RoadMate — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2 September 2026

RoadMate is a voice copilot for driving. It is built to work on your device: your voice and your questions are captured, transcribed, and answered locally, and are never sent anywhere.

This policy describes exactly what data RoadMate touches, what stays on the device, and the few cases where something leaves it.

The short version

• Your voice is never recorded to a file and never leaves the phone. It is transcribed on-device (Vosk) and discarded.
• Your questions and the assistant’s answers never leave the phone. They are generated on-device (Gemini Nano via AICore where available, otherwise a small open model run locally through MediaPipe).
• RoadMate has no account, no login, no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking.
• Some builds enable crash reporting (Firebase Crashlytics). When it’s on, it uploads a diagnostic report only if the app crashes — stack trace, device model and OS version, and app state at the moment of the crash. It never sends your voice, your questions, the answers, your location, or your contacts. Builds without a Firebase config file have no crash reporting at all.
• Beyond crash reports, the app makes network requests for only two things, both described below: an optional weather lookup, and a one-time download of the local-AI model file.

What stays on your device

Data	Why	Where it goes
Microphone audio	Speech-to-text while you are asking something	Processed in memory on-device by Vosk, then discarded. Not written to storage, not transmitted.
Your question / the spoken answer	To answer you	Processed on-device (AICore / a locally-run model).
Conversation history and things you tell RoadMate to remember (“recuerda que…”, places you search for, your home/work location if you save it with “esta es mi casa”, “X es mi hermano”)	So replies build on what was just said and match what you’ve told it	Stored locally in an on-device database (Room). Never transmitted. History older than a week is deleted automatically; “olvida lo de…” drops a remembered preference.
Approximate & precise location	Trip context for answers, centring the map, and biasing a “find a petrol station” search	Stays on-device, except it is sent to the weather provider when the weather feature is enabled (see below).
Contacts	To turn “call Ana” into a phone number	Read locally at the moment you ask. Not uploaded, not stored by RoadMate.
Onboarding state, the date of the last daily greeting, and your answer-length preference	So the intro/greeting show once and answers match how you like them	Stored locally (Android DataStore). Never transmitted.

When data leaves your device

0. Crash reports (only in a Firebase-configured build, only after a crash)

If the build has Firebase Crashlytics enabled (it needs a google-services.json config file that is not part of the source tree), a crash report is sent to Google’s Firebase servers the next time the app is launched with a connection. The report contains: the stack trace, the device model and Android version, and app/thread state at the time of the crash, plus a random per-install identifier Crashlytics uses to group reports. It does not contain your voice, transcripts, answers, location, contacts, or any prompt content. See Firebase’s own privacy and data-handling terms for how Google processes it. A build without the config file does not include Crashlytics at all.

1. Weather (optional)

If the build you are running has weather enabled, RoadMate sends your approximate coordinates to OpenWeather (api.openweathermap.org) to get the current conditions for your prompt context. No other data is included. If weather is not configured, this request is never made. See OpenWeather’s own privacy policy for how they handle requests.

2. Local-AI model download (one time, Wi-Fi only)

On a device without built-in on-device AI (AICore), RoadMate downloads a small, openly-licensed language model file once, over HTTPS, from Hugging Face’s public content CDN (huggingface.co). This is a plain download of a static file: it carries no account, no identifier, and none of your query data. As with any HTTPS request, the host can see standard connection metadata (your IP address, the file requested, timestamp). The download runs only on an unmetered (Wi-Fi) connection and only once.

Requests handed to other apps you already have

When you ask RoadMate to do something another app owns, it hands that app an Android intent and nothing more:

• “Find …” → a geo: search string is passed to your installed maps app.
• “Call …” → a phone number is passed to the dialer.
• “Open Spotify / YouTube Music” → a launch request is passed to that app.
• Map navigation → a google.navigation: intent is passed to Google Maps.

RoadMate does not query any places, directory, or maps API itself.

Text-to-speech

Answers are spoken using Android’s built-in TextToSpeech. Which engine handles that, and whether it runs fully on-device, depends on the text-to-speech engine configured in your system settings.

Permissions and why they are requested

• Microphone (RECORD_AUDIO) — to hear your questions, and, in the background, to detect long silences for rest reminders.
• Location (ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION, ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION) — trip context, the map, and location-biased searches.
• Internet / network state (INTERNET, ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE) — the two requests above, and to check for Wi-Fi before the model download.
• Foreground service / microphone foreground service (FOREGROUND_SERVICE, FOREGROUND_SERVICE_MICROPHONE) — to keep the rest-reminder silence monitor running while the app is in the background.
• Notifications (POST_NOTIFICATIONS) — the ongoing notification that the background monitor is required to show.
• Phone (CALL_PHONE) — to place a call when you ask.
• Contacts (READ_CONTACTS) — to resolve a name to a number.

Children

RoadMate is not directed at children and collects no data from anyone.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the “last updated” date above will change and the new version will be published in this repository.

Contact

Questions about privacy: pedro13087@gmail.com