New York Subway Map & Routes — Privacy Policy
New York Subway Map & Routes plans journeys on the New York City subway. The whole network — every station, every service and the fare — is built into the app, so most of it works with no connection at all. This policy explains the exceptions.
Summary
- There are no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking of any kind. We have no server, and we never receive anything from your phone.
- The app asks for one permission: approximate location. It is requested only when you open a screen that uses it, and the app works without it.
- Three screens use the internet — live service status, weather, and the street map. Everything else works offline.
- What you save stays on your phone. Uninstalling the app deletes it.
Location
The app declares approximate location
(ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION) and nothing more precise. Precise location is
deliberately blocked: a neighbourhood is enough to tell you which station is closest,
and a doorstep is not ours to ask for.
It is used on Nearby stations and Find a place, and only after you tap the button that asks for it. Your position is read, used on your phone to sort a station list that is already built into the app, and then discarded. It is never stored and never sent anywhere — there is no code in the app that transmits it.
If you decline, both screens keep working. You simply do not get the blue dot.
When the app uses the internet
Live service status
Delays and disruptions come from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's public service-alerts feed. The request carries no parameters and nothing about you: the whole network's alerts come back in one response and the app sorts them on your phone.
Weather
Conditions come from the National Weather Service (weather.gov), a United States government service. The app requests the forecast for a fixed grid covering New York City, not for your position.
The street map
If street tiles are enabled in your build, map images come from MapTiler, drawn from OpenStreetMap data. No personal data is sent, but you should know what any online map inevitably reveals: each request names the square of the map being drawn, so the tile provider can see, from your device's IP address, roughly which part of the city you are looking at. That is true of every online map, and it is the reason the rest of this app is built to work without one. Map images are cached on your device, so areas you have already viewed keep working with no signal.
None of these services receives your location, your saved places, or anything you have typed. Each has its own privacy practices, which this policy does not cover.
What is stored on your device
- Saved places — your home station, your work station and any favourites you add.
- Cached map images for areas you have viewed.
All of it sits in the app's own private storage. Nothing is backed up to the cloud — Android's automatic backup is switched off for this app — so the data exists only on the phone you are holding.
No advertising, no analytics
This version contains no advertising SDK and no analytics SDK. Nobody is counting your screens or profiling your journeys. If a future version adds advertising, this policy and the Play Data Safety disclosure will both be updated before that version is published.
Children
The app is not directed at children under 13. Since it collects nothing, there is nothing held about a user of any age.
Your rights and deletion
- Clear a saved place from the station's own screen, or from the home screen shortcut.
- Revoke location at any time in Android Settings → Apps → Permissions. The app keeps working.
- Clearing the app's data in Android Settings erases the saved places and the cached map images.
- Uninstalling removes all of it.
We hold no copy of anything, so there is nothing for us to delete on your behalf. Write to support@nivarostudios.com with any question.
Data sources
Station, route and schedule data from the MTA subway GTFS feed and the MTA public service-alerts feed. Weather from the National Weather Service. Street map tiles, where enabled, from MapTiler, drawn from OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors).
This is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or an official product of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New York City Transit, or any other agency or operator. The MTA name, logo, official subway map and route symbols are trademarks of the MTA and are not used in this app.
Grievance redressal
India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 requires a published point of contact for privacy questions and complaints. For every Nivaro Studios app that is:
Grievance Officer, Nivaro Studios
support@nivarostudios.com
Delhi, India
We acknowledge a grievance within 48 hours and aim to resolve it within 30 days.
Withdrawing consent
There is no consent to withdraw, because nothing is collected to consent to. If you would like the app to stop holding anything at all, clear its data in Android Settings or uninstall it — that removes everything, immediately and permanently, with no request to us needed.
If there were ever a breach
Your data stays on your phone, so there is no server of ours holding it and no database of ours to breach. In the unlikely event of an incident that nonetheless affected you, we would publish it on this page and notify affected users within 72 hours of becoming aware of it.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the effective date above changes with it, and any change that affects what the app collects will ship alongside the app update that introduces it.