ForecastSpread Privacy Policy

Updated 6 October 2026

The short version

ForecastSpread has no accounts, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. The developer keeps nothing about you: the app's relay passes weather requests on without storing them, and the developer only hears from you if you send a problem report or feedback yourself.

Your location

If you allow it, the app reads your location while it's open to show the weather where you are. It never reads your location in the background.

Your current location and saved places stay on your iPhone. The app's widgets and your Apple Watch get them from the app, on your own devices.

Weather services

To fetch weather, the app sends the coordinates of the place you're looking at, or the words of a place search, to the services that make the data:

• Open-Meteo, through the ForecastSpread relay below: forecast models, history, air quality, marine and place search
• US National Weather Service and NOAA: alerts, station and airport readings, map layers and hurricane forecasts
• Iowa Environmental Mesonet: the latest satellite picture when NOAA's satellite loop is unavailable
• MeteoAlarm: European warnings (it receives only which country's list to download)
• Environment and Climate Change Canada: Canadian warnings (it receives a small area around places in or near Canada)
• Esri ArcGIS: the wildfire map
• Amazon Web Services (NOAA's and ECMWF's open data): GOES satellite lightning files, HRRR future radar and forecast cloud pictures, and the HRRR, GFS and ECMWF rain totals on the map (it receives no location, only which files to send)
• Apple Maps: the map itself and place names

Like any website, these services also see your IP address. Each handles requests under its own privacy policy. The widgets and background refresh fetch weather for your places the same way.

The ForecastSpread relay

Requests to Open-Meteo go through ForecastSpread's own relay, a small server the developer runs on Cloudflare. It adds the app's Open-Meteo access and limits how often each phone can ask. The relay sees what Open-Meteo sees: the coordinates or search words and your IP address. It passes each request on without storing or logging it, and its request counts last about a minute.

So that only the real app can use the relay, the iPhone app proves itself with Apple's App Attest. This makes a random key on your iPhone, and the relay keeps that key's public half, a counter and the dates it was made and last checked. The key isn't tied to your name, Apple Account, places or weather requests. Deleting the app deletes the key from your iPhone. Cloudflare runs the server under its own privacy policy.

On your iPhone

Settings, saved places, cached forecasts and forecast-checking history are stored on your iPhone. Deleting the app deletes them.

Notifications are planned on your iPhone too. No server knows your places or when to alert you.

Purchases

Apple handles subscriptions through the App Store. The app only learns which plan is active.

Problem reports and feedback

Report a problem opens an email with the app version and build, device model, iOS version, plan, language and time zone filled in, plus any crash and hang reports on your iPhone. Send feedback opens an email with only the app version and build and your plan filled in. Nothing is sent until you send it, and you can change it first.

Crash and hang reports

When the app crashes, freezes or is closed by iOS, iOS gives the app a report through Apple's MetricKit. The app keeps the last few on your iPhone for up to 30 days. A report says where in the app's code it stopped, with the iOS version and device model. It holds no places, forecasts or account details. Reports leave your iPhone only if you attach them to a problem report or share them from Support.

Separately, if you share analytics with app developers in the iOS Settings app, Apple may send crash reports to the developer through App Store Connect.

This website

This website is hosted on GitHub Pages and loads nothing from other sites. It has no cookies, analytics or sign-up forms. GitHub sees visitors' IP addresses to serve the pages and handles them under its own privacy policy.

Children

ForecastSpread doesn't collect personal information from anyone, including children.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here and in the app with a new date.

Questions

Write to callanhardin@gmail.com.