Last updated: October 23, 2026
Mettle is a social fitness game: your real-world steps power heroes who battle monsters alongside your friends. This policy explains what data the app handles and where it goes. The short version: your steps and game progress are stored to make the game work, nothing is sold, and there are no ads or third-party trackers.
Your account. Mettle requires signing in with Apple or Google. From your provider we receive a unique account identifier and, depending on the provider and your choices, your name and email address (Sign in with Apple lets you hide your email — that works fine). The account exists only to anchor your game progress so it survives reinstalls and follows you across devices; your name and email let us contact you about your account and are never shown to other players. We store which provider you signed in with. Your email is never used for identity matching, never shared, and we do not send marketing email. We never see a password.
Health data (steps and walking distance). With your permission, Mettle reads your daily step count and walking distance from Apple Health on iPhone and from Health Connect on Android. Steps are converted into in-game damage. Your daily totals, and the damage they are worth, are shown to the members of any squad you join, on that squad's page (which any signed-in player can open), to anyone you duel, and on the global leaderboard, which every player of the game can see. Health data is used only for gameplay. It is never used for advertising, never sold, and never transferred to a third party.
On Android, Mettle also asks to read this data in the background. That permission exists for one reason: so the steps you walk with the app closed still damage your squad's monster during the day, rather than only counting the next time you happen to open the app.
Mettle also reads your past daily totals, from further back than the last 30 days. This is used for one thing: the step chart on your profile, which you can page back through week by week to see what you have already walked. Nothing in the game's scoring ever looks further back than the current week, and past totals are read on your phone — reading them sends nothing anywhere.
You can withdraw either permission at any time in Apple Health or Health Connect's own settings, and Mettle keeps working — it simply stops counting steps, or stops showing earlier weeks, until you grant it again. Mettle never writes anything back to Apple Health or Health Connect.
Display name. The name you enter is shown to your squadmates, on your squad's page, on your leaderboard row, and to anyone you duel or add as a friend. It is also searchable: any signed-in player can find you by typing part of your name, and sees your name and your level — nothing else. That is how squads invite people and how friends find each other. Change your name any time in Settings.
Game progress. Your heroes, coins, unlocks, and battle history are stored so the game works across your devices and after a reinstall.
Squad data. Joining a squad shares your display name, daily step totals, and in-game activity (deploys, claims, nudges, and the hunts you fight in, with your hero, steps and damage in each) with that squad's members. A squad is not a private channel: what it holds is ordinary game data, and what the app shows of other squads is a rule of the game rather than a lock on the data. A squad's page is public to signed-in players: anyone can find a squad by name, and opening it shows its name, crest, banner and level, and who is in it, with each member's name, hero, level and steps today. Squads that are recruiting are also listed for everyone to browse. A squad's hunts can be read only by its members and the people fighting in them. There are several ways in: an invite link or QR code, an invitation from a member, asking to join (the owner says yes or no), or joining straight away when the owner has opened the squad to anyone. A request or an invitation stores your name, the squad and the answer, and that squad's members can see it. The squad plays on one time zone its owner chooses, so members spread across the world share one day and one midnight; your phone's own time zone is stored with your membership too.
Leaderboard. The leaderboard ranks every player of the game, so a row on it is public to everyone who plays Mettle. Yours carries your display name, the hero fronting you, that day's steps and the damage they were worth, your lifetime totals, and your country — and tapping it opens your profile, where anyone can page back through your weekly step chart. Together with squad pages (see Squad data), it is where your walking is visible beyond the people you play with. A day you walk nothing does not rank, but there is no way to play with the board switched off.
Duels. A duel is a walking contest between you and one other player — a squadmate, a friend, or a stranger you challenged from the leaderboard. Its record holds both names, the hero each of you sent, and each side's step total for the days it runs, so both of you can watch the score. A duel is not private to the two of you the way a friend list is: its record is readable by signed-in players of the game.
Friends. Adding a friend stores a record naming the two of you and whether the request is pending, accepted, or declined. Only the two people on it can read it — a friend list is not public and nobody else can enumerate yours. Your friend code, the eight characters behind your friend link, identifies your account to anyone you give it to, and nobody can find you by it unless you share it. Declining a request tells the other person nothing.
Camp board. The members of a squad can leave short notes for each other on its camp board. A note stores its text, who wrote it and when, and only that squad's members can read it. Notes are deleted after 15 days. Any member can report a note: a reported note is read by us to decide whether it breaks the rules, and is kept for up to 90 days for that. A note the word filter refuses is never shown to anyone, and its text is kept for up to 90 days so we can review the filter.
Blocking. You can block any player. A block stores a record naming the two of you, and only you can see your list of blocked players. The player you block is not told. While the block stands, neither of you sees the other's notes, and neither can send the other a friend request, a squad invitation, a duel or a nudge, or ask the other into a hunt. Blocking someone also ends a friendship between you.
App and device basics. Your player record also stores the app version you are running, your app language, and how you first came into the game (creating a squad, joining one, or, on older versions, starting solo). This is so we can tell how many people play and support them when something breaks. It is not linked to any advertising identifier and is never shared outside the game.
Country. Your leaderboard rows record the country your device's region setting names. This is a setting on your phone, not your location: Mettle never asks for location access and never reads it. It is stored so that leaderboards can be ranked by region, and — like everything else on a leaderboard row — other players can see it.
Notification token. If you allow notifications, the app stores your device's push token so gameplay alerts can reach your phone — issued by Apple Push Notification service on iPhone and by Firebase Cloud Messaging (a Google service) on Android. The token identifies the device, not you, and it is deleted when you sign out. The alert text is composed on your own device from a message key, so the words of a notification are never sent through the push service. We also keep a short technical log of the times a device's push token comes to belong to a different account, so we can find sign-ins that split one player into two by accident. It holds the token, the platform and the account and nothing else, and it is kept as a record after an account is deleted.
Game data is stored in a database we operate on Supabase, a hosted database service, on servers in the United States. Writes are locked to your own account, so nobody else can change your progress; what other players can read is what the game shares by design — your squads' data, every squad's public page, your leaderboard rows, and duels.
If you played Mettle before accounts were introduced (version 1.4.3), your earlier progress lives in Apple's iCloud (CloudKit), tied to your iCloud account. When you first sign in, the app copies that progress to our database once; the iCloud copy is not deleted by us and remains subject to Apple's privacy policy.
Health data is read from Apple Health or Health Connect on your device. Only daily totals (steps, distance) leave the device, and only to power the features above; the underlying health records never leave your phone. Mettle keeps no copy of your health data beyond those daily totals, and deleting your account deletes them.
If you write to us from Settings → Support and Feedback, your own mail app opens a message to us, footed with the name you entered and basic diagnostics (app version, OS version, device model), which you can edit or delete before sending. We receive it like any other email, from your address, and only if you send it.
If you allow notifications, the app sends gameplay alerts (a monster falls, a squadmate nudges you, an expedition starts, someone recruits you into a hunt, a duel or a friend request arrives). You can turn these off in your phone's Settings at any time.
Game data persists so your progress survives reinstalls. You can delete your account at any time in Settings, on the Account page, with Delete account: this removes your account, your game records and their history, your squad join requests and invitations, your camp board notes and the reports you made, and every block that names you from our database immediately. What stays is the state a squad shares — the squads themselves, their battles and hunts, and the monsters felled together — along with duels you have already fought, which keep both players' names and step totals, and the technical log above. We also keep fair-play records — step and progress figures that went backwards, the rewards paid out, and any ban — so cheating can still be found after an account is gone, and camp board notes the word filter refused, for up to 90 days. Leaving a squad stops sharing your steps with it; the damage you already did stays in its fights. You can also email us at the address below with any deletion request. Full details, including everything that is and is not removed, are at walkmettle.com/delete-account.
Mettle is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect data from them.
If this policy changes materially, the updated policy will be posted here with a new date.
Questions or deletion requests: danielchungfung@gmail.com