and it never asks again.
The coordinate is used for exactly one thing: fetching the weather, the astronomy and any warnings for that point. It is not stored anywhere beyond your device, not attached to an identifier, and not used for advertising or tracking of any kind. This matches the app’s privacy manifest, which declares precise location for App Functionality, not linked to your identity, and not used for tracking.
What leaves your device
| When | What | To whom |
|---|
| Every weather refresh | The coordinate you are looking at | Apple, through WeatherKit |
| You search for a place, or the app names the place you are in | The search text, or the coordinate | Apple, through MapKit and Core Location |
| “Official warnings” is on, in a covered region | The coordinate | The US National Weather Service, or MeteoAlarm |
| You buy Pro or leave a tip, or tap “Restore purchases” | The purchase request | Apple |
Your name, your email address, your Apple Account, your device identifiers and your contacts are in none of those requests, because the app never asks for them in the first place.
Apple
The forecast comes from WeatherKit, and searching for a place or naming the place you are in goes through MapKit and Core Location. These are frameworks built into iOS: they are authenticated by the app’s own signature, so there is no API key, no account, and no server of ours in the path. What Apple does with a request is covered by Apple’s Privacy Policy.
The official warning feeds
With Official warnings switched on, the app reads the public feed of the service that covers the place you are looking at, and sends the coordinate in order to ask:
- the US National Weather Service (
api.weather.gov), for the United States;
- MeteoAlarm (
feeds.meteoalarm.org), run by EUMETNET, for Europe.
Both are public feeds. Neither needs a key or an account, and neither receives anything from the app but the coordinate being asked about. Switch the setting off and neither is contacted at all — the app falls back to the advisories it derives from the forecast itself, which needs no extra request.
Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration is credited in the app’s About screen, but this version does not read its warnings: they were only ever going to arrive through the push server described below, which is not part of this release. In Taiwan the app therefore shows its own derived advisories, and says so.
Notifications, and the server we do not run
Advisory notifications are raised locally, on your device, by the app itself while it is running. Nothing is sent anywhere for them, no push service is involved, and if you decline notification permission everything else in the app works normally.
The app can also be built to subscribe to a server that watches the forecast and pushes a warning while the app is closed. This version is not. No server address is compiled into it, the switch for it is not in the app, and no subscription is ever created — which is why there is no push server in the table above. If a future version ships that feature, this policy will be updated before it does, and it will say exactly what the subscription contains.
Purchases
Pro, and the tips, are handled entirely by Apple’s App Store through StoreKit. We never see your payment details, your Apple Account or your name, and we receive no information from Apple that identifies you. The app keeps only a local note of which product you bought. Apple’s handling of the transaction is covered by Apple’s Privacy Policy.
Data we receive from Apple
If you choose to share crash and usage data with developers in Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements, Apple may show us anonymised, aggregated crash reports and sales figures through App Store Connect. We cannot identify you from them, and we do not combine them with anything else. That is Apple’s reporting, not collection by the app.
Third parties
We share no data with any third party for any purpose of their own. There are no advertising networks, no analytics providers and no data brokers involved in this app, and nothing is ever sold. The only parties in the picture are the ones named above — Apple and the two official warning feeds — and each receives only what it needs to answer the question being asked.
Retention and deletion
There is nothing of yours for us to keep, because we run no server that this version of the app ever talks to.
Everything lives on your device for as long as the app is installed. Deleting the app removes your settings, your saved places and the widget snapshot with it.
Children
The app is not directed at children, and collects nothing from anyone including children. It has no user-generated content, no messaging, no social features and no links out to the open web other than the ones named in this policy and the data-source credits inside the app.
Your rights
Under the GDPR, the CCPA and comparable laws you have rights to access, correct, export and delete your personal data. Because we hold nothing about you — no account, no profile, no history — there is nothing for us to disclose, correct or export; your settings and places are already entirely in your hands, and deleting the app removes them. Questions about these rights go to candanweng@gmail.com, and we will answer within 30 days.
Changes
If this policy changes, the updated version is published here with a new date. Material changes will also be noted in the app’s release notes.
Contact
Questions about this policy: candanweng@gmail.com
