The questions worth asking.
Every flight tracker will show you a departure time. The differences that actually matter are harder to see from a store listing: where your boarding pass ends up, what the app does when it doesn't know something, and who can see what when you share a flight.
So rather than a scoreboard, here are the fifteen questions we think are worth asking of any tracker — and what FlightDex answers to each. Every answer below is checkable in the app itself, or in our privacy policy.
| What to ask | FlightDex's answer |
|---|---|
| Where does my boarding pass actually live? | Encrypted on your phone, and nowhere else. It is never uploaded to a server, never written to a log, and deliberately excluded from cloud backup and device-to-device transfer. Delete the pass and the file goes with it. |
| Do I have to make an account before I can do anything? | No. There is no sign-up, no email and no password: the app starts you with an anonymous identity the moment you open it, and you can track flights, build your whole history and store passes like that indefinitely. Sign in with Google only if you want your flights to follow you to another phone. |
| Which permissions does it ask for? | None of them is location. The app only ever asks you for three things: notifications, the camera (to scan a pass), and your calendar (only if you choose to import from it). Everything else it declares is the routine plumbing any connected app has. Check the full list on its Google Play page — location isn’t on it, and an app that doesn’t declare it can’t quietly start using it. |
| What third-party SDKs are in it? | No analytics SDK, no crash reporter, no advertising SDK. The Google libraries it does include each do a job you can see: delivering your notifications, Sign in with Google, Play purchases, and reading a boarding-pass barcode on the phone itself. |
| What does it do when it doesn't know something? | It says so, rather than filling the gap. A blank means not recorded — never zero. A flight time that was never measured is not shown as 0h 00m, and in your exported log a cancelled flight's duration is left blank beside its status rather than filled in with the time it would have taken. |
| Can I tell a measurement from a guess? | Yes, and the app draws the difference. On the live map, any stretch where no position was received from the aircraft is drawn dashed and captioned as an estimate, so you know whether it was seen there or calculated to be there. A predicted delay is always labelled as a prediction. |
| Does it tell me when the data isn’t live? | Yes, on every screen that shows the flight. If live refresh has been slowed — for instance because a daily limit was reached — the flight reads Updates paused · last updated with the time, so you always know how old what you’re looking at is. It never passes off an old time as a fresh one. |
| What does my flight history cost? | Nothing, permanently. Your complete history and your travel Passport are on the free plan and stay there. Not the last twelve months — all of it, kept for as long as you want it. |
| Can I get my data back out? | Yes, as a file you keep (a Pro feature). Export your flight log as CSV or PDF, with dates, routes, distance, time in the air and any fare you recorded — the format an expenses claim actually wants. A fare you never entered is left blank, not written as 0.00. |
| How honest are the numbers in my log? | Measured beats scheduled, wherever we have it. When a flight is tracked, the log keeps the distance it actually flew — so a flight that turned back after an hour counts the few hundred kilometres it covered, not the ocean it was booked to cross. Otherwise it uses the airline’s filed route. And a flight that was cancelled, or never happened, never lands in your totals. |
| Can I share a flight with someone who doesn't have the app? | Yes — a link that opens in any browser. No app, no sign-in and no account for them. They see the flight’s live status and its route, with the aircraft’s last reported position and how long ago it was seen. |
| What exactly can the person I shared with see? | The flight's status, and nothing personal. Never your booking or confirmation code, your seat, or your full name — only a short display name if you choose to set one. What a follower receives is built so that it cannot carry a private field, rather than relying on us to remember to strip one. |
| Can I take a shared link back? | Yes, and you can find it to do so. Every link you’ve created is listed in the app, with whether it still works and whether anyone is following — though never who. Taking one back is a tap. A privacy control you can’t find is the same as one that doesn’t work. |
| Will it wake me at three in the morning? | Only if it genuinely can’t wait. During quiet hours alerts are silenced, never dropped — they’re waiting for you in the morning. Just two things still ring: a disruption such as a cancellation, and anything about a flight that leaves before you’d be up. A friend’s flight never wakes you. |
| Can I delete everything, and know what "everything" means? | Yes, from inside the app, in one action. Your flights, history, Passport, follows, passes and saved fares all go. We keep a page that spells out precisely what is deleted rather than asking you to trust the word. |
Privacy that survives being checked
Your boarding pass carries your name and your booking code, which makes it one of the most sensitive things in any travel app. It is easy to say it's safe, so here is the shape of the claim instead: the pass is encrypted on your device, it is never sent to a server, it is left out of cloud backup on purpose, and it renders on the phone itself so it still scans at the gate on airport wifi that isn't cooperating.
The permission list is the part you can verify without taking our word for anything. Open the app’s page on Google Play and read its permission list: location is not on it. The only things the app ever asks you for are notifications, the camera and — if you import from it — your calendar. An app that has never declared location cannot quietly begin using it.
An app that admits what it doesn't know
This is the difference that is hardest to see before you've used something, and the one we've spent the most time on. It is always tempting for an app to present a calculation as an observation — a zero where a measurement is missing, a dot on a map where the aircraft probably is, yesterday's arrival time shown with the confidence of a live one.
FlightDex is built the other way. A blank means we don't have this, and never zero. A projected position looks different from an observed one. When updates are paused, the flight says so. When a prediction is a prediction, it is labelled. None of that makes a screenshot prettier; it is what makes the app worth believing when it does tell you something.
Sharing that gives nothing away
Telling someone which flight you're on usually means handing over more than you meant to. A FlightDex share link opens in any browser with the flight’s live status, its route and the aircraft’s last reported position, and carries no booking code, no seat and no full name — a display name only if you set one, and you're told on the share sheet exactly what the recipient will see before you send it.
The person you shared with can also be the one waiting at arrivals: they get a landing soon alert of their own, which is the notification the person doing the airport pickup actually needs. And because sharing is only useful if it is reversible, every link you’ve made is listed — with whether anyone is following, never who — and can be taken back in a tap.
Built for Android, not ported to it
FlightDex is designed for Android first: foldable layouts, home-screen widgets, a live tracking notification while you fly, and a full-screen travel map you can zoom into. Your flights, your Passport and your boarding passes all work offline.
What we deliberately don't do
FlightDex does fewer things than an everything-app, on purpose. There are no indoor terminal maps, no radio feeds, no social timeline. It concentrates on the part you use on every single trip — live status, early delay alerts, airport boards, and a travel Passport that fills as you fly — so there is nothing to wade through to reach it.
It also doesn't monetise you. No ads on any plan, ever, and nothing about your travel is sold or used for advertising. Pro exists so that the app can watch a flight while you get on with your day; the record of your flying is free and stays free.
Who it's for
People on Android who want live status and early delay alerts, a record of their flying that's worth looking back at, and an app that stays quiet, keeps their documents on their own phone, and tells them the truth about what it knows.