Location access

What we use it for

The moment you start a workout, Motum begins reading your location updates. Every point becomes a coordinate on your route map. Over the course of the ride, we use those points to compute every distance-related stat the app shows:

• Route map — the polyline you see on every activity detail page.
• Distance — total kilometers or miles covered.
• Pace and speed — derived from time between consecutive points.
• Elevation — total ascent, descent, and the elevation profile chart.
• ClimbPro detection — Motum analyses the elevation stream in real time to detect when you're on a climb, then shows live grade, remaining distance, and gain to summit. No pre-loaded routes required.
• Auto-pause — when your GPS shows you've stopped moving (e.g. at a traffic light), Motum can pause the timer automatically and resume when you start again.
• Splits — every kilometer or mile gets a row in your activity log with the time it took.

Why we need background access

Motum requests "While Using the App" access during onboarding. Later, the first time you record a workout and lock your phone, iOS upgrades that to "Always" for the duration of recording — but only because you asked us to keep tracking.

Without background access, the moment your phone's screen turns off, GPS stops. Your route ends up with a broken trace where the recording paused mid-ride. Background access is the difference between a complete workout and a half-recorded one.

Motum uses Apple's modern background location APIs (CLServiceSession and CLBackgroundActivitySession) which only run while a workout is actively being recorded — never when the app is idle in the background.

What stays on your device

Every coordinate of every route you've ever recorded is stored locally in Motum's database on your iPhone (and a copy on Apple Watch for watch-started workouts). None of it is uploaded to our servers. We have no servers that store location data.

If you've also granted Apple Health permission, completed workouts are also saved to Apple Health alongside everything else — but that's between your iPhone and Apple Health, handled by iOS, not by us.

If you denied permission

Motum still works, but the recording feature does not. Without GPS, there's no route, no distance, no pace, no elevation. The rest of the app — Apple Health integration, statistics from past workouts, settings — keeps working normally.

To enable it after denying: open Settings on your iPhone, scroll down to Privacy & Security → Location Services → Motum, and choose "While Using the App".

How to revoke access

You can turn off location access for Motum anytime:

Activities you've already recorded remain in the app's database with their full route data. To delete them too, use Settings → Delete All Data inside Motum — that wipes every activity, every location point, and every preference from this device.

Questions?

See the full Privacy Policy for everything Motum collects (and doesn't collect), or email angel@angelterziev.com directly.