Privacy Policy

Branchline — Train Tracks

Last updated: 14 September 2026

The short version

Branchline has no accounts, no servers of ours, and no analytics of its own. Your puzzle progress stays on your device and we never see it.

The one exception is advertising. Branchline offers an optional reward video in exchange for a hint, and that video is served by Google AdMob, which does collect data. That part is described in full below.

What the app stores on your device

Branchline saves a small amount of data locally so it can remember your progress between sessions:

Which puzzles you have solved, how long each took, and how many hints you used
Your daily puzzle results and your current streak
Your appearance preferences (light, dark, or system theme; the board theme; the language)

This data never leaves your device. It is not backed up to us, because there is no "us" to back it up to — Branchline itself has no server component.

Uninstalling the app deletes all of it. You can also delete it at any time from Settings → Reset all progress.

Advertising

Branchline is free and has no paid version. It is funded by a single, optional advertisement: a reward video you can choose to watch to reveal one square of the puzzle you are solving. No advertisement is ever shown unless you tap the hint button, which is marked with a video symbol. There are no banners, no interstitials, and nothing that plays on its own.

Those videos are delivered by Google AdMob. To serve them, Google's advertising software — which runs inside the app — collects and processes:

Your device's advertising identifier (the Android Advertising ID), a resettable identifier used to limit repeated ads and to measure them
Your IP address, which reveals your approximate location (typically your city or region)
Device and app information: device model, operating system version, language, and the fact that this app is Branchline
Ad interaction data: that an ad was requested, shown, watched to the end, or closed
Diagnostic information: such as app launch time, hang rate and energy usage

Google uses this data for advertising, analytics, and fraud prevention.

To keep the video ready, the ad software starts when the app opens and loads a video in the background while you are on a puzzle, even if you never end up watching it. That is when this data is sent to Google.

Branchline does not receive any of this. The app is told only whether you finished the video, so it knows whether to reveal the square. We have no access to your identifier, your IP address, or your location, and we never see who watched what.

Google acts as an independent controller of the data it collects. How it uses that data is described here:

How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services — https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites
Google Privacy Policy — https://policies.google.com/privacy

Your choices

Don't watch. No ad is shown unless you ask for one.
In the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland, Branchline shows Google's consent form the first time it runs and asks whether you agree to personalised ads. You can change that answer at any time from Settings → Ad privacy options. If you decline, you will still see the reward video if you request it, but it will be non‑personalised.
On any device, you can reset or delete your advertising identifier in Android Settings → Privacy → Ads. Deleting it stops apps from receiving an advertising identifier at all.

What the app does not do

It does not ask for an account, an email address, or any personal detail
It does not include analytics or crash reporting of its own
It does not track your location itself, and it never requests location permission
It does not request access to your contacts, photos, camera, or microphone
It does not sell your data, and apart from what Google's ad software collects as described above, it shares nothing with anyone
Apart from the ad software, it sends nothing over the network

When you choose to share a solved puzzle, Branchline generates an image on your device and hands it to your operating system's standard share dialog. You then pick where it goes.

Branchline does not see, record, or transmit what you share or who you share it with. Once the image reaches the app you chose — a messaging app, a social network, your photo library — that app's own privacy policy applies to it.

Opening external links

Three options in Settings open something outside Branchline: Rate the app opens your device's app store listing, Privacy policy opens this page, and Ad privacy options opens Google's consent form. Each hands control over and stops there.

Children

Branchline is a logic puzzle suitable for all ages and is not directed at children. It collects no data of its own from anyone. Because it shows advertising, it is not enrolled in Google Play's Designed for Families programme. Its ad requests are tagged so that Google serves only ads rated suitable for a general audience.

Changes to this policy

If a future version of Branchline changes what it stores or what it transmits, this policy will be updated before that version is published, and the date at the top will change.

Contact

Questions about this policy go to the developer contact address shown on the Branchline listing on Google Play.