Privacy policy
Updated 4 November 2026
In short
No login, no ads, no tracking. Sanathana Yatra is free and made by one person.
Your visits, journal, photos, saved temples and birth star stay on this phone. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you export a backup yourself.
Location is used only when you tap “Check in with GPS”, “Near me” or “Start from my location”: one reading, in the foreground, never stored on a server.
The map is drawn on the phone; it needs no connection. Temple photos load from Wikimedia Commons when you open them.
A state’s detail map downloads only when you ask: from Google Play, or, for an app installed from elsewhere, from Sanathana Yatra’s map files on GitHub. Like any website, the server sees the phone’s internet address.
Who makes Sanathana Yatra
Sanathana Yatra is a free Android app about the history and stories of Hindu temples in India. It is made by an individual developer in India, not by a company or an organisation. For any question about privacy, write to praveen.dev.mys@gmail.com.
What Sanathana Yatra doesn’t do
- No account or login, and no server of its own.
- No ads, and nothing for sale: no pujas, offerings or bookings.
- No analytics, tracking or crash reports.
- Nothing about you is sold or shared with anyone.
What stays on your phone
Sanathana Yatra keeps these in its own private storage on your phone, where other apps can’t read them:
- Your visits: their dates, whether you checked in with GPS, and your journal’s notes, companions and photos.
- Your saved temples, trip checklists, birth star and settings. For the birth star, only the star you pick is kept; no birth date, time or place is asked.
- The offline map, and the state maps you download.
None of this is sent to the developer or to anyone else.
Location
Sanathana Yatra asks Android for your location only when you tap “Check in with GPS” on a temple, “Near me”, or “Start from my location” in the trip planner. Android asks for your permission the first time. The app then takes one reading while it is open, never in the background.
- A check-in compares the reading with the temple’s position. Only the fact that the visit was checked in is saved, not where you were.
- Near me and the planner use the reading while you look at the results, and don’t save it.
Directions open Google Maps with the temple’s position. Sanathana Yatra doesn’t add your own position to the link.
Photos
When you add photos to a visit, you pick them from your gallery or take them with the camera. Sanathana Yatra copies them, made smaller, into its own storage on the phone. They are never uploaded.
Reminders, the widget and narration
- Festival reminders, if you turn them on, are set on the phone by Android, which asks your permission first. There is no notification server.
- While the Today’s Darshan widget is on your home screen, the app saves the coming week’s temple photos on the phone for it.
- Listen reads a story aloud with the text-to-speech engine on your phone. Sanathana Yatra gives it only the text being read.
When Sanathana Yatra uses the internet
The app goes online only for these, and sends no information about you:
- Temple photos, from Wikimedia Commons, when a temple’s photo is shown and for the widget (Wikimedia’s privacy policy).
- A state’s detail map, only when you tap Download or Update: from Google Play for an app installed from Google Play (Google’s privacy policy), otherwise from Sanathana Yatra’s map files on GitHub (GitHub’s privacy statement).
- Links you open, such as a story’s sources, Wikipedia or Google Maps. They open in your browser or their own app, under their own policies.
Like any website, these services see your phone’s internet address and what was asked for.
Sharing and backups
- When you share a card (My sky or a story passage) or export your yatra, Android’s share sheet sends it where you choose. The developer never receives it.
- An exported backup is a zip file that isn’t encrypted, so keep it somewhere safe. Importing one adds its visits and saved temples to those on the phone.
- Android’s automatic app backup is turned off for Sanathana Yatra, so your yatra isn’t copied to your Google account. Export it to keep a copy or to move it to a new phone.
Keeping and deleting your data
Everything stays on your phone until you delete it:
- Delete a visit on its journal page, or everything in Settings › My data › Clear all my data.
- Remove the state maps you downloaded in Settings › Offline maps.
- Uninstalling Sanathana Yatra deletes all of it from the phone.
The developer holds no data about you, so there is nothing to delete on a server. Backups you exported stay wherever you saved them.
Security
Your data is kept in the app’s private storage, which Android protects from other apps. Photos and maps download over encrypted connections (HTTPS), and a downloaded map is checked before it is used.
Android permissions
- Location (precise and approximate): the single readings described above.
- Notifications: festival reminders.
- Internet and network state: photos and map downloads, and asking before a large download on mobile data.
- Run at startup: to set reminders and the widget again after the phone restarts.
- Foreground service (data sync): used by Google Play’s download library while a state’s map comes from Google Play.
- Wake lock, vibration and Wi-Fi state: needed by the libraries behind scheduled updates, notifications and the map.
Children
Sanathana Yatra collects no personal information from anyone, including children.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the new version is published here and in the app, with a new date.