Privacy Policy

Sideline Headset is an iOS app that lets a high school football coaching staff talk to each other during a game — a press-box coordinator and the coaches on the field, on the same line, over their own phones. It is developed and operated by Jeffrey Feely as an individual developer.

What happens to your voice

This is the part that matters most, so it is stated plainly.

Nothing you say is recorded, stored, or sent to a server. When you are on the line, your phone opens a direct connection to the phone of each other coach on your channel (up to eight coaches can be on one channel) and sends audio straight to them. The audio is encrypted end to end using DTLS-SRTP, an internet standard, and it is decoded on the other coach's phone and played. Then it is gone.

There is no relay server for audio. If two phones cannot reach each other directly, which can happen between two different cellular carriers, those two coaches do not connect, and the audio is not sent through a server instead.

• Nothing is written to your device's storage.
• Nothing is uploaded anywhere.
• There is no server in the middle of the audio, so there is no copy of it to keep.
• There is no feature anywhere in the app that plays a conversation back, because there is nothing to play back.

This is a fact about how the app is built rather than a promise about how it is operated. There is no recording capability in the app at all — not one that is switched off, not one reserved for later. If a school, a parent, or a court asked for a recording of what a staff said on the line, there would be nothing to produce.

One coach can keep a one-way ear on another channel of his own staff — he hears it and cannot talk on it — and everyone on that channel sees his name on their screen for as long as he is listening.

Information the app collects

1. Account information

Headset has no sign-up of its own. You sign in with the account you already use for Sideline SideKick Tracker, and the app reads from that account:

• Email address
• Display name
• A user ID assigned by Firebase Authentication
• Which coaching staffs you belong to, so the app can put you on the right team's line
• Whether your account, or your team, is covered by a coach subscription: its status and the date it is paid through, so the app can open the line

The name the other coaches see is the display name on your account. If your account has none, the app uses the part of your email address before the @.

You can sign in with an email and password, with Google, or with Sign in with Apple. Passwords are handled by Firebase Authentication and are never stored by the app or visible to the developer. If you use Sign in with Apple and choose to hide your email address, Apple gives the app a relay address instead and the app is happy with that.

The app reads your team's name, its colors, the list of coaches on its staff, and whether someone's subscription covers the team. It does not read the roster, the playbook, or any game data from the tracker, and it never writes anything back to them.

Restore Purchases. Headset sells nothing. If the line says it needs a subscription, that screen offers Restore Purchases. Tapping it asks Apple to refresh your purchases, sends any Apple purchase receipt this app can see to the developer's server so it can be matched to your account, and then checks your account's subscription record again. A subscription is bought in Sideline SideKick Tracker, and Apple shows that purchase only to the tracker, so usually there is no receipt to send. A receipt the server does receive is handled as the tracker's policy describes for subscriptions.

2. Who is on the line

While you are on the line, the app keeps one small record about you so the other coaches' phones know you are there and can connect to you. It contains:

• your display name and your user ID;
• the role you picked for yourself: head coach, coordinator, comms tech or coach;
• which channel you are on, the channel you are listening to if you are listening in on one, and whether you are muted;
• a random session id, new each time you join, so the other phones know when to reconnect;
• whether you are currently on the line, and the time your phone last checked in, which is how the other coaches can tell a coach who stepped away from one whose phone died;
• your device model, as a bare string like "iPhone15,2" — no serial number and nothing that identifies your particular phone.

This record is visible only to the coaching staff of your own team, and to the developer in the limited circumstances described under Access by the developer below. It is kept for every coach who has ever joined your team's line, marked as off the line when he is not on it (see How long data is kept).

Other things the line stores. Besides that record and the connection messages in section 3, two kinds of short record are stored with your team's line, readable by your team's coaching staff:

• Line commands. When a coach mutes or unmutes everyone, moves a coach to another channel, buzzes a coach, calls a sound check or answers one, the app writes a command with the kind, the channel, the account id and display name of the coach who sent it, the coach it is aimed at (if any), and the time. The phone that sent it deletes it about 35 seconds later (about 95 seconds for a sound check). If that phone is closed or loses its connection first, the command is left in place.
• Breakout channels. A breakout keeps the name a coach typed for it (any text, up to 40 characters), the account id of the coach who made it, and when. It stays until a coach closes the breakout. The name is stored as typed, so it is best not to put a player's name in it.

On your phone. The app keeps a copy of what it has read from the database (your team's name and colors, the staff list, the line records and your subscription status) so it keeps working when the signal drops, and it remembers the role you picked and the volume you set for each coach. These stay on the phone until the app is deleted; signing out does not clear them.

On your Apple Watch. If you use the Headset watch app, your phone sends it your team's name, your channel's name, how many coaches are on it, whether you are muted, and the name of a coach who buzzes you or calls a sound check. This goes only between your phone and your own watch. The watch plays no audio; the sound stays on your phone and earbuds.

3. Connection setup messages

Two phones cannot start talking directly without first exchanging a short set of technical messages describing how to reach each other. Those messages go through the same Firebase database, addressed from one coach to one other coach, and each is deleted by the receiving phone as soon as it has been read.

The app also uses public STUN servers run by Google to discover its own public address. It asks each time it sets up a connection, and again when your network changes. The request carries no account information, no name, and nothing about your team.

4. Crash and error reports

There is no crash-reporting service in this app. No crash reporter, no error-reporting SDK, nothing that watches for a failure and sends a report about it. When the app crashes, or when a connection drops and will not come back, nothing about it is sent to us.

If your iPhone is set to share analytics with Apple, iOS may send Apple its own crash log, which Apple may pass on to developers. That is a setting on your phone, between you and Apple, and you can turn it off in Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements. It is not something this app switches on or reads.

The only diagnostic information that ever leaves your phone because of this app is the technical log you choose to send — see sending a diagnostic log, which describes what is in it. Nothing goes automatically, and the button has to be tapped by a coach.

5. That is the whole list

The app does not collect:

• any recording or transcript of anything said on the line;
• location, in any form, including from the IP addresses described above;
• contacts, photos, health data, or files;
• the device's advertising identifier, or any other advertising identifier;
• usage analytics — which screens you open, which features you use, or how long you spend in the app;
• a roster, or anything else about student athletes. The app has no field for player information; the only free text it stores is a breakout channel's name.

Permissions the app asks for

Microphone

Required, for the obvious reason: it is a headset. The app asks for it at the moment you first go on the line, not when you open the app, so that the question arrives when it makes sense. If you refuse, you cannot go on the line at all, so you will not hear the other coaches either. You can turn the microphone on later in Settings › Sideline Headset.

Local network

Asked for once, and the reason is worth knowing because it looks surprising. When the signal at a field is unusable, a staff's common fallback is for everyone to join one coach's phone hotspot. Every phone is then on the same small network, and the app connects them to each other directly across it — which is faster and more reliable than going out to the internet and back. iOS classifies that as local network access. The hotspot phone still needs some data, because coaches find each other and set up the call through the database. The app connects only to the other coaches' phones it has been told about that way; it does not scan for, catalog, or report any other device on the network.

Background audio

The app keeps working with the screen off and the phone in a jacket pocket, which is the only way a headset is any use for three hours. It does not run in the background when you are not on the line.

Sending a diagnostic log, if you choose to

The app keeps a technical log on your phone — a record of when it connected to another coach, when a connection dropped, and what the error was. It is written on your device and stays there.

Nothing sends this log but you. Because the failures a headset actually has are usually not crashes — a coach simply stops being audible — there is a Send diagnostics button under Settings. Tapping it hands the log to your phone's normal share sheet, and you choose who receives it, the same as sharing a photo. If you never tap it, the log never leaves your phone and is deleted along with the app.

Where the data is stored, and who else is involved

The account information and the line records described above are stored with Google Firebase: Firebase Authentication for sign-in, Cloud Firestore for the database, and Cloud Functions, which runs account deletion and Restore Purchases. It runs on Google Cloud infrastructure, and the database is stored in the United States. It is the same Firebase project the tracker uses. Google acts as a hosting and processing provider; the data is not shared with Google for Google's own advertising or marketing. You can read how Google handles data in that role at policies.google.com/privacy and firebase.google.com/support/privacy.

Access is limited on the server by Cloud Firestore security rules, not only in the app: only a signed-in member of a team's coaching staff can read or write that team's line, and no coach can alter another coach's record. A command from another coach, such as a mute-all or a move, is still followed by the phone it reaches; the command records who sent it.

The app includes these pieces of third-party software:

• Firebase (Google) — sign-in and the database described above.
• Google Sign-In (Google) — only if you choose "Continue with Google".
• WebRTC — the open-source library, originally from Google and now an internet standard, that carries and encrypts the voice. It sends audio directly between phones and reports to nobody.

There is no crash or error reporting service, so there is nobody else on that list — see section 4. There are no advertising networks, no attribution or measurement services, and nothing that tracks you across other apps or websites.

Apple

Headset uses these Apple services:

• Sign in with Apple, if you choose it. Apple runs the sign-in and gives the app your name the first time, and your email address or a private relay address.
• The App Store. Restore Purchases asks Apple to refresh your purchases (section 1). Headset does not sell anything and receives no card or other payment details.
• The link between your iPhone and your Apple Watch, if you use the watch app. It carries what is listed under "On your Apple Watch" in section 2, between your own two devices.

Headset does not use Apple's push notification service, and it does not use App Check. Apple handles information under its own privacy policy, at apple.com/legal/privacy.

Who receives information, when, and why

This is every place information goes outside the app's own database.

The developer's own alerts. Headset and the tracker share one sign-in system, so the alerts the tracker's policy describes also fire for Headset, except the alert for a new account (first row below). Some of those alerts, those for a team being created, a fan joining or a game starting, are set off in the tracker and include the email address of the account concerned, which is in the Discord message only. When one of these events happens, the server posts a short message to a private Discord server the developer runs, and keeps a copy of the same details, except the email address, in the developer's own admin records in the app's database, with no set end date. The alert does not say which app the account came from. Signing in to Headset with an account you already have creates no new account and no alert. A new account made in Headset is recorded in the admin records but not posted to Discord (first row below). Discord handles the messages under its own privacy policy, at discord.com/privacy.

These alerts are deleted from Discord automatically once they are more than 30 days old, by a sweep that runs on the 1st of each month, so an alert stays in Discord for no more than about two months. Alerts posted before that automatic deletion began, on 12 October 2026, are being deleted by hand. Our record of each alert keeps the Discord message number so the message can be deleted; it is not personal information.

Headset has no suggestions form. Suggestions sent from the tracker, and the alert each one sets off, are described in the tracker's policy.

This describes the alerts as they work today.

How long data is kept

• Voice is not kept at all, for the reasons above. There is no retention period because there is nothing retained.
• Your on-the-line record is overwritten each time you join and is left in place when you leave, marked as off the line, so that the staff list shows your whole staff rather than only whoever happens to be on at that moment. It is deleted, along with any connection setup messages and line commands that name you, when you leave or are removed from the team, when you are changed to a role that cannot use the line, when the team is deleted, and when you delete your account. It is removed by our server within moments of the change, not by your phone. If you ever need it removed sooner, email [email protected] and the developer will delete it.
• Line commands are deleted by the phone that sent them about 35 seconds later (about 95 seconds for a sound check). One whose phone closed or lost its connection first is left in place. Breakout channels stay until a coach closes them, except that when a coach is removed from a team, or deletes his account, the empty breakouts he made are closed with him.
• Connection setup messages are deleted by the receiving phone as soon as they are read, which for a connection that succeeds is a matter of seconds. A message addressed to a coach who never comes on the line is not read by anyone and is currently left in place; it contains IP addresses, two user IDs, a channel id, session ids and the technical connection details, it is readable only by the two coaches it passes between, and automatic expiry for that case is a known improvement that has not yet been made.
• Crash and error reports have no retention period because the app sends none — see section 4. The technical log on your phone is capped at roughly its most recent megabyte, and is deleted when you sign out, when your account is deleted, and when the app is removed.
• Account information is kept until you delete your account. You can do that inside Headset (on the no-team screen, or under Settings) or in Sideline SideKick Tracker, whose policy covers the tracker's own data. Either way it is the same account, and deleting it removes you from every team at once, football and basketball. It does not remove your on-the-line record, described above.
• The developer's admin records (the copies of the alerts listed under Who receives information) have no set end date. They do not hold the account's email address or name. After an account is deleted, they still hold its account id, its sign-in method, and when it was created and deleted. Records made before 12 October 2026 can still hold an email address and name; those are being removed.
• Backups. Headset's records are in the same database as the tracker's football teams, so they are in the same backups: the database can be rolled back to any point in the last 7 days, daily backups are kept for 14 days, and weekly backups for 98 days. Something deleted stays in those copies until they expire.

Deleting your data

Deleting the Headset app from your phone removes the diagnostic log and every trace of the app on the device. It does not remove your on-the-line record, because that lives with your team; leaving the team or deleting your account does.

Leaving the team or being removed from it in Sideline SideKick Tracker, or deleting your account, removes that record. To have it removed any other way, email [email protected].

To delete your account: in Headset, Delete Account is on the no-team screen ("Nothing to join yet"), on the screen that says the line needs a subscription, and under Settings; in the tracker it is under Team → Danger zone → Delete my account. Both remove you from every team you are on.

If you would rather not do it yourself, or you cannot sign in, email [email protected] from the address on the account and ask for deletion. You can email the same address to ask what information is stored about your account or to have it corrected.

Who this app is for

Headset is for the adult coaching staff of a team and nobody else. You cannot use it unless someone has already added you to a football team's staff in Sideline SideKick Tracker; a parent or player who follows a team in that app's read-only Fan role is refused, by design, and told so. A person who has asked to join a private team in that app and has not been let in is not a member of the team at all, so they cannot use Headset with it either. Their request to join is described in that app's privacy policy.

Signing in with Apple or Google for the first time creates an account even for someone who is not on any staff. That person sees "Nothing to join yet" and a Delete Account button, and the new account is announced in the developer's alert like any other (see Who receives information).

There is no way to discover, search for, or contact anyone outside your own staff. There are no profiles, no directory, no friend requests and no public content. A coach can reach exactly the people his school already put on his staff.

The app is not directed at children under 13, we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13, and it has no roster and asks for no information about student athletes. If you believe an account was created by someone under 13, email [email protected] and it will be removed.

Access by the developer

Sideline Headset is run by one person. To support the app he can, in the situations below and no others, look at what a team has stored — including the line record described above.

• to answer a support request, where looking is the only way to answer it;
• to investigate a security or abuse problem;
• where the law requires it.

It is used for nothing else, never for advertising or profiling, and nobody other than the developer has it.

Live audio is not included and cannot be. Talk between coaches goes directly between phones and is never stored, so there is nothing there for anyone to look at, including the developer.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted on this page with a new effective date.

Contact

Jeffrey Feely
[email protected]