Privacy Policy
September 19, 2026
Compass Go is a travel companion app that helps you find nearby sightseeing spots, get walking/transport directions, plan and save custom tours, and translate text (menus, signs, documents) from your camera or photo library. This policy covers all of those features as actually implemented in the current version of the app. it was drafted from a direct audit of the app's source code, not from a generic template.
Developer/Publisher: KDS Studio
Contact: kdsstudio92@gmail.com
Compass Go does not require an account and does not collect your name, email address, phone number, or payment information. The app works with three categories of information:
Location (precise and approximate) — powers the sightseeing map, nearby-place search, and directions.
Camera photos and gallery photos you choose — used by Scan & Translate to extract and translate text.
Tour data you choose to save — stop names, ratings, route details, and starting coordinates, stored locally on your device.
Camera capture: a Live Scan photo is written to a temporary, app-private cache file, used to run text recognition and translation, then deleted automatically — either on your next capture or when you leave the scan screen.
Gallery photos: "Choose from Gallery" uses Android's system Photo Picker, which grants the app access only to the one photo you select. no broad photo-library or storage permission is requested.
Processing: OCR and translation both run on your device. Photos are never uploaded to Compass Go's servers or any third party — the app has no server of its own to send photos to. (See Translation for the one narrow exception involving language-model downloads, which involves language data, not your photo.)
Compass Go recognizes text using two on-device engines:
Google ML Kit Text Recognition for Latin-script, Devanagari (Hindi), Chinese, and Japanese text.
A bundled, fully offline Thai OCR engine (Tesseract, via Tesseract4Android) — its model ships inside the app, so Thai recognition never requires a network connection.
Extracted text is processed only on your device to show you a translation. It is not transmitted to Compass Go or logged in any analytics system.
Translation uses Google ML Kit's on-device Translation API across eight languages (English, Hindi, Thai, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese).
The translation computation itself happens on your device.
Each language's model (~30–45MB) is downloaded once from Google's servers the first time you use that language — this requires internet access. We do not claim the app is "fully offline," because of this one-time, per-language download.
The app automatically manages downloaded models, keeping a small number of your most-recently-used languages to limit storage use; you can clear this anytime via Android Settings → Apps → Compass Go → Clear storage.
Compass Go requests approximate and precise location permission to power its core sightseeing and navigation features.
Where it goes: coordinates are sent, over encrypted HTTPS, to Google's Places API, Directions API, and Routes API to retrieve nearby places and routes. Compass Go does not run its own location-processing server.
What's stored: your live location isn't stored unless you tap "Save Tour" — in which case your starting coordinates are saved locally in the app's on-device database, alongside that tour's stops. This stays on your device; it is not uploaded anywhere by Compass Go.
Your control: revoke location access anytime in Android's app permission settings; navigation features won't function without it.
Compass Go's map, results, and route screens are built on Google's mapping platform. Using these sends your location and search parameters to Google over an encrypted connection. Place details returned (name, category, rating, review count, hours, a Google-hosted photo) are shown to you and cached locally only if you save a tour containing that place. This use is also subject to Google's own Privacy Policy.
Compass Go connects to the internet only to reach Google's Places/Directions/Routes APIs and Google's ML Kit infrastructure (for translation-model downloads). The app has no backend server of its own, and integrates no advertising network, analytics platform, or data broker.
Stored only on your device, removed on uninstall or when you clear the app's storage:
Saved tours (name, coordinates, stops, transport legs, meal picks) in a local database.
Generated tour PDFs, held temporarily and replaced each time you export a new one.
The offline Thai OCR model, copied once from the app's bundled assets.
Downloaded translation language models, capped to a small number of recently used languages.
None of this is transmitted to Compass Go or any third party by the app itself.
Compass Go integrates only Google-operated services: Maps SDK for Android, Places API (New), Directions API, Routes API, and ML Kit (Text Recognition, Language ID, Translation).
Compass Go does not integrate any advertising SDK, analytics SDK, or crash-reporting SDK — verified directly against the app's build configuration and source code. There is no Firebase, Google Analytics, AdMob, Meta/Facebook SDK, Crashlytics, Sentry, Bugsnag, Mixpanel, or Amplitude integration. This policy will be updated before any future version changes that.
The app also bundles one open-source library that runs entirely offline and contacts no server: Tesseract4Android (Apache-2.0), used only for Thai text recognition.
Not applicable. Debug-only diagnostic logging (timing of OCR/translation/network steps) exists purely for local developer testing, is compiled entirely out of the version published to Google Play, and never includes the text you scan or translate.
Not applicable. Compass Go shows no advertising and contains no advertising SDK.
All calls to Google's APIs (Places, Directions, Routes, ML Kit) use encrypted HTTPS.
Locally stored data lives in the app's private, sandboxed storage, inaccessible to other apps under Android's standard sandboxing model.
The app has no account system, so there is no password or credential of yours to store or protect.
Location used for a single search/route request isn't retained unless you save the resulting tour. Saved tours, cached PDFs, and downloaded translation models remain until you delete them — translation-model storage is capped, and the oldest unused language is removed automatically once you exceed that cap. Live-capture scan photos are deleted automatically within the same session.
Compass Go has no account and no server-side storage of your data, so there is no separate deletion request process:
Delete a saved tour: use the delete option in the Saved Tours screen.
Delete everything the app has stored: Android Settings → Apps → Compass Go → Storage → Clear storage, or uninstall the app.
Compass Go is a general-audience travel and translation utility, not directed at children, with no features (chat, user-generated content, social sign-up) requiring special handling of children's data.
Location: grant, deny, or revoke anytime in Android Settings.
Camera: only requested when you open Scan & Translate; gallery-based translation works without it.
Network: required for map/place/route lookups and first-time language-model downloads.
This policy will be updated if Compass Go's data practices change — for example, if a future version adds an account system, analytics, or advertising. Material changes will be reflected by a new effective date at the top of this page.
Questions about this policy or how Compass Go handles information: kdsstudio92@gmail.com