Privacy Policy

Last updated August 7, 2026

Pulse is a nightlife app that shows live wait times and lets you share ephemeral moments from the venues you're at. This policy explains what we collect, why, and the choices you have. We've tried to keep it plain.

Information you give us

• Account: your email address (from email, Apple, or Google sign-in), a display name, a unique @handle, and a US phone number. Optionally, a profile photo.
• Phone number: collected when you set up your account and used for account recovery and for friends to find you. It is never shown to other users, and is only discoverable by others if you turn that setting on (it's off by default). We may offer to confirm it by SMS; confirming is optional, and you can remove your number at any time in Settings.
• Content you post: photos and captions you share at a venue, and the wait-time reports you submit. Posts are ephemeral — they're removed everywhere 24 hours after you post them.
• Your connections: the friend requests, friendships, and blocks you create.

Information collected as you use Pulse

• Location — when you act, and (only if you opt in) around one venue. When you post or report a wait, the app sends a single GPS reading to confirm you're actually at that venue. That check happens only while the app is open and only when you take that action.
• "Share when I leave" — optional, and off unless you turn it on. If you enable it, Pulse asks for background ("Always") location access and watches a single circle around the one venue you posted at, so your friends can see when you've headed out. It reports only that you left — never where you went. The watch ends when your post does, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings or by revoking the permission in iOS. Declining is a normal choice and the rest of Pulse works exactly the same. Pulse does not follow you between venues and does not build a history of where you go.
• Basic technical data: if the app crashes, diagnostic data (device model, OS version, error details) is sent to our error-monitoring provider to help us fix it.

How we use this

• To run the core features: show live wait times, deliver your posts to the right people, and power friends and discovery.
• To keep Pulse safe: enforce our Content Policy, review reports, and act on violations.
• To send you transactional email (verifying your address, resetting your password). We don't send marketing email.

What's visible to others

• Public posts are visible to people using Pulse. Friends-only posts are visible only to your accepted friends; their images are served through an access check and are never given a public link.
• A friend may see that you're "at" a venue tonight only if you've made a public post there and have the "show me in friends tonight" setting on. Presence checks for posting or reporting never reveal your location to anyone.
• We do not sell your personal information.

Service providers

We use a small set of providers to run Pulse, each handling only what their function needs: Cloudflare (hosting, image storage), Neon (database), Resend (transactional email), Sentry (crash reporting), Apple and Google (sign-in), Expo (delivering push notifications to your device), Twilio (confirming a phone number by SMS, where offered), and Sightengine (automated image review) — every photo you post is sent to Sightengine to be checked against our Content Policy before it goes live. Sightengine processes the image to return a classification; it does not receive your name, handle, email, or location.

How long we keep things

• Posts: removed from every surface at 24 hours; the underlying media is deleted by our cleanup within roughly a day after that.
• Account data: kept until you delete your account.
• Wait-time history: retained in aggregate to power the service; when you delete your account, your reports are disassociated from you (anonymized), not kept linked to your identity.

Your choices

• Delete your account any time, from inside the app (Settings → Delete account). This removes your profile, posts, connections, and the media you've uploaded, and signs you out immediately.
• Control your default post audience, whether you appear in "friends tonight," and whether you're discoverable by handle or phone — all in Settings.
• Report or block other users at any time.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit. Access to friends-only media is checked on every request. We stamp the time of every wait report on our servers rather than trusting device clocks, so a stale time can't be presented as current.

Age

Pulse is intended for adults in nightlife settings and is not directed to children. You must meet the minimum age required in your location to use it.

Changes

We'll update this policy as Pulse evolves and revise the date above. Material changes will be surfaced in the app.