How it works

CarrySafe is map-first: the map is the interface, not a tab inside one. Everything below describes what the app does and, in the same breath, where it stops. If a sentence here promises something the app cannot do on a bad day, it is a bug — tell us.

Reading the map

Two different things are drawn on the same map, and the app keeps them apart on purpose: where a record exists, and what the law says about it.

Zoom out and a state shows a count of the records we hold, never a colour standing in for a conclusion about the whole state. Zoom in and each record can be opened. Where a review supports an answer, the card carries the official source and the review date.

Five statuses, each with a word

Colour is never the only carrier of meaning. Each status has a word, a distinct border shape that survives greyscale, a glyph, and a full sentence that VoiceOver reads — four redundant signals, because four of six statuses once collapsed to the same amber ring.

• ✕

  Prohibited

  Reviewed: an official source prohibits carry here. Spoken as “Carry prohibited”.

• !

  Restricted

  Reviewed: limits or conditions apply. Spoken as “Carry restricted”.

• ?

  Verify locally

  The answer turns on something we cannot see from here. Spoken as “Restrictions may apply. Verify locally before carrying”.

• ○

  No restriction on record

  Our records hold no restriction for this place — a statement about our records, not a finding about any act. Spoken as “No restriction on record for this place”.

• –

  Not reviewed

  Spoken as “Not reviewed. Unknown is not permission.”

Grey is never a quiet green. It is the app admitting a gap, and it is deliberately the most common thing you will see in an area we have not finished.

What a plan changes

A plan sets how much of the map opens. It never changes what has been reviewed. The most expensive plan and the free one show the same “Not reviewed” on the same unreviewed record.

The full ladder, and why there are no prices on this page.

Carry Mode and warnings

Carry Mode is a choice you make on your phone — start one day, enable it daily, or say you are not carrying today. It is device-local, shared with Siri and Shortcuts on that iPhone, and it never crosses accounts.

Background warnings for a record whose legal status has not been reviewed are labelled separately and say so in the notification itself. Such a record is never called restricted or prohibited by an alert.

The permit wallet

You type your own permit details in. The card is flippable, carries renewal reminders, and both faces are permanently watermarked DIGITAL COPY · NOT VALID FOR CARRY. It deliberately does not reproduce a state seal.

What the wallet is genuinely for: your permit's edition — resident or non-resident, its type, its issuing state, your age — are the facts that decide recognition, and the app carries them through the map, the travel view, route planning and border warnings so that one wrong assumption cannot quietly become load-bearing.

Travel and route planning

• A recognition table for the permits in your wallet, showing each destination's reviewed answer with its source — and “Not reviewed” for every pair that has not cleared the evidence gate.
• Route planning draws your route coloured by each state's reviewed recognition answer for your wallet.
• Each state leg keeps its reviewed source context. A state that has not cleared the evidence gate remains visibly Not reviewed rather than being omitted.

Route origin and destination are places you deliberately enter. If you choose Use my location, the fresh current coordinate becomes the origin. Those values go through our server to Mapbox Geocoding and Mapbox Directions and are not saved to your CarrySafe account.

News, community and map markers

• News is never law. Bills and press are rendered with the outlet's name and the line “Reporting, not law”. No ingestion path can write a rule. Only a reviewed determination changes what the map says.
• Community posts and events support report and block. A verified badge is set by a human reviewer and cannot be self-awarded.
• Official ATF licensee records can support a contextual FFL marker where that place appears on the map. The customer app has no browsable FFL directory or dealer list, and a marker is not an endorsement, inventory listing, purchase link or transfer service.
• Partner, publisher and FFL applications are website-only at the separate partner portal. News, Community and the customer app do not contain an application form or access-request action.

Siri and Shortcuts

You can start a carry day, say you are not carrying today, check Carry Mode status, or open a public section of the app. Siri never returns a legal verdict, never indexes permit data, never buys anything and never changes legal content. Signed out, these actions fail closed and ask you to sign in.

Accessibility

• Dynamic Type stays on. The layout gives way, and no status is carried by colour alone.
• Every status has a spoken sentence for VoiceOver — a name and a meaning, never “green square”.
• Reduce Motion removes travel, never state: the screen still changes, it just lands instead of springing.
• State and territory flags are bundled with the app rather than fetched, because a carry app gets used in rural dead zones.

What we do with your data

• No advertising identifier, no data broker, no cross-app tracking, and map telemetry is off.
• No continuous background GPS and no location history. Coordinates leave the device to answer a lookup you asked for, and are not kept as a trail.
• Deleting your CarrySafe account removes your CarrySafe data and private permit files. It does not cancel Apple billing — that is managed with Apple, separately.

The full privacy summary, and the authoritative policy.