Help & support

Write to us

E-mail hello@tarrow.dev. A person reads every message. It helps to say which iPhone and iOS version you use, the Tarrow version (Settings → About) and what you saw on the screen.

The arrow does not turn, or points the wrong way

Hold the phone flat, screen up, like a compass. The arrow is computed from the phone's magnetometer; tilted steeply, it has little to go on.

Allow motion access when Tarrow asks on the first Navigate tap — that is how it reads the compass. Without it, the arrow follows the direction you walk, from GPS. In the browser the switch is Settings → Safari → Motion & Orientation Access.

Calibrate by moving the phone in a slow figure eight. Magnets near the phone — a MagSafe wallet, a car mount, a metal case — bend the reading; take the phone out of them.

No distance, or "No satellite fix yet"

The distance needs a GPS fix. GPS works without mobile data or Wi-Fi, also in airplane mode, but the signal must reach the phone: indoors and in a plane only near a window. Without mobile data the phone has no help to find satellites quickly, so a first fix can take a few minutes. When the fix drops out on the way — a tunnel, a garage — the arrow keeps pointing from the last position and says how old it is.

Allow location: iPhone Settings → Tarrow → Location → While Using the App, with Precise Location on. The app needs the precise position for a distance in metres; the position is used on the phone and is not sent to Tarrow.

The distance jumps near the goal

GPS is usually accurate to a few metres in the open and to 10–30 m between tall buildings. Within about 20 m of the place the arrow turns into a point: you are there, look up.

Vibration: nothing is felt

Tarrow vibrates through the iPhone's haptics, which the iPhone can switch off for all apps. Turn on Settings → Sounds & Haptics → System Haptics, and Accessibility → Touch → Vibration. Tarrow can neither check nor change these switches; Settings → Test vibration in Tarrow lets you feel whether it arrives.

A Tarrow link opens in the browser, not in the app

That works too: the arrow page in the browser needs no app. To open links in the app, press and hold the link and choose "Open in Tarrow". The iPhone remembers that choice for the next links. When you scan a Tarrow QR code with the camera for the first time, the iPhone may ask whether such codes may always open in Tarrow — "Always Allow" opens them straight in the app from then on.

Saved places: a new phone, a backup

Saved places live on your phone only; there is no Tarrow account and no Tarrow cloud sync. Settings → Export all places writes a file you can keep anywhere; Settings → Import places reads it on another phone. The recent places are deliberately not part of that file.

Accessibility

Tarrow is built to be used by feel and by ear, not only by eye. What the app supports today:

• Larger text. Settings → Text size has four steps up to 200 %. The layout wraps; nothing is cut off.
• Dark interface and contrast. A light and a dark theme (the moon button on the arrow page, Settings in the app). Text, borders and surfaces keep a contrast floor in both; a test in the code base fails the build if a colour drops below it.
• Reduced motion. With "Reduce Motion" on in iOS, the arrow moves without transitions and the pulsing stops.
• Not by colour alone. Distance is a number, direction is the arrow's shape, nearness is the vibration and the sound; no state is shown by colour only.
• Without looking. Vibration pulses faster the straighter you face the place; with earbuds, ticks sit in the ear to turn toward. Both are made for walking with the phone held flat and the screen ignored.
• VoiceOver and Voice Control. Every control has a name and a role; the status line is a live region, the arrow an image with its direction. We are testing the full walk before we claim these labels in the App Store.

Something in the way? Write to hello@tarrow.dev. Accessibility reports are answered first.

The purchase, refunds

The app is bought once in the App Store, with no subscription. Purchases and refunds are handled by Apple: reportaproblem.apple.com.

Your data

Tarrow stores nothing about you on a server — there is nothing to request or delete there. Everything the app keeps is on your phone: saved places, recent places (Settings → Clear recent places) and your settings. Deleting the app deletes all of it. The details are in the privacy policy.