Privacy policy
The short version. Your rowing data lives on your iPad or iPhone. If you use iCloud, it also goes to your other devices through your own private iCloud database. There is no Row Smarter account. No analytics, no ads, no tracking. A workout only leaves your device when you ask for a share link. Racing is optional, and it never sends your heart rate.
Who is responsible
Row Smarter is made by Yottabyte Solutions B.V. in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. That company is the controller of your personal data, as the law calls it. Questions about this policy or about your data go to privacy@rowsmarter.app. A real person reads that mailbox.
What stays on your device and in iCloud
Every session you row, every stroke, your saved workouts, your training plans and your settings are kept on your iPad or iPhone. If you are signed in to iCloud, the app syncs them so you see the same library on your other devices. Sessions, workouts and plans go through your private CloudKit database. Settings are a few kilobytes and go through your private iCloud key-value store. Heart rate readings recorded during a session are part of that session, so they sync too.
We never see any of this. iCloud is yours, Apple runs it, and Row Smarter has no server sitting in between. The app does not send a workout to us unless you create a share link.
Delete a session in the app and it disappears from the synced library on all your devices. Deleting the app itself removes the local copy, but does not by itself remove a copy already in iCloud. That copy goes when you delete the app's data in your iCloud settings.
Files you import
You can open a ROWFILE/1 archive, a TCX or FIT file, or a SmartRow CSV export from Files or iCloud Drive. The app reads a file only after you pick it. It shows you what is inside, imports the sessions you confirm, and puts them in the same library as everything else. The original file never gets uploaded to us.
Share links
Sometimes you want to show a row to a friend or a coach. Creating a share link uploads a copy of that one workout to the Row Smarter server. The copy is the whole session, including heart-rate readings and beat-to-beat heart data when you recorded them. Anyone with the link can download it, and the server deletes it automatically after thirty days. So think for a second before you paste a link somewhere public.
Apple Health
If you allow it, Row Smarter reads a few things from Apple Health: your weight, height, date of birth, biological sex, resting heart rate and heart rate samples. It uses them for one thing only, which is doing the maths. Calories, training zones and your maximum heart rate all come from these numbers.
If you allow it, the app also writes your finished rows back to Health, with distance, active energy and heart rate. That is how a row shows up in the Fitness app.
Health data is never used for advertising and never sent as part of a race. The heart rate that was recorded during a session is part of that session, so it can end up in your private iCloud library and in a share link you create yourself. Declining Health access leaves the rest of the app fully usable.
Live coaching
The coach looks at the numbers already on your screen and speaks. It does not listen. There is no microphone use, no recording, and nothing about the coaching goes anywhere.
Racing, if you want to
Racing is off until you open the race screen. Opening it asks the server which races are running, and that is the first racing request the app ever makes. Stay out of the race screen and there is none.
When you join a race the app sends the race server:
- The name you type for that race.
- A random identifier the app makes up for you. It is not tied to your Apple ID or to your device.
- Where you are in the race while you row: time, distance, split, power and stroke rate.
- For a private race, the join code. If you host one, a host token stays on your device so you can manage it.
- App Attest data. This is an Apple mechanism that lets our server check the request comes from a genuine copy of the app, and not from a script pretending to be a rower.
That is what lets the other rowers see you on the course. Heart rate and every other health value are deliberately left out and are never transmitted.
Races do not hang around. On the live race service, races expire 24 hours after finishing, or after 24 hours and 30 seconds without activity if unfinished. Every race expires no later than 7 days after creation. Expired races become unavailable; hourly cleanup removes them and their results from the live database.
What we do not collect
- No analytics and no usage tracking of any kind. There is no analytics or advertising code in the app.
- No advertising identifier, and no tracking across apps or websites.
- No account, no email address, no password.
- No location. The app never even asks for it.
- No payment details. Apple handles subscriptions, and we never see your card.
This website
This site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics. It reports aggregate, cookieless traffic, sets no cookies and does not track visitors across sites. We use it to see roughly how many people visit, and that is all it can tell us.
Permissions the app asks for
The current TestFlight build uses Bluetooth to read your rowing machine and your heart rate strap. The app also offers optional local Bluetooth broadcasting: only when you enable it, nearby apps or devices can pick up the rowing measurements from your SmartRow connection. This broadcast does not include heart rate or other health data and does not upload those measurements to an internet service. Keep Row Smarter in the foreground while broadcasting.
Public racing connects to race.rowsmarter.app over the internet. Local network access is only used if you point the app at a self-hosted race server on your own local network. You can say no to Bluetooth and to local network access. Without Bluetooth the app cannot read your machine, of course, but it will still open.
Your rights
Your rowing data is in your hands. You delete a session in the app, and it is gone from the synced library. Deleting the app removes its local copy, but does not by itself remove a copy already in iCloud. Health data you manage in Apple's Health app.
If you want race data on our server deleted, write to privacy@rowsmarter.app and tell us the display name you used. Under the GDPR you can also ask what we hold about you, have it corrected, or have us stop processing it. And if you feel we got something wrong, you can complain to your data protection authority.
Children
Row Smarter is not made for children and we do not knowingly collect anything from them.
Changes
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If the change matters, we say so in the release notes too.