Privacy
playdar is a map of places to play in New York City. It does not have accounts, it does not ask who you are, and it has nothing to sell.
Your location
playdar uses your location to show playgrounds near you. It stays on your phone.
When you tap Near me, playdar explains what it is about to do and then asks your phone for permission. If you agree, your coordinates are used inside the app, on your device, to centre the map and sort the list by distance.
Your location is never sent to us, never sent to anyone else, and never written down. It is not saved between visits. Nothing in our analytics records where you are or where you went — there is no coordinate anywhere in what we receive, because none is ever transmitted.
You can decline, and the whole app still works: the map, the full list of 1,781 places, every filter and every detail page. Declining costs you the distance sort and the blue dot, nothing else. Adding equipment works too — see below.
Adding equipment
No public source lists what is actually in a playground, so parents can add it. When you tap Add equipment and answer, we receive:
- which playground you were looking at, and what you told us is there or not there
- a random identifier for your device — not for you. It is generated on your phone, is not linked to anything else, tells us nothing about who you are, and exists so we can rate-limit and spot someone submitting nonsense
- whether you were at the playground at the time, and if so how far from its centre in metres. A report from someone standing there is better evidence than one from memory, so it is worth recording
Your coordinates are still never sent. The comparison happens on your phone; what leaves it is a yes-or-no and, when yes, a single distance figure for that playground. There is no way to work backwards from it to where you are, and it is only ever recorded against a playground you chose to open.
You can contribute without sharing location at all — the flag is simply recorded as unverified. Nothing you submit appears in the app until we have reviewed it, and what is published is a count of how many people said yes or no, never an individual report.
Analytics
We use Plausible, a privacy-focused analytics service. It sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device, and does not collect personal data or follow you to other sites. That is also why playdar has no cookie banner — there is nothing to consent to.
What we can see, in aggregate and never tied to a person:
- how many people opened the app, and which pages
- whether people use the map or the list
- which filters get used — the filter name, such as “accessible bathroom”, and nothing about the results
- which type of place gets opened: a Parks playground, a school yard, or a NYCHA play area
- whether Near me was tapped, and whether permission was granted or declined
- whether the “add to home screen” suggestion was shown, dismissed or accepted
- whether an equipment contribution was started and finished — the step reached, never the playground and never what was reported
- roughly, whether this browser has opened playdar before
What we deliberately do not collect:
- Any location. Not coordinates, not a borough, not a neighbourhood.
- Which specific playground you opened. We record the type of record, not the place. Where your family is going is yours.
- Names, email addresses, accounts, or any identifier that could single you out.
If your browser sends a Do Not Track signal, playdar loads no analytics at all.
What stays on your device
playdar stores two small things in your browser, which never leave it and which we cannot read:
- a flag noting you have opened playdar before, so the analytics above can distinguish a first visit from a later one
- a note, for the current session only, that you have already seen the location explainer, so it is not shown twice
- a count of how many times you have opened playdar, and whether you dismissed the “add to home screen” suggestion, so it is not offered on a first visit and never returns once you have waved it away
- the random device identifier described above, and an unfinished equipment contribution, saved as you tap so an interruption does not lose your work. A draft is deleted once submitted, and expires by itself after a week
Clearing your browser data removes all of it. The playground data itself is also cached so the app works offline; that is a copy of public City of New York data, not anything about you.
Getting in touch
The Report a problem links open your own email app with a message prefilled, including the name and reference of the place you were looking at. Send feedback opens the same email app with nothing filled in but a subject line. In both cases nothing is sent until you press send, and you can edit or delete any of it first. We use what you send only to answer you and to fix what you told us about.
We don't sell or share your data
We do not sell, rent, or share data with advertisers, brokers, or anyone else. There are no advertising trackers, no social media pixels, and no third-party scripts beyond the analytics described above.
Two services do see your device's IP address simply because your browser connects to them, as with any website: our analytics provider, which discards it without storing it, and OpenStreetMap, which serves the map tiles under its own privacy policy.
Children
playdar is built for parents and carers rather than children, and collects no personal data from anyone regardless of age.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected, we will say so here and update the date below.
Last updated 2 August 2026 · Back to playdar