Last updated: 5 August 2026
Waterline is developed by nchanted (contact: info@nchanted.eu). This policy explains what the app does with data. The short version: Waterline runs on your device, and nothing leaves it unless you deliberately join an online session or send a workout to your own Strava account.
Waterline saves a small settings file on your phone or tablet containing:
The file itself is stored in the app's private storage and is never uploaded. Uninstalling Waterline deletes it.
Two of those settings do leave your device, but only while you are actually rowing online: your display name and your country flag are sent to our server and shown to the other people on your course. That is what they are for — the Row Online section below sets out exactly what is sent. Everything else in the list stays on your device and is never transmitted.
Your workout data — distance, split, stroke rate, power, elapsed time — is read from your rowing machine, shown on screen, and discarded when the session ends. Waterline keeps no workout history and creates no account.
Waterline uses Bluetooth Low Energy for one purpose: to find your rowing machine and read its live workout data. It shows only devices that identify as rowing machines, and it connects only when you tap one.
On Android 11 and below, the operating system requires apps to hold the location permission in order to scan for Bluetooth devices at all. Waterline declares it for that reason only, restricted to those Android versions (maxSdkVersion="30"). Waterline does not request, read, derive, collect, store or transmit your location on any Android version. On Android 12 and above the Bluetooth scan permission is declared with the neverForLocation flag, which tells Android to withhold location information from the app.
This section changed. Waterline used to leave hosting to you: you typed in a server address, and whoever ran that server was responsible for it. That is no longer how it works. We now operate the server, so the responsibility is ours and this policy covers it.
Row Online does nothing unless you tap it. When you do, the app connects to our relay server and sends, several times a second, for as long as you are rowing:
Everyone else on that course sees the same about you — that is the feature. There is no chat, no messaging, no photo or file sharing, no account and no password.
Nothing, after you disconnect. The relay holds your session in memory only. It writes no database and no data files. Close the app, lose signal, or let us restart the process, and every trace of you is gone. There is no profile to delete because there is no profile.
Two qualifications, stated plainly:
connections are printed to the server's journal, which retains them for a limited period as part of normal operation. That log includes IP addresses, which are used to enforce per-IP connection limits and to investigate abuse.
wss:// (TLS). There is nooption to connect to anything else — the address is fixed in the app, so nobody can be directed to an untrusted or cleartext endpoint.
Waterline asks for a name in your profile. It is stored on your device, and it is also the name other rowers see when you row online — the two are the same name, so you are not asked twice.
That means it is public to everyone on your course whenever you use Row Online. Use whatever you are happy for strangers to see; there is no requirement that it be your real name, and we would rather it was not. Names are length-limited and filtered for slurs and abusive words before anyone else sees them.
If you never tap ROW ONLINE, the name never leaves your device.
Your profile also lets you pick a country, so a small flag shows next to your name when you row online. It is optional and off by default — until you choose one, your country is "Global" and nothing about it is sent.
If you do pick one, it is public to everyone on your course in the same way your name is, and it is stored on your device alongside your other settings.
This is not your location. Waterline does not look up where your device is, and does not check or infer your country from your connection — it is simply the flag you chose from a list. Pick whichever one you want, change it whenever you like, or set it back to Global to remove it.
Some boats you meet are simulated, not people. They are named so this is obvious. They have no connection to any real person's data.
Waterline can send your finished workouts to your own Strava account. It is off until you set it up, and it never happens by itself.
Connecting. Tapping CONNECT STRAVA in your profile opens your browser at strava.com, where you sign in — the app never sees your Strava password. Strava then gives us a token that lets Waterline upload workouts to your account. That token, and your Strava display name, are stored on your device.
Uploading is per workout. After each piece you decide, on the summary screen, whether to send that one. Nothing is uploaded unless you tap the button, and pieces rowed in demo mode (no machine connected) are never offered at all.
What a workout contains: its date and duration, the distance you covered, and one sample per second of distance, stroke rate and power — plus a title and a line of statistics. It contains no location data: the app deliberately sends no GPS track, because a rowing machine has no position.
Where it goes and how long it stays. It goes to Strava, into your account, and it stays there until you delete it — in Strava, under your control. That is different from everything else in this policy: unlike Row Online, this is not temporary. Strava's own privacy policy governs it once it arrives: <https://www.strava.com/legal/privacy>.
Our server's part in it. Strava requires a secret that cannot safely live inside an installed app, so the sign-in step and the upload pass through our server. It stores nothing: your token exists there only for the seconds it takes to hand it to the app, and workouts pass straight through to Strava without being written down or kept.
Stopping. DISCONNECT in your profile deletes the stored token and any pieces waiting to upload. You can also revoke Waterline from Strava's own settings, at <https://www.strava.com/settings/apps>. Neither touches workouts already in your Strava account — those are yours to keep or delete there.
Waterline is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.
device at all.
your saved best times, and any stored Strava token.
app will still run in demo mode.
<https://www.strava.com/settings/apps>, at any time.
If this policy changes, the date at the top will change with it, and the updated version will be published at the same address.
Questions about this policy: info@nchanted.eu