HikeCue Terms of Service
Oct 7, 2026 ยท Version 1.0
HikeCue notifies the people you choose if you do not check in by the time you set. It is a notification tool: it does not contact police, search teams or medical services, and it depends on your phone, your network and the people you pick. The decision to go, and the decision to call for help, stay with you and your contacts.
1. Agreement
These terms are a contract between you and the individual developer listed as the seller of HikeCue on the App Store ("HikeCue", "we"), for the HikeCue iOS app, the pages at hikecue.app and the emails we send (together, the "Service").
You accept these terms when you sign in with Apple and tap Agree. We record the version you accepted and when. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
If you were added as an emergency contact and do not have an account, sections 4, 5, 12 and 14 apply to your use of the status page and invitation links.
The Privacy Policy explains what we collect and is part of these terms.
Effective date: October 7, 2026. Version 1.0.
2. What HikeCue is, and is not
HikeCue does one thing: if you register a trip with a return time and do not check in by that time plus the grace period you set, we send notices to the contacts you chose, by push notification, by email and through a status page. The notices contain the trip details and last recorded position you allowed.
HikeCue is not any of the following, and you agree not to rely on it as such:
- Not a dispatch service. We do not call, message or notify police, search teams, medical services or any authority. Only your contacts receive notices, and whether they call anyone is their decision.
- Not a tracking or monitoring service. Nobody watches your trip. Notices are sent by an automated timer that you set.
- Not a substitute for a satellite messenger, a personal locator beacon, a trip plan filed with a ranger station, or telling someone in person.
- Not a judgement about conditions. The weather briefing shows forecast data; it does not tell you whether to go.
Use HikeCue as one layer among others, and choose contacts who will act on a notice.
3. Eligibility and your account
- You must be 18 or older.
- You sign in with Apple. One Apple ID, one HikeCue account. Keep your Apple ID secure; actions taken through your account are yours.
- HikeCue supports one active device per account. Signing in on a new phone moves the account there and the old phone stops reporting location and can no longer check in.
- The name you enter is shown to your contacts in every notice. Use a name they will recognise.
- You are responsible for keeping the app updated, notifications enabled and location permission granted. Without them the Service cannot work as described.
4. Your emergency contacts
When you add a contact you give us that person's name, a relationship word and email address, and we send them an invitation on your behalf.
- You confirm you have that person's permission to share their email with us and to send them notices about your trips.
- Contacts can opt out at any time through the link in any email. If they do, they stop receiving notices and you are told. A trip needs at least one reachable contact; if none remains, the app will not let you register a trip.
- Contacts see your trip details and last recorded position on the status page only while a trip is overdue or alerted, and for 7 days after it ends. They are asked not to forward the link.
- Test alerts are limited to one per contact per day.
- You may remove a contact at any time; their status page links stop working immediately.
If you are a contact: you may use the status page and its actions ("I reached them", "I called for help") only to respond to the trip in question. Marking that you reached the hiker when you have not may cause other contacts to stand down.
5. How notices work, and what can stop them
The chain runs on our servers, so it continues if your phone dies or loses signal after the trip is registered. Each step still depends on things outside our control.
| Step | Depends on | What can stop it |
|---|---|---|
| Registering the trip | Your phone having a connection at the moment you tap Start | If the trip never reaches our servers before the return time, no notices are sent. The app shows this clearly and retries in the background |
| Timer | Our servers | Outages are rare but possible; we run redundant workers and a watchdog |
| Push notification to a contact | Apple's push service; the contact's phone, settings and app version | Notifications disabled, phone off, app deleted |
| Email to a contact | Our email providers; the contact's mailbox | Spam filtering, bounced or mistyped addresses, full inboxes |
| Status page | Our web host | Outage; link expired or revoked |
| Last recorded position | Your phone's location permission and signal | Permission revoked, airplane mode, no GPS fix; the position shown may be hours old and is labelled with its age |
We resend a notice once if it is not delivered within 2 minutes, and we alert again on the schedule shown in the app until you check in, a contact confirms they reached you, or 72 hours pass. We do not promise that any notice will be delivered or read, or when.
6. Your responsibilities
- Set a return time you can meet, and extend it from the trail if plans change. Extensions are limited to the cap shown in the app.
- Check in when you are back. If you forget, your contacts will be alerted and will act on that. Tell them directly as well.
- Keep your phone charged and location permission on for the trip. Battery level is shown to contacts for this reason.
- Enter accurate trip details. Contacts and anyone they call will rely on your start location, route and notes.
- Choose contacts who will see a notice and act on it. HikeCue tells them what you set; it cannot make them respond.
- Do not register a trip for someone else, or on their behalf, without their knowledge.
- Carry what the terrain requires. The pre-trip checklist is a reminder, not a complete list.
7. Weather briefing and location
Weather: forecasts come from Apple Weather for the area around your trip start. Mountain weather changes faster than forecasts. The briefing is for reference only; conditions can change, so check again before you leave. Whether to go is your decision. Apple Weather data is provided under Apple's terms; see the attribution in the app.
Location: you grant location permission in iOS. The app reads location only while a trip is active, including in the background, and stops when the trip ends. Revoking the permission mid-trip stops position updates; notices still fire on the timer but will show your last recorded position. Signing out during a trip has the same effect on this phone.
8. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- add a person as a contact without their permission, or keep sending invitations to someone who has opted out;
- register trips you are not taking, or use test alerts beyond the limits in the app;
- share a status page link with anyone other than its intended contact, or scrape, crawl or bulk-request status pages;
- interfere with the Service, probe its security, or use it to harass or locate anyone;
- use the Service for anything unlawful.
We may rate-limit, suspend or close accounts that breach this section, and we will tell you why unless the law prevents it.
9. Fees and subscriptions
Version 1.0 of HikeCue is free. We may add a paid tier in a later version.
If we do, paid features will be sold through Apple's in-app purchase system as auto-renewing subscriptions. Price and billing period are shown before you buy. Payment is charged to your Apple ID; the subscription renews unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period; you manage and cancel it in your Apple ID settings; refunds are handled by Apple under Apple's policies. The core notification chain described in section 2 will remain available without payment.
10. Your content and our property
Your content: trip details, notes, route links, photos and the names you enter stay yours. You give us a licence to store, process and show them to your contacts for the purposes in these terms and the Privacy Policy, and for no other purpose. The licence ends when the content is deleted under the retention rules in the Privacy Policy.
Our property: the app, the website, the name HikeCue, the logo and the text are ours or our licensors'. We grant you a personal, non-transferable licence to install and use the app on Apple devices you own or control, under these terms and the App Store rules. You may not copy, modify, reverse engineer or redistribute it except where the law allows.
11. Ending the agreement
By you: delete your account in Settings. Any active trip is cancelled and your contacts are told. Your data is deleted as described in the Privacy Policy. Deleting the app alone does not delete your account or stop an active trip.
By us: we may suspend or close your account for a breach of section 8, for a legal requirement, or if we discontinue the Service. If we discontinue the Service we will give at least 30 days' notice by email and in the app, and no trip will be left active without notice.
Sections 10, 12, 13 and 14 survive termination.
12. Disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity
Disclaimer: the Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose and uninterrupted or error-free operation. Section 5 lists what can stop a notice. You accept that a notice may be delayed, undelivered or unread, that a recorded position may be stale or inaccurate, and that a forecast may be wrong.
Your risk: hiking alone carries risk of injury or death that no app removes. You decide whether to go, where, and when to turn back. Your contacts decide whether and whom to call. We are not responsible for those decisions or for how any third party responds.
Limitation: to the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for loss of life, injury, property, data or profits arising from use of or inability to use the Service, however caused. Our total liability for all claims in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of USD 50 or the amount you paid us in that period. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud or for death or injury caused by our negligence where the law so provides.
Indemnity: you will indemnify us against claims arising from your breach of section 4 or 8, including claims by a person you added as a contact without permission.
Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these limitations; in those places they apply to the extent permitted.
13. Apple-specific terms
These terms are between you and HikeCue only, not Apple. Apple is not responsible for the app or its content.
- The licence in section 10 is limited to use on Apple-branded devices you own or control, as permitted by the App Store usage rules.
- HikeCue, not Apple, is responsible for maintenance and support. Apple has no obligation to provide support for the app.
- If the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price, if any. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation.
- HikeCue, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claims by you or a third party relating to the app, including product liability, legal or regulatory compliance, and consumer law claims.
- HikeCue, not Apple, is responsible for investigating and resolving any third-party claim that the app infringes intellectual property rights.
- You represent that you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated as "terrorist supporting", and are not on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
- You must comply with applicable third-party terms (for example your carrier's) when using the app.
- Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you.
14. Changes, law, disputes, contact
Changes: we may update these terms. The version and date appear at the top. For material changes the app asks you to review and accept again before you register a new trip, and lists what changed. Continued use after a non-material change means acceptance.
Governing law: these terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, USA, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. If you are a citizen of an EU country, Switzerland, Norway or Iceland and do not reside in the US, the law and courts of your usual place of residence apply instead. If you are a consumer elsewhere whose local law gives you rights that cannot be waived, those rights apply.
Disputes: write to us first; most issues can be resolved by email within 30 days. Failing that, disputes go to the state and federal courts in Santa Clara County, California, except where the previous paragraph gives you the courts of your residence.
Severability and whole agreement: if any clause is unenforceable the rest stands. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service.
Contact: support@hikecue.app.