45. Legal and contact#
Everything formal sits in one place: under About this app. On the iPhone you find the entry at the very bottom of the More tab, on the iPad in the sidebar. The screen shows the app icon, the name Etappe and below it the line Version … (build …) — the two details you will be asked for first whenever you get in touch with a question.
Below it comes the App group with three rows:
| Row | Content |
|---|---|
| Platform | iOS / iPadOS |
| Data | On device + private iCloud |
| Backup | JSON export under Backup |
That is the whole data concept in short: Etappe is a purely on-device app with no server of its own, and you make your own backup (Backup, in detail in Your data).
45.1 Legal notice and privacy#
The Links group contains three rows, each of which opens the website in your browser:
- Website — etappe.app, the home page introducing the app.
- Legal notice — the mandatory information under Section 5 of the German Digital Services Act (DDG).
- Privacy — the privacy policy for the app and the website.
The browser that opens is the one you have set as default in iOS.
The Legal notice lists the service provider with postal address, the contact details (email and phone), the person responsible for content under Section 18 (2) of the German State Media Treaty (MStV) and the VAT identification number. This manual deliberately does not repeat those details — they could change, and then you would be reading an outdated address here. The linked page is always what counts.
The privacy policy covers the website and the app separately. For the website: no cookies, no tracking, no content from third-party servers; when you visit, the usual server log files are generated at the hosting provider. For the app, essentially what you also find in Your data:
- Trips, places, photos, documents and the journal are stored locally on your device.
- Optionally, Etappe syncs them between your devices via your personal iCloud (iCloud sync).
- There is no user account, no registration and no sharing with third parties.
- Location and photo access are used only when you open a feature that needs them.
- When you open a map, the displayed map section is transmitted to Apple — with no map open, nothing at all (Map).
- Etappe downloads the signed country file from etappe.app only when you explicitly tap to do so (Countries).
- Etappe fetches exchange rates from frankfurter.dev (reference rates of the European Central Bank) — only when you tap “Refresh Rates” or import countries. Nothing is transmitted beyond what every request technically requires (IP address); no data from the app (Your data).
- The purchase of the full version runs exclusively through the App Store; all that stays on the device is whether it is unlocked, plus the date of the first launch in the keychain (Trial and full version).
The section on your rights names access, rectification, erasure, restriction, data portability and objection under Articles 15–21 GDPR, as well as the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
45.2 Fonts, maps and licenses used#
The third group is called Licenses & acknowledgments and is short, because Etappe gets by with very little third-party material.
| Entry | Details |
|---|---|
| Font “Geist” | © Vercel · SIL OFL 1.1 |
| Map data | Apple Maps © Apple Inc. |
Geist is the typeface the entire app is set in. It is licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 and is bundled with the app; the row is tappable and leads to the source project on GitHub. The website uses it too — self-hosted there, without embedding a font service.
Map data comes from Apple Maps (MapKit). Every map in Etappe — the trip map, the location picker, the route preview — is an Apple map; the map data comes from Apple Inc. and its data providers.
All of this is laid out in more detail on the Legal screen under More → Help. It names the data sources in use — the map data from Apple Maps, the signed country file that Etappe downloads from etappe.app only when you tap to do so, and the exchange rates from frankfurter.dev, fetched only on “Refresh Rates” or after a country import — and the full license notice for the font: “Copyright 2024 Vercel, in collaboration with basement.studio”, SIL Open Font License 1.1, with links to the license text and to the source project on GitHub.
On trademarks: Apple, the Apple logo and “App Store” are trademarks of Apple Inc. Etappe has no connection with Apple beyond the app being distributed through the App Store.
45.3 Feedback and support#
There is no support button in the app. The way to send feedback is through the contact details in the Legal notice — that is where you find the email address and phone number.
Before you write, two places are worth a look:
- More → Help in the app. That is where the Getting started assistant for the guided setup lives, along with the links Guide on etappe.app and Website.
- FAQ and troubleshooting in this manual. Many questions — entries that have disappeared, sync, storage — are answered there.
If that does not help, make your report easy to follow. Useful are:
- version and build from the About screen,
- the device and the iOS or iPadOS version,
- what you did and what happened instead,
- for display problems, a screenshot.
Requests for future versions are as welcome as bug reports. What is already known to be under construction is listed in What’s next — a note on how much one of those items matters to you still helps with setting the order.