Privacy & How It Works

Travel Route Animator · Last updated August 2026

The short version: this tool has no accounts, no database, and no server that receives your content. Your videos and photos are generated entirely inside your own browser and are never uploaded anywhere. The site uses Google Analytics to count visits and measure which features are used, in aggregate. Beyond that, the only data that leaves your device are the ordinary technical requests needed to download map imagery, city search results, and route shapes from public open-data services.

Privacy Statement

What this website stores about you

No content, ever. This page is a single static file with no backend server: the cities you search, the routes you create, and the videos you export are never transmitted to the operator of this website, and there is nothing to register or log into. The one exception to "no tracking" is Google Analytics, which sets its standard cookies to produce aggregate statistics — how many people visit, and anonymous feature-usage events such as "a video was exported" with its travel mode, format, and route distance. The events never include the place names you type or any content you create. Analytics is governed by Google's privacy policy, and blocking it (e.g. with an ad blocker) does not affect any feature of this tool.

What happens on your device

Video rendering (MP4) and photo capture (PNG) happen locally in your browser using standard web APIs. The finished file is written directly to your Downloads folder from your browser's memory. It does not pass through any server — ours or anyone else's.

Location & GPS

This tool never accesses your device's location. It does not use the browser's Geolocation API — in fact the code actively disables it, so you will never see a location-permission prompt. Any place shown on the map is there because you typed it, not because we detected it.

What third-party services receive

To function, the page requests data from a small number of free, open-data services. Like any web request, these include your IP address and standard browser headers, and each service may keep routine server logs under its own privacy policy. Specifically:

ServiceWhat it receivesPurpose
OpenFreeMapThe map areas you view (tile coordinates) Map imagery, fonts and styles. No API keys, no cookies, no user database — see its privacy policy.
Photon (komoot)The text you type in the city search boxes City name autocomplete.
FOSSGIS / OSRMThe start and end coordinates of your route Computing driving and walking route shapes.
Google AnalyticsPage visits and anonymous feature-usage events (no place names, no content) Aggregate traffic and usage statistics.
cdnjs & jsDelivrA one-time request for two JavaScript libraries Loading the map renderer (MapLibre) and the MP4 packager. Cached by your browser afterwards.

None of these services are paid or advertising-funded; they are community and open-source infrastructure. We send them the minimum required for each feature and receive only map data back.

Your choices

If you prefer not to send route endpoints to the routing service, use the Plane mode — flight arcs are computed entirely on your device with no routing request. Closing the tab erases everything: since nothing is stored, there is nothing to delete.

Not for navigation

This is a visualization toy for making travel videos. Routes have no live traffic, closures, or safety information and must not be used for real-world navigation.

How It Works — Q&A

Where does the map come from?

The base map is OpenStreetMap — a Wikipedia-style world map maintained by millions of volunteers, receiving around 3 million edits per day. OpenFreeMap, an open-source project, repackages this data weekly into vector tiles and hosts them free of charge. So the map you see is usually less than a week behind the real world.

What is a "vector tile"? Why does it matter?

Instead of sending finished pictures, the server sends raw geometry — the coordinates of roads, rivers and buildings — and your browser draws them on the spot using the MapLibre GL rendering engine. That's why the same data can be displayed in light, dark, or minimal styles, and why the map stays sharp at any zoom level.

How are the routes calculated?

Depending on travel mode. Plane: a great-circle arc (the genuine shortest path over the curved Earth) computed with spherical trigonometry right in your browser — no server involved. Car and Walking: the route shape is requested from OSRM, an open-source routing engine running on community servers (FOSSGIS e.V.), using the same OpenStreetMap road network — with separate profiles so walking routes prefer footpaths. Boat: computed entirely in your browser against a bundled global shipping-lane network (Eurostat maritime dataset via the open-source searoute-ts library), so sea voyages correctly pass through canals and straits like Suez or Panama — and, like Plane, send no coordinates to any server.

How is the video made without a server?

Frame by frame, like a stop-motion film. For each of the ~30 frames per second, the page positions the map camera, waits until every map tile has fully loaded, captures the canvas, and hands the frame to your browser's built-in hardware video encoder (the WebCodecs API). The compressed frames are then packaged into a standard MP4 container — all in memory, on your machine. This is why export quality doesn't depend on your internet speed, and why nothing is ever uploaded.

Why is there a small credit line on every video and photo?

It's a license requirement, not advertising. OpenStreetMap data is licensed under ODbL, which requires attribution wherever the data appears — including exported video and images. Every map product, paid or free, carries an equivalent notice. See openstreetmap.org/copyright.

Why do some walking or driving routes fail with an error?

Roads only connect places on the same landmass. If your start and destination are separated by an ocean, no road route exists — the tool detects this and tells you plainly instead of inventing a route. Use Plane mode for intercontinental trips.

Does it cost anything to run? Is there a catch?

No catch. The page is a static file; the heavy lifting (rendering, encoding) happens on your device, and the data comes from donation-funded open infrastructure. If you find these services valuable, consider supporting OpenFreeMap and OpenStreetMap.

Which browsers work best?

Any modern browser can preview animations. Exporting MP4 requires the WebCodecs API — best supported in Chrome and Edge (Safari and Firefox support varies by version). The photo (PNG) download works everywhere.

No accountsNo uploads No GPSOpen dataLocal rendering

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