Last changed on 12 October 2026.
Orbit keeps your maps on your phone. It has no accounts, no ads and no tracking. It doesn’t send your maps, or anything about you, to us or to anyone else. What leaves your phone is only what you send, as below.
What stays on your phone
- Your maps, with their pictures, their versions and the trash, in Orbit’s own storage, which other apps can’t read.
- Your settings.
- Crash reports, if Orbit ever closes unexpectedly. They say what went wrong and which versions of Orbit and Android you have, never what’s in your maps, and they leave your phone only if you share one.
What leaves your phone, when you choose
- A folder you keep maps in. Orbit writes your maps there as markdown files. Where they go from there is up to the app that holds the folder: your phone’s storage, a memory card, or a sync or cloud app.
- Sharing and exporting. Maps, pictures and files you share go to the app you pick.
- Nearby devices and screens. When you send a map to a device nearby, get one from it, present in a browser or open a map on a computer, Orbit runs a small server on your Wi-Fi and announces itself there with the name you choose in Settings (your device’s name until you change it), so your other devices can find it. Maps sent between your devices are encrypted end to end, so others on the Wi-Fi can’t read them, and both devices show a code to check the map reached the one you meant. It doesn’t go through the internet. Someone on the same Wi-Fi who has the code on your screen can see what you’re showing, the pictures and videos you show them included, and Orbit stops the server when you’re done.
- Casting to a TV, in Orbit from Google Play. When you present on a TV with Google Cast, the map is sent to the TV. Google’s Cast library also sends Google anonymous information about casting, such as when TVs are found and presentations start and end, with your phone’s and Orbit’s versions, to keep Cast working well. Nobody can turn that off; Google’s privacy policy covers it. Orbit from F-Droid, AppGallery or a download has no Google code, and shows presentations on TVs through your phone’s own screen casting instead.
- Talking ideas onto a map. What you say goes to your phone’s speech recognition, which may send it to its maker (such as Google) to turn it into words. Orbit only gets the words.
- Pictures and videos from the web in a map. Your phone gets them from their sites when you open them, and the sites see that it asked.
- YouTube and Vimeo videos play inside Orbit, in YouTube’s and Vimeo’s own players: YouTube’s in its privacy-enhanced mode, so what you watch there doesn’t shape what YouTube shows you, and Vimeo’s told not to track, with no third-party cookies in either. They see what your phone plays, and that it’s played in Orbit, as YouTube asks apps to say, under their own privacy policies. Vimeo protects its videos, so its player may ask your phone’s protected-content system, as a browser’s would, and nothing else of your phone.
- Links open in your browser.
- Backups. If your phone backs up its apps (Android’s backup, or moving to a new phone), your maps and settings are part of it, under your phone’s backup settings. Their versions are left out of online backups, as are pictures and videos that don’t fit in them.
Children
Orbit collects nothing from anyone, children included.
Changes
If this changes, the new version comes with an update of Orbit, with a new date at the top.
Questions
Write to the address on Orbit’s page in your app store.