The Guide: Privacy Policy

Last updated: 24 October 2026.

The Guide is a reader for Wikipedia, retold in a comic voice, with a few games and curiosities tucked inside. It has no accounts, no advertising, no analytics and no tracking. This page says exactly what leaves your phone, and why.

What stays on your phone

Saved entries, the stamps in your passport, game scores and progress, your settings (theme, text size and the rest), any emergency contacts you choose to type in, and the entries the app has already fetched. None of this is sent to us or to anyone else.

What is sent, and to whom

To Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikiquote and Wikimedia Commons (the Wikimedia Foundation). When you search, open an entry, look at pictures or use NEARBY, the app asks these services for the matching articles, facts, quotations and images. That includes your search words, the titles you open and, for NEARBY, your position (to find articles and places close to you). The Wikimedia Foundation sees your network address, as any website would, and handles it under its own privacy policy (https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Privacy_policy).

To Apple. Points of interest in NEARBY come from Apple Maps, which is given the area you are searching. If you search by voice, your speech is turned into text by Apple's speech recognition, which may send the audio to Apple. Both are governed by Apple's privacy policy. If you allow location, Don't Panic also asks Apple's geocoder which country you are in, so it can show that country's emergency numbers; only the country is kept, and only on your phone.

To our relay, and from it to OpenAI. To retell an entry in the Guide's voice, or to read it aloud, the app sends the entry's text (the Wikipedia article, with any Wikidata facts and Wikiquote lines for the same subject) to a small server we run, which passes it to OpenAI to write or speak it, and returns the result. What is sent is the public text of an article, never your name, your position, your saved items or anything else about you. The server sees your network address and a random identifier the app made for this installation (it is not tied to your name or an account, and it is not the hardware identifier Apple supplies; it exists only for abuse prevention and rate limiting, so that no one install can run up the bill); it keeps a daily count against that number and address, which deletes itself within 36 hours. OpenAI handles the text under its own terms (https://openai.com/policies). If you choose THIS PHONE under REWRITTEN BY, entries are written on your phone by Apple's on-device model and nothing is sent to OpenAI.

Asking a question in SEARCH. If what you type in SEARCH is a question, the app sends those words to the same relay, which asks OpenAI to turn them into a few Wikipedia search phrases; the app then searches Wikipedia with them. If you open one of the results, the app sends the question and that article's public text to the relay, which asks OpenAI to write a short answer from the article, shown at the top of the entry. The question is not tied to your name or an account; the relay handles it exactly as it handles article text (network address and the random installation identifier, kept for up to 36 hours for rate limiting). Questions that look explicit are not sent. You can turn this off with ASK QUESTIONS IN SEARCH in Settings, and searches then go to Wikipedia only.

Sharing a passage. The share button puts a few lines of an entry, with a picture of them and their credit, into your phone's share sheet. What happens next is up to you and the app you choose; the Guide sends nothing to us.

Playing with another person. Some games can be played against someone else. Nearby, the two phones find each other over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and talk directly to each other, with no server of ours in between; each is shown to the other under a made-up traveler's name (such as "Traveler Otter"), never your own name or your phone's name. Through Game Center, Apple finds and connects the players under Apple's own privacy policy, and the app never shows or keeps the other player's Game Center name. What passes between the two phones is the name of the game and its moves, and nothing else: no chat, no names, no position. None of it is sent to us. A grown-up can turn playing with others off under Settings, FOR PARENTS.

What the app asks permission for

• Location: to find entries and places near you, to show the emergency numbers of the country you are in, and for the features that use your heading. Only while the app is open, and only when you use those features.
• Microphone and speech recognition: for voice search, and for the few features that respond to your breath. Breath is measured on the phone and never recorded or sent.
• Motion: for shake-to-random, and for the features that respond to how the phone is held, turned or lifted.
• Local network: to find another phone nearby when you choose to play together. Only while the screen for finding someone is open.
• Notifications: the app does not send any.

You can refuse any of these and the rest of the app still works.

What we do not do

We do not sell or share personal data, we do not build profiles, we do not track you across apps or websites, and the app contains no third-party advertising or analytics.

Children

The Guide is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect anything from them.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the date above changes with it. Questions: theguide@samdyatt.com