Support

04 Frequently asked questions

Why is my safety score so low?

The score weights nearby reported incidents by severity and proximity within a 150-metre corridor around your route, using the most recent published data for your city — a rolling month in the UK, up to a year elsewhere. A score of 39% means the route runs through areas with a moderate density of recent incidents relative to the rest of that same city; scores are not comparable between cities. It's an aggregate of historical reports, not a prediction of what will happen on your walk.

The same route shows different scores at different times — why?

In the UK, data.police.uk publishes a new dataset on the last working day of each month, covering incidents from roughly two months earlier. US city portals update on their own schedules — typically far more frequently. Your score changes when the underlying data is refreshed, or when more or fewer reports are filed in your area. Time-of-day weighting also nudges the score — from each US city's actual reported incident times where available, or an aggregate-pattern heuristic in the UK.

How fresh is the crime data?

It depends on the source. data.police.uk (UK) releases monthly, with roughly a two-month publishing lag. US city open-data portals generally update more often — many daily or weekly. SafeRoute always pulls the most recent data available for your location, and your device caches it locally so the app works smoothly between updates.

I don't have a Live tab, or it says there's nothing to show

The Live tab appears only in cities where a police force or road authority publishes a live feed we can use — the two tables in section 03 list every one of them. Everywhere else the tab is hidden and the rest of the app works normally.

If the tab is there but the map is empty, that is a genuine result and not a failure: no qualifying calls came in during the window. If a feed cannot be reached at all we say "couldn't load" instead, precisely so an outage is never mistaken for a quiet night.

Are the dots on the Live map actual crimes?

No. They are calls that police were dispatched to, which is a record of what someone reported and where a unit was sent — not a confirmation that an offence occurred. That is why they are labelled as calls throughout, and why, everywhere except New Orleans, they are never included in any safety score (see section 03).

What are the Schools and Home values layers?

From version 1.4, the full-screen map on the Nearby tab has two more layers. Schools shows schools as pins, with or without the crime shading. Home values shades official statistical areas by their median sale price or median home value, and takes the place of the crime shading while it is on: choose Crime or Home values on the map, and switch Schools on or off. Open the map from the heatmap on the Nearby tab or, from version 1.4.1, with the Schools or Home values button under that heatmap, each shown where its layer has data, which opens the map on that layer; Home values also opens the details of the area you are looking at, where there is one, or says why it has no figure. From version 1.4.1, the heatmap and its buttons also appear where no crime has been reported or there is no crime data, if either layer has data there. In version 1.4, open it with Show schools here or Show home values on the map further down the tab, where there is data. Tap a pin or an area for its details and its source. The layers are on that map only, not on the route planner's map, the widgets or Apple Watch, and versions before 1.4 do not have them. Where each layer works is in the tables in section 02.

The school and home-value data is built into the app, so showing it sends nothing to us or to anyone else. Switching a layer on or off, filtering schools, using the Schools in view list, or opening a school or an area sends nothing either, except, if Usage analytics is on (it is unless you switched it off), one usage signal saying what kind of thing you did: which layer you switched on or off and from where; a school's sector (state or private) and stage when its details are shown; which kind of filter you changed (sector, stage, gender, boarding or charter), not what you chose; that you used the list, and whether you opened a school from it; and, for an area you open (from version 1.4.1, not the one the Home values button opens for you), the kind of figure it has and whether it is coloured on the map. They never say which school or which area. The app keeps whether Schools is on, on your iPhone only. The map underneath still loads from Mapbox, and while the crime shading is shown the app asks our server for the crime data of the area you move to, as it does without these layers; while Home values is shown, it does not; when you switch back to the crime shading, it asks for the area in view if you have moved the map. Links marked ↗ open the publisher's website in your browser (a licence link opens the licence's own site), which then sees your IP address; a link to a school's official record or inspection report includes the school's official ID, or the report's, in its address, so that publisher also sees which school you opened. The data is as current as your version of the app: each version carries the data its publishers had released when that version's data was prepared (for version 1.4, late September to early October 2026; version 1.4.1 carries the same data; version 1.4.2 carries it too, except that the Minneapolis figures from Hennepin County's sales run a month later, from September 2025 to August 2026 instead of August 2025 to July 2026), and each figure gives its own date or period. The SafeRoute map on the web has the same two layers and updates its data each month, so it can be newer.

Where does the school data come from?

From version 1.4, the app's school data comes from official open data, in England, Wales (state schools only), Northern Ireland, the 26 US cities, Toronto, Vancouver and Mexico City. There are no schools for Scotland. Outside the UK, a city's schools can include neighbouring towns in the same state: around New York City they include Yonkers, Mount Vernon and New Rochelle in Westchester County and towns in western Nassau County such as Valley Stream and Great Neck, but no schools in New Jersey. The sources, each with its licence:

• England and Wales: the Department for Education's Get Information About Schools, and Ofsted's management information (Open Government Licence v3.0). In version 1.4: the register as at 4 October 2026, and Ofsted's information as at 31 August 2026.
• Northern Ireland: the Department of Education's school register and census, and the Education and Training Inspectorate's inspection reports (Open Government Licence v3.0). In version 1.4: the register as at 4 October 2026, the 2025/26 school census, and inspection reports published up to 7 September 2026.
• US public schools: the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data and EDGE school locations. US private schools: the NCES Private School Universe Survey, which lists only the schools that answered it, about 3 in 4. Both are public domain, as works of the US federal government. In version 1.4: the Common Core of Data for 2024-25, and the Private School Universe Survey for 2023-24.
• Connecticut's and Washington's ratings: the Connecticut State Department of Education's Next Generation Accountability System (public domain, data.ct.gov dataset licence) and the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction's School Improvement Framework (CC BY 4.0; tier labels lightly reworded by SafeRoute). In version 1.4: Connecticut's for 2024-25, and Washington's 2025 framework.
• Toronto: the Ontario Ministry of Education (Open Government Licence – Ontario). Vancouver: the British Columbia Ministry of Education and Child Care (Open Government Licence – British Columbia). In version 1.4: Ontario's public schools for 2024-25 and its private school list for 2025-26, and British Columbia's schools for 2025/26.
• Mexico City: the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) school catalogue (Catálogo de Centros de Trabajo) and Formato 911 school census, on datos.gob.mx (CC BY 4.0), adapted by SafeRoute. In version 1.4: the 2025 catalogue, and the Formato 911 census for 2024-25.

About → School data lists each source with its date, its licence and how many of its schools are not drawn because their published location is missing or unreliable. Each school's details give its official ID, its source with the licence, and a link to its official record where the publisher has one.

A pin's colour shows the school's stage — nursery, primary, secondary, or not published — and never a rating; private schools' pins are hollow. With Differentiate Without Colour on in your iPhone's accessibility settings, the pins are larger and carry a letter for the stage: N for nursery, P for primary, S for secondary and – where the stage is not published; the key explains them, and private schools' pins stay hollow. You can filter by state or private, by stage and, where a source publishes them, by gender, boarding and charter status. There is no filter or colour for religion.

A school's inspection, rating or status appears only in its details, in the publisher's own words (Washington's tier labels lightly reworded by SafeRoute, as its details say), with its year and its source: Ofsted's in England, the kind and date of the Education and Training Inspectorate's latest report in Northern Ireland, and the state's rating in Connecticut and Washington. These cannot be compared between countries or states, and SafeRoute never uses them to colour, filter, sort or count schools, or to make a list of “top” schools. Private schools never show one. Wales's schools show none, because Estyn's inspection outcomes are not in this data; Ontario, British Columbia, Mexico, Missouri and Minnesota publish no overall rating for each school.

If a school is missing, in the wrong place, or has wrong details, email with the subject Bug report, giving the school's name and the official ID shown in its details. Most such errors are in the published record: the publisher corrects them at source, and the app shows the correction in a later version.

Why does SafeRoute show a rating for some US schools and only a link for others?

From version 1.4, SafeRoute shows a state's school rating or status only where the state explicitly allows it to be reused. Connecticut (public domain) and Washington (CC BY 4.0) do, so their values appear in a school's details, with the year, the source and a reminder that they cannot be compared with other states'.

For Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas, the app says what the state publishes — a rating, or for California, New York and Pennsylvania a status — and links to it, with no value and no colour. Texas's copyright notice asks for written approval for use outside Texas; Arizona's grades have no published licence; the other 14 publish no licence for them. A later version can show a state's values if that state allows their reuse. The SafeRoute map on the web follows the same rule. Missouri and Minnesota publish no overall rating for each school, so their schools say so.

Where do the home values come from?

From version 1.4, the Home values layer covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the 26 US cities, Toronto and Vancouver. It does not cover Scotland, or Mexico City, where no open data gives home prices for areas smaller than the whole city; there the map says so and, from version 1.4.1, so does a line at the end of the Nearby tab (in version 1.4, the Home values near here card). Every figure is a median for an official statistical area, never an average, and the app says exactly what it is, its period and, where the source gives one, how many sales or homes it is based on. There are two kinds:

• Sale prices, from official records of sales: in England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics' median price paid by area, from HM Land Registry data; in Northern Ireland, Land & Property Services and NISRA's house price statistics by ward; and in New York City, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Hartford, Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) and Hennepin County (Minneapolis), medians SafeRoute works out from the sales the city, county or state publishes: NYC's Department of Finance, the District's Office of Tax and Revenue, Maryland's State Department of Assessments and Taxation, Connecticut's Office of Policy and Management, the City of Charlotte and Hennepin County.
• Owners' estimates of what their homes would sell for, from a survey or census: the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey everywhere else in the US cities (including Nassau and Westchester around New York City, and the counties around Mecklenburg and Hennepin), and the 2021 Census of Canada in Toronto and Vancouver. They are not sale prices, and the app never calls them prices.

The licences: the Open Government Licence v3.0 for the UK figures and boundaries (the England and Wales figures contain HM Land Registry and Ordnance Survey data, Crown copyright); public domain for the US Census Bureau's figures and boundaries and for Connecticut's and Maryland's sales; CC BY 4.0 for the District of Columbia's and Charlotte's sales; no licence is required for NYC Open Data (NYC Administrative Code § 23-502) or Hennepin County's open data; and, for Toronto and Vancouver, the Statistics Canada Open Licence and the Open Government Licence – Canada. Their credits, as the app gives them: “Adapted from Statistics Canada, Census Profile, 2021 Census of Population (98-316-X2021001), 2021. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.” and “Adapted from Statistics Canada, Census Tracts 2021, Cartographic Boundary Files, 2021. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.” About → Home values data and each area's sources give the full credits. Hennepin County’s disclaimer for its GIS open data, which version 1.4.2 of the app shows in the details and sources of each area with Hennepin County's sales and in About → Home values data (on a Spanish-language iPhone, with a Spanish translation under the county's English), and versions 1.4 and 1.4.1 do not: “This data (i) is furnished ‘AS IS’ with no representation as to completeness or accuracy; (ii) is furnished with no warranty of any kind; and (iii) is not suitable for legal, engineering or surveying purposes. Hennepin County shall not be liable for any damage, injury or loss resulting from this data.”

Colours compare areas within one city or region only, as the safety score does, and money is shown in the source's own currency. An area with no figure, too few sales or answers, or an estimate too uncertain to use is hatched instead of coloured; with very few sales it shows no figure at all. In a city that mixes the two, owners'-estimate areas have a dashed edge. With Differentiate Without Colour on, the key numbers its colour bands and names them in words, and the hatching and dashed edges carry their meaning without colour.

Why is a home value never shown next to a safety score?

Because they answer different questions, and side by side they would read as a single verdict on a neighbourhood that neither of them is. So from version 1.4 the map shows either the crime shading or Home values, never both, and shows no safety score in Home values. From version 1.4.1, the Nearby tab shows no home-value figures: its Home values button opens the full-screen map, where an area's details appear with no safety score. In version 1.4, the Home prices near here or Home values near here card on the Nearby tab sits below the area's safety score and keeps its figures hidden while any part of the score is on screen; Show the figures scrolls the score out of view first. School pins can be shown with either.

How do I turn safety alerts off?

In About, under Alerts, switch off Area heads-up and Fresh incident nearby. They are off by default, so you only have them if you turned them on. To silence them just for the rest of the day, pull down any alert and choose "Quiet for today" — that mutes both kinds until midnight without changing your setting.

Why does my Apple Watch say "Phone offline" or "Connecting…"?

The watch app gets everything from SafeRoute on your iPhone, through Apple's WatchConnectivity framework. Try:

• Unlock both your iPhone and your Watch
• Make sure Bluetooth is on (or both devices are on the same Wi-Fi)
• Open SafeRoute on iPhone once — this wakes the connection
• If you installed the watch app while SafeRoute was open on your iPhone: from version 1.4.1 the watch should connect by itself; if it does not, close SafeRoute on your iPhone (swipe it away in the app switcher) and open it again. In earlier versions it soon stops getting updates until you do that

Does navigation keep going with my phone locked or in my pocket?

Normally, yes: turn-by-turn guidance runs in the background, with your phone locked or in your pocket. But during a walk, iOS can disconnect SafeRoute's screen while the app is in the background, for example with your phone in your pocket, and reconnect it when you go back to the app. In versions before 1.4.2, when that happens, guidance stops until you open SafeRoute again: there are no spoken directions, the Live Activity stops updating, your Apple Watch only repeats its last update, a walk you share with Live location gets no new positions, there are no off-route warnings, and the app cannot tell that you have arrived. When you open SafeRoute again, guidance picks up where you are and the app asks Mapbox for your route again. In versions 1.4 and 1.4.1, if you chose Go in Find Help while sharing with Live location, it can also send our server the route to that place again, which moves back the time from which the page says you are later than expected.

From version 1.4.2, guidance should keep running through a disconnect until the walk ends: spoken directions, the Live Activity, your Apple Watch, a Live location share, off-route warnings and arrival, without asking for your route again. If you arrive while SafeRoute's screen is disconnected, navigation should end and sharing stop, as they do when you arrive with the app open, and when you next open SafeRoute it should show You've arrived, if that is within 30 minutes of your arrival; after that it does not. If guidance still stops partway through a walk while your phone is in your pocket, please email us with the subject Bug report (see section 06).

What happens when I reach my destination?

From version 1.4, when the app detects that you have reached your destination — the last one, not a stop on the way — navigation closes by itself and the app shows You've arrived. From there you can send a ready-made “I've arrived safely” message, which names your destination when the app knows it, with whichever app you pick from iOS's share sheet; it goes through that app, not through us. If you are sharing the walk, sharing stops and the page tells the person you shared it with that you arrived (see My share link expired below), and the Live Activity shows Arrived for about 10 seconds before it closes. The app notices your arrival only when your position on the route reaches its end, so if you stop short of it, end navigation yourself: that stops sharing too.

On Apple Watch, version 1.4 asks How are you? when you arrive. I'm safe closes the question and sends nothing. Not safe asks whether to call the emergency number for where you are (999, 911 or 112), with Find Help and the other safety options below it. Your iPhone places the call, and only once you tap Call. If the watch cannot reach your iPhone, or your iPhone cannot start the call, the watch says so and tells you to hold the side button to use Apple's Emergency SOS instead. In versions before 1.4, the watch's call buttons can close as if a call had started even when your iPhone did not start it.

From version 1.4, after your second and later arrivals, iOS may also show Apple's standard request to rate SafeRoute on the App Store (see section 07). The app does not ask how the walk felt: our release notes for version 1.3.2 said that SafeRoute asks one question when you arrive (Street Feel), but no released version has asked it, version 1.4 does not ask it either, and before any version does, our privacy policy will describe it.

Versions before 1.4 never detect that you have arrived, because of a fault in the app (see the correction under My share link expired below), so they show none of this: at the end of the route they show Mapbox's Rate your trip screen, and navigation, sharing and the Live Activity end only when you close it.

What does Find Help do?

Find Help shows the closest places that can help — the nearest hospital, police station and 24-hour shop, from OpenStreetMap — with a button to call the emergency number for where you are. On your iPhone it is the HELP button among the safety buttons during navigation; on Apple Watch it is Find Help under the safety options. From version 1.4, the iPhone asks Call 999? (or 911 or 112) before it dials, says that it will dial the emergency services and that you should call only in a real emergency, and dials only if you tap Call 999 (or 911 or 112); Cancel dials nothing. A place's own Call button asks the same when the number listed for that place is an emergency number, as it is for some police stations. In versions before 1.4, SafeRoute's own call buttons in Find Help on your iPhone do not ask first (the emergency button shown during navigation does).

From version 1.4, Find Help shows only places from a lookup made within about 300 m of where you are now, with distances measured from where you are now. Until your iPhone has a current location it says Waiting for your location…, and it looks again as you move. If the places cannot be loaded, it says Couldn't load places near you, points you to the emergency number and offers Try again; on Apple Watch it says Location unknown or Couldn't load nearby places. In versions before 1.4, because of a fault in the app, Find Help can show places it looked up earlier for somewhere else, such as where your previous walk ended or wherever the app last looked up places, even in another city, with distances measured from there, most often while it is still loading or when it cannot load new ones. If the places or distances look wrong, do not rely on them: use the emergency number.

From version 1.4, choosing Go on a place ends the walk you are on and, once the app has found a route, starts navigation to that place straight away, from where you are and with no stops. If you chose Go on your watch while your iPhone was locked or in your pocket, navigation starts when you next open SafeRoute on your iPhone, if that is within about 10 minutes; after that, the route waits on the route screen for you to start it. If you are sharing your walk, the app sends no positions until navigation to the place starts, so until then the person you shared it with sees your last position; if it never starts, their page goes on saying that you are heading to that place until sharing stops or the link stops working. In versions before 1.4, Go ends navigation and puts the place on the route screen as your destination, keeping your original start and any stops, and you find routes and start the new walk yourself. If you are sharing your walk, see My share link expired below for what the person you shared it with sees.

Where the places come from. The places that Find Help and the Nearby tab list come from OpenStreetMap, which anyone can edit, so a place can be missing or wrong. Until the server update announced on 1 November 2026 in section 13 of the privacy policy, SafeRoute's server asks Overpass servers for them (see Service status). From that update, it finds them in its own copy of OpenStreetMap instead: in the UK, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands and around each city listed in section 02, it does not ask the Overpass servers (section 03 of the privacy policy says when it still can), and elsewhere it uses its copy where the copy has them and asks the Overpass servers where it does not. We build that copy every week from Geofabrik's OpenStreetMap extracts and publish it, with the scripts that build it, at github.com/minhajk21/saferoute-osm-data (© OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database License 1.0). Because the copy is updated once a week, from that update a place's 24-hour opening details can be about a week out of date, or more if a weekly update fails (our server stops using a copy whose data is more than 30 days old), and a place that has opened or closed can be missing or still listed. In an emergency, call the emergency number rather than rely on a place being open.

My share link expired — what happened?

Share links auto-expire to protect your privacy. The link stops working:

• About 30 minutes after sharing stops, or 4 hours 15 minutes after it was created if that is sooner. Sharing stops when you end navigation (but not when you choose Go in Find Help; see below), when you share another walk, or when you tap Stop sharing on Apple Watch — during navigation, and from version 1.4 at any time while the walk is shared. From version 1.4 it also stops when the app detects that you have reached your destination. In versions before 1.4, reaching your destination stops sharing only when you then close navigation.
• About 4 hours 15 minutes after it was created, if sharing never stops — for example, if SafeRoute was closed after you made the link

Before then, the page tells your recipient that you stopped sharing (“Sharing ended”) or, once the link is 4 hours old, that it will close soon (“Link is closing”). From version 1.4 it also tells them when the app detects that you have arrived (“Arrived”, and how long ago you reached the destination); the app knows only that your phone reached the destination, so the page says no more than that. If you made the link and then navigated somewhere else, the page says “Arrived” when you reach that other place. Versions before 1.4 never report an arrival (see the correction below), so with them the page does not say that you arrived. With Live location, our server keeps no position sent more than 4 hours after the link was created, so from then on the page shows the last one sent before that. A link also stops working if our server restarts. Create a new link from the route screen if you want to continue sharing.

If your iPhone cannot reach our server when you arrive, version 1.4 tries once more a couple of seconds later and, if that fails too, sends the arrival again each time you open SafeRoute until it gets through, for up to about 5 hours after you arrived. Until then the page keeps showing you as walking, and once the arrival gets through, the page dates it to when it got through, not to when you arrived. To send it, the app keeps the link's code, the key that lets it update the link, and the time you arrived on your iPhone, and nothing else, until our server confirms or rejects the arrival or, if it never does, until you next open SafeRoute more than about 5 hours after you arrived, when it deletes them unsent. If the link is more than 4 hours old by then, our server accepts the arrival without recording it, and the page keeps saying that the link is closing.

From version 1.4, the app also stops sharing when the link is 4 hours old, with Live location or Route only. If you are navigating (or waiting for the walk that Go in Find Help planned to start), it tells you: a banner in navigation, the Live Activity (with an alert) and Apple Watch say “Sharing ended — links last about 4 hours. Share again to keep going.” Outside navigation it stops without telling you. With Live location it sends no more positions. It tells our server nothing at that point, so until the link stops working the page keeps saying “Link is closing”. With Live location, if our server no longer has the link (for example after a restart) or has already stopped it, version 1.4 stops sending to it and, if you are navigating, tells you, in the same places, that your link is no longer active. In versions before 1.4, with Live location, the app keeps sending positions after 4 hours without telling you, and keeps trying a link our server no longer has until sharing stops.

One way of ending navigation does not stop sharing: choosing Go on a place in Find Help, on your iPhone or Apple Watch.

• From version 1.4, the link follows you to that place. While you share a walk, Find Help says “Your contact will see you're heading here.” After Go, the page says that you are heading to that place, “(chosen in Find Help)”. With Live location, once navigation to it starts, the page shows the new route and the app sends your positions to the same link; with Route only, the page shows the place but no route or time. The link keeps its lifetime: it still stops working no later than about 4 hours 15 minutes after it was made. If the app cannot tell our server about the place, it says “Couldn't update your shared walk” and offers Try again and Stop sharing, and, while the walk to that place has not started, your watch tells you to check your iPhone; sharing does not stop on its own. Stop sharing stays on your watch while the walk is shared.
• In versions before 1.4, the link stays open, the page keeps showing you as walking and, later, as later than expected, Stop sharing disappears from your watch, and with Live location your next navigation sends its positions to the same link. To stop it, end that next navigation in the usual way, tap Stop sharing on your watch during it, or share another walk; otherwise it runs to the 4 hours 15 minutes above.

Correction, 30 September 2026: until then this answer said that links end when you mark your walk as arrived or four hours after they are made, and that the page then tells your recipient the walk has ended. Because of a fault in the app, which we will fix in version 1.3.9, no released version has ever reported an arrival. The privacy policy explains what happens instead, and its section 13 lists the other things we published about sharing that were wrong. We have also replaced a troubleshooting entry below, which said that share links made before May 2026 might fail with an "Unauthorized" error after a security update: share links have needed no key since 9 May 2026, and any link from before then has long since expired. Update, 4 October 2026: version 1.3.8, released on 1 October 2026, does not fix this fault either. The fix will come in version 1.4, not 1.3.9; if we release a smaller update before then to fix an urgent problem, it will not contain the fix. Section 13 of the privacy policy has a correction dated 4 October 2026 that says the same. Update, 23 October 2026: the fix is in version 1.4, which is not yet on the App Store on this date; until it is, every version you can download still never reports an arrival. From version 1.4 the app tells our server when it detects that you have reached your destination, and the page then says that you arrived, as described above. Versions before 1.4, 1.3.8 included, still never report an arrival. Update, 24 October 2026: version 1.4 has been on the App Store since 23 October 2026.

The Live Activity disappeared from my Lock Screen

iOS imposes an eight-hour hard limit on Live Activities and ends them automatically at that point. They can also be dismissed by swiping. In versions before 1.4.1, SafeRoute restarts the Live Activity when you begin a new route and, because of a fault in the app, sometimes when you go back to SafeRoute partway through a walk, even if you had swiped it away. Correction, 30 October 2026: until then this answer said that SafeRoute restarts the Live Activity only when you begin a new route and won't re-add it to a dismissed Lock Screen during an active walk.

From version 1.4.1, if iOS ends the Live Activity while you are still walking, rather than you swiping it away, SafeRoute should start a new one for the same walk, as long as the ended one is still on your Lock Screen: at once if SafeRoute is open, otherwise the next time you open it. One you swipe away should stay away until your next walk, even when you go back to SafeRoute partway through the walk; if it comes back during the same walk, please email us with the subject Bug report (see section 06). In versions before 1.4.1, because of another fault in the app, going back to SafeRoute partway through a walk could also end the walk's Live Activity, and sometimes it did not come back for the rest of the walk.

From version 1.4, the Live Activity also ends when the app detects that you have reached your destination: it shows Arrived for about 10 seconds and then closes (in versions before 1.4 it stays until you close navigation). If a walk you are sharing stops sharing at the 4-hour limit, or its link stops working, the Live Activity says so, with an alert (see My share link expired above). Choosing Go in Find Help ends the Live Activity of the walk you were on, and the walk to the help place starts its own.

Can I use SafeRoute offline?

Not for planning or navigating a walk. SafeRoute needs internet for routing, search, safety data, and share sessions. The map will keep showing tiles it has already loaded, but a fresh route plan won't be possible without a connection. We're exploring offline tile caching for a future release.

From version 1.4, the school and home-value data is built into the app, so the Schools and Home values layers need no connection of their own: once the full-screen map is open, their pins and shading, filters, list of schools and details work offline. The map they are drawn on does need one: offline, it can show only map data your iPhone has already loaded, and where it has none, the layers may not show either. The Nearby tab needs a connection to look up an area (offline, it shows the last reading it saved for that area, if any), and so do the crime shading and the ↗ links to publishers' websites.

How do I delete my data?

Uninstall the app. SafeRoute has no accounts or stored profiles, so removing the app removes everything held on your device, and a reinstall starts with a new analytics identifier. Our backend's request log holds no IP address, keeps locations only to about 1 km, and keeps each line for about 7 days; its cache of crime data keeps the box around an area you check or a route you plan, to about 10 m, for up to a day, and can hold it for about an hour more (longer in Dallas), in memory and with no identifier. Deleting the app does not end a walk you have shared: it stays visible to anyone with the link until it expires (see My share link expired above). To end it sooner, end navigation (choosing Go in Find Help does not count; see above) or tap Stop sharing on Apple Watch (during navigation, and from version 1.4 at any time while the walk is shared), before you delete the app. For anything else, email with the subject Privacy request; the privacy policy has the full detail.

Correction, 31 October 2026: from 30 September 2026 until then, this answer said that the cache of crime data keeps that box for up to a day. Our server uses it for up to a day, but deletes it only at its next hourly clean-up, or when the same box is next looked up, so it can stay in memory for up to about 25 hours. Section 13 of the privacy policy lists the other caches this also applies to.