The fine print
Privacy Policy
Effective August 7, 2026
What’s Open exists to answer one question — what can you reach before it closes — and it’s built to do that with as little of your data as possible. No accounts, no profiles, no selling anything about you. Here’s the full picture.
Your location
If you tap “Use my location,” your browser asks for permission first, and your coordinates are used for exactly one thing: running your search. They’re sent to our server, which forwards them to Google’s mapping services (see below) to find restaurants and drive times, and that’s it. We don’t store your location, build a history of where you’ve been, or share it with anyone beyond that search. If you’d rather not share your location at all, type an address or city instead — the app works the same way.
Searches
Search requests (the place you typed, radius, cuisine, and departure time) pass through our server to Google’s APIs. Recent search results are held in short-lived server memory for a couple of minutes so repeated searches don’t cost extra API calls; they aren’t written to a database and aren’t tied to you.
What we don’t collect
We have no user accounts, so we hold no names, emails, passwords, or payment details. We don’t sell or rent personal information — we don’t have any to sell.
What’s stored on your device
Your light/dark theme preference, kept in your browser’s local storage — it never leaves your device. If analytics is running (see below), Google Analytics also sets its standard measurement cookies (names starting with _ga) to tell returning visitors from new ones. Clearing your browser data removes all of it.
Third-party services
- Google Maps Platform powers the search, map, drive times, and restaurant photos. Your search coordinates and the map you interact with are processed by Google under the Google Privacy Policy.
- Vercel hosts the site and, like any web host, briefly retains standard server logs (IP address, browser type, pages requested) for security and operations.
- PayPal handles donations on PayPal’s own site — we never see your payment details.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics to understand how What’s Open is used so we can make it better: which pages get visited, what searches are run (the area searched, chosen radius and cuisine, and whether the search is for right now or a later departure), and which actions get used — like tapping “Let’s Go” for directions or an ordering link. We look at this data in aggregate to spot patterns (say, which cities need better coverage); we don’t use it to identify individual visitors, and Google Analytics doesn’t log or store IP addresses. If you’d rather not be counted, the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on works here and everywhere else, and blocking cookies for this site does the same. Details on how Google processes this data are in the Google Privacy Policy.
Advertising
We may show ads through Google AdSense to keep the site free. When ads are running, Google and its partners may use cookies to show ads based on your visits to this and other sites. You can opt out of personalized advertising at Google Ads Settings, and learn more in Google’s advertising policies.
Affiliate disclosure
Some outbound links on What’s Open — for example, links to order from a restaurant through delivery services such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub — may be affiliate links. If you click one and place an order or sign up, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It helps cover the mapping data every search pays for. We only link to services because they’re useful, not because of commissions, and affiliate relationships never change which restaurants you see or how they’re ranked.
Children
What’s Open is a general-audience site and isn’t directed at children under 13. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from anyone, children included.
Changes
If our practices change — say, when advertising goes live or new features launch — we’ll update this page and its effective date. Meaningful changes will be visible here before they apply.