Privacy — Tessella Extra
Last updated 23 September 2026
The principle
Tessella Extra plans trips on Apple Maps. It has no account and no server of ours — but planning a route means asking Apple, and this page says what Apple is asked. We never receive, store or see any of your data. There is nothing for us to sell, lose or hand over, because there is nothing on our side to begin with.
What the app keeps
Tessella Extra records what you put into it:
- your trips, their stops and their coordinates, your route variants and your wishes
- your bookings, and the text read from a screenshot you import
- the arrival and departure times detected for a stop, if you turn detection on
Where it lives
On your device. If you turn iCloud on, it also syncs through your own private iCloud database, which Apple encrypts and which we cannot open, read or list. We have no key and no access of any kind.
What it asks permission for
Every one of these is optional. Refuse any of them and the rest of the app keeps working.
- Location, including in the background
- Only if you turn arrival detection on. The app draws a circle around each stop and asks iOS to tell it when you enter or leave one. It never reads your position otherwise, and your coordinates are never stored: what gets saved is a time, not a place. Leave the feature off and the app never asks.
- Photo library
- To import a booking screenshot. The text is read on the device by Apple’s Vision framework; the image is not kept and is never sent.
- Calendar — write only
- To add your itinerary. iOS grants write-only access, so the app cannot see anything already in your calendar.
What leaves the device
The app has no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising and no third-party kit of any kind. What it does send, it sends only to the services below, and only for what you asked it to do:
- Apple Maps, to search
- What you type in the search field, and the region you are looking at.
- Apple Maps, to route
- The coordinates of the start and the end of a leg, to get the distance and the driving time.
- Apple Maps, to name a place
- The coordinates of a point you tap, to turn it into an address.
- Apple Maps, to draw
- The map region shown in a printed booklet.
- Apple Weather
- The coordinates of a stop and the date you plan to be there, to show the forecast.
None of it reaches us. We have no server in any of these paths, and we never receive a copy.
The suggestions
When the app suggests stops, it does the thinking on your iPhone, with Apple’s on-device model. Nothing about your trip is sent to a model on a server — not ours, not anyone’s. The place names it comes up with are then checked against Apple Maps, which is the outgoing search described above.
Sharing a trip
If you share a trip, the app puts a copy — its title, dates, stops with their coordinates, your notes and the first letter of your name — in your own iCloud and gives the people you name a link to it. The share is never public: only someone you invited can open it. We cannot.
Talking to Tessella
Extra and Tessella pass each other a file in a folder the two apps share on your device: Tessella writes where you have been, Extra writes what you have planned. That file never leaves the phone, and no other app can open the folder.
Your data is yours
Export everything, whenever you want, without asking us. Delete the app and what was only on the device is gone; what synced to iCloud goes when you remove it from your iCloud settings. We cannot recover any of it for you, because we never had it.
Children
The app is not directed at children and collects nothing about anyone, of any age.
Changes to this page
If the app ever starts doing something this page does not describe, this page changes first. The date at the top says when it last did.
Your rights
Quebec’s Law 25 and similar laws elsewhere give you the right to access, correct and delete the personal information a business holds about you. In our case the answer is the same every time: we hold none. Your information is on your device and in your own iCloud, where you can already read, change and delete all of it yourself.
Contact
Nidello — Canada — [email protected]