Bearings
Terms of Service
1. Acceptance of Terms
These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of the Bearings mobile application and related services (the "Service"), operated by McGlaflin Labs, LLC ("Bearings", "we", "us"). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms, and in particular to Section 3, which covers using the Service while driving or otherwise in motion.
2. Description of Service
Bearings narrates the history, landmarks, and points of interest near you as you travel by car or on foot, and lets you save completed trips as journal entries you can revisit and optionally share via a public link.
Bearings is not a navigation app. It does not give driving directions, does not know about road conditions, closures, traffic, or speed limits, and is not designed to be looked at while you are moving. It is meant to be listened to alongside whatever navigation you are already using.
3. Safety While Traveling
Do not interact with the Bearings screen while driving. Set up your trip, start the walk, and put the phone down before you move. Everything the Service does while you travel is audio; nothing on screen needs your attention while the vehicle is moving.
- You are solely responsible for operating your vehicle safely and for obeying the laws where you are, including laws about handheld device use, hands-free operation, and audio volume while driving.
- Narration describes places near you. It is not an instruction or a recommendation to stop, slow down, turn, park, pull over, or enter anywhere, and it does not know whether doing so would be safe or legal where you are.
- Don't rely on the Service to tell you where you are or where to go. Use your vehicle's navigation, a dedicated navigation app, or a map.
- On foot the same rule applies: watch the traffic and the ground, not the phone.
- If a passenger is handling the phone, these Terms apply to them as your guest, and you remain responsible for the vehicle.
The app asks you to acknowledge this before your first walk. That acknowledgment is a reminder, not a transfer of responsibility: responsibility for safe operation of your vehicle is always yours, and McGlaflin Labs, LLC is not responsible for any accident, injury, damage, citation, or loss arising from your use of the Service while driving, cycling, or otherwise in motion.
4. Accounts
You must provide accurate information to create an account and are responsible for activity that occurs under it. You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service.
5. Subscriptions & Purchases
Some features require a paid subscription or one-time purchase, billed through the Apple App Store or Google Play using the payment method on file with that platform. Subscriptions renew automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period, through your platform account settings (Bearings does not process payments directly and cannot issue refunds on the platform's behalf). Prices are shown in the app before purchase and may change for future billing periods with notice.
6. Your Content
Journal entries and the other content you save through the Service remain yours. By creating a shareable link for a journal entry, you're choosing to publish that entry -- its title, its route on a map, its distance and duration, and excerpts of what was narrated and asked during it -- to anyone who has the link. The link is unlisted, not secret: it isn't guessable, but anyone you send it to can forward it, and it works without a Bearings account. You can revoke it at any time from the entry in your Journal, which stops the page loading for everyone.
7. Location Data & Third-Party Sources
The Service uses your device's location to determine what to narrate, and draws on third-party data sources (including but not limited to Wikipedia, mapping and routing providers, and weather data) to generate narration content. We aren't responsible for inaccuracies originating in that third-party data.
8. Acceptable Use
- Don't use the Service in a way that violates any law or infringes anyone's rights.
- Don't attempt to access accounts, data, or systems you're not authorized to access.
- Don't use the Service to distribute malware, spam, or harmful content.
- Don't submit profile, trip, or journal content that is unlawful, hateful, harassing, sexually explicit, or that solicits help with illegal or dangerous activity. Profile and trip notes are used to personalize what the Service narrates aloud, so what you write there shapes what it says.
- Don't attempt to manipulate the narration system into producing content that violates these Terms, including by writing instructions to it in fields meant to describe yourself or your trip.
We screen submitted content and may refuse, remove, or stop using content that violates these Terms, and may suspend accounts for repeated or serious violations.
9. Intellectual Property
The Bearings app, its design, and its narration-generation technology are owned by McGlaflin Labs, LLC. These Terms don't grant you any rights to our trademarks or branding beyond what's needed to use the Service as intended.
10. AI-Generated Content & Accuracy
Narration and answers to your questions are generated by artificial intelligence, in real time, and are not reviewed by a person before you hear them. They do not represent the views of McGlaflin Labs, LLC.
Narration is generated content and may be wrong. It can get dates, names, numbers, attributions, and sequences of events wrong; attribute a building or event to the wrong person or period; present a contested account as settled; or describe a place as it once was rather than as it is now. It may describe something that is not there, or miss something that is. Do not rely on it for navigation, safety, legal, medical, financial, or any other consequential decision, and verify anything that matters to you against an authoritative source.
The Service may also say something you find incomplete, outdated, one-sided, or objectionable, and may reflect errors or biases present in the underlying AI models or in the third-party sources it draws on. This is a known limitation of the technology rather than an editorial position. Travel narration also regularly touches subjects that are grave or contested -- among them war, slavery, atrocity, disaster, religion, and disputed territory -- and reasonable people disagree about how such subjects should be described.
If the Service says something you believe is offensive, harmful, or wrong, please report it -- see Section 11.
11. Reporting Content
You can report any individual thing the Service narrates from within the app, by pressing and holding the card for that item in your feed or in a saved journal entry. Reports reach us directly. Where the reported item is one we can identify and suppress, we stop narrating it to you going forward; we review reports and may change or remove content, or adjust how the Service generates it.
You can also reach us at trevor@mcglaflinlabs.com.
12. Disclaimers
The Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted by law, McGlaflin Labs, LLC disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty that the Service will be uninterrupted, accurate, or error-free.
Narration content, including historical and cultural information, is provided for informational and entertainment purposes, not as an authoritative or safety-critical reference -- in particular, don't rely on it in place of your vehicle's own navigation for driving directions, or as guidance on whether a place is safe, open, accessible, or lawful to enter.
13. Limitation of Liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, McGlaflin Labs, LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of the Service, including any damages arising from use of the Service while driving or otherwise in motion (see Section 3) or from reliance on generated narration (see Section 10).
14. Termination
You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate access for violation of these Terms.
15. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by an updated effective date above; continued use of the Service after a change constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.
16. Governing Law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles.
17. Contact
Questions about these Terms can be sent to trevor@mcglaflinlabs.com.