Frequently asked questions

Yes. Logging climbs and sessions, gym search, grade conversion, your full history and the core progress stats are all free. There’s no climb limit and there are no ads.

SENDO Pro is an optional upgrade for deeper analytics, premium share cards and video export, and gym-arrival detection. Getting your data back out of the app is never part of the paywall.

No. SENDO works without registration: tap “Get started” and log your first climb. An anonymous identifier is created on your device so things like presence and avatars work.

Signing in with Apple, Google or an email code matters for two things: cloud sync, and having your log survive a lost phone. Everything else works signed out.

Yes, and it’s built that way from the ground up rather than falling back to it. Your log lives in a database on your device, and that database is the source of truth. Every climb is written locally first and needs no connection.

If you use cloud sync, changes queue up and replay to the server once you have signal again. A basement gym with no reception changes nothing about logging.

iOS and Android. There’s no browser version of the logger; this site is the marketing and help site.

English, German and Japanese. The app follows your system language, and you can override it under Settings → Appearance → Language. This help site is English only for now.

Tap a grade on the pad. One tap and it’s saved.

You don’t have to start a session first. The first grade you tap either starts a new session or resumes the current one.

Quite a lot, and all of it optional. A grade on its own is a perfectly valid entry:

• Style: flash, send, repeat or attempt
• Number of attempts
• Wall angle: slab, vertical, overhang, roof or cave
• Move tags (crimps, heel hook, mantle and so on)
• Free-text notes
• Route photos

The container for one visit: a start time, an end time, an optional gym, and the climbs you logged in it.

You can also tag how the session felt, with an energy and focus rating plus a note. That context is what turns a pile of climbs into patterns you can see months later.

Yes. Style, attempts, wall, tags, notes and photos are all editable from the logger or the session detail screen. The grade itself is fixed, so to change a grade you delete the entry and log it again.

No, you end a session when you’re done. If you forget, SENDO sends a reminder notification after a stretch with nothing logged, so a session you walked away from doesn’t quietly run for days.

SENDO doesn’t ship a fixed gym list. Gyms are discovered as you search: from the Gyms tab, search by name or look for gyms near you, and whichever one you pick is cached locally from then on.

If you climb somewhere that can’t be found, like a home wall, a garage board, or a gym that isn’t listed anywhere, log without a gym. That’s a supported choice and not a workaround.

No. Both your home gym and each session’s gym are optional, and “No gym” is a first-class option.

Setting a home gym does buy you two things: the logger leads with that gym’s grade ladder, and arrival detection becomes available.

Yes. Sessions can have no gym at all, and those climbs count in every stat exactly like the rest.

While a session is running you’re added to a live count of climbers at that gym. It’s a number and nothing else: your name and profile stay out of it. You see the count too.

Presence ends when your session ends. There’s no location tracking behind it and no activity feed. It’s on by default and it’s symmetric, so turning it off under Settings → Privacy hides the count from you as well. Nobody gets to lurk.

A Pro feature: when you arrive at your home gym, SENDO can either notify you or start a session for you.

It needs a home gym with a location, notification permission, and background (“Always”) location permission. You set the detection radius yourself, and the whole thing stays off until you turn it on.

V-scale (Hueco), Fontainebleau (Font) and Japanese kyu/dan (級/段). Log each climb in the system the wall uses and SENDO normalizes underneath.

The full mapping is public: see the grade converter.

No. Every grade is stored with its own system plus a normalized value. Kyu at your home gym, Font on a trip and V-grades with friends still add up to one coherent pyramid and one trend line.

Your choice. Settings → Logging → “Grades shown” decides whether the logger leads with the session gym’s system or your own preferred one. The other ladder stays one tap away behind “…”.

No, and no conversion between these scales can be. They were invented in different places at different resolutions, so one V-grade often spans two Font grades, and gyms calibrate their own ladders on top of that.

Treat conversions as a translation guide. There’s a longer explanation on the grade converter.

Profile → Your data → Export / import data. Under “Export log” you get three formats: a CSV file, a JSON file, or Markdown copied to your clipboard.

None of those. Export is free and complete: nothing is truncated, no subscription is checked, and you don’t need an account. Your log is yours, and you should be able to walk away with it.

They do two different jobs, which is why they’re two separate sections:

• Export log is shareable. Sessions and climbs only, in a readable format. Safe to hand to a coach or open in a spreadsheet, because your favorite gyms, contacts and photos never ride along.
• Back up all data is private. One lossless JSON of everything, meant for your next phone. Restoring it replaces what’s on the device, and the file includes your contacts.

One row per climb, newest first, with the session it belongs to repeated on every row:

• Session: id, started at, ended at, energy, focus, context note
• Climb: logged at, ascent id, grade system, grade, normalized V-grade, style, whether it was a send, attempts, wall angle, move tags, notes
• Gym: name and area, or “No gym”

It shouldn’t. The CSV is written as UTF-8 with a byte-order mark so that spreadsheet apps detect the encoding and render non-ASCII gym names properly instead of turning them into mojibake.

CSV for spreadsheets, pivot tables and your own analysis. JSON for the most complete machine-readable form; it also carries a small profile block (display name, home gym, default grade system) as reading context. Markdown when you want to paste a readable session-by-session table into notes or a chat.

No. Photos are files on the device, and a text export never carries image data.

The full backup is different: it carries each photo’s metadata so photos can be re-linked after a restore. See “Will my route photos come back after a restore?” below.

Not today, and it’s better to say so plainly. There’s no merge-style import in the app. The only route back in is Restore from backup, which replaces what’s on the device rather than merging into it.

So a CSV or JSON export works as an archive and as an interoperability format, but not as a round trip. If you’re coming from another logger, your history would have to be re-entered by hand.

Into your system share sheet, so you decide: Save to Files, send it to Drive, mail it to yourself, drop it in a chat. SENDO doesn’t upload it anywhere.

Markdown is the exception. It goes to your clipboard rather than a file, because pasting is the whole point of that format.

Profile → Your data → Export / import data → “Back up all data”.

SENDO writes a single file named sendo-backup-<date>.json and hands it to the share sheet, so you choose where it lands. You then get a confirmation telling you how many sessions and climbs it contains.

Neither. Manual backup and restore are free for everyone. Cloud sync is a convenience, being automatic, continuous and multi-device, but it isn’t the only way to avoid losing your log.

Everything the app is able to restore:

• Your profile: display name, home gym, default grade system
• Every session and every climb, including the active one
• Route-photo metadata, though not the images themselves
• Favorite gyms, milestones and contacts
• The public coordinates of the gyms it references, so they pin on the map immediately after a restore

Your email address, password, authentication tokens, API keys, and your account id. None of those are ever serialized.

The photo and video files aren’t in it either, only their metadata. That’s what keeps the file small and text-based.

It replaces. Restore makes the device match the file: the log, favorite gyms, milestones and contacts currently on the device are wiped, then the file’s contents are applied. That’s why it sits behind a destructive confirmation.

Route photos go too. Any photo the backup file doesn’t account for is deleted from SENDO — and on Android from your device’s photo gallery as well, since that is where SENDO keeps its own album copy. That part can’t be undone by restoring again. Photos the file does account for are kept and re-linked.

It isn’t a merge. Restoring an old backup doesn’t add its climbs to what’s already there, it becomes what’s there. Your account identity and app settings are left alone.

Profile → Your data → Export / import data → “Restore from backup”, pick the .json file, then read and confirm the warning.

Yes to both. The backup carries no account id at all, and everything in it is re-keyed to whoever is signed in at the moment you restore.

That makes the file portable across devices and across accounts, which is what you want from a personal backup.

Sometimes, and strictly best-effort. The backup carries each photo’s metadata plus a stable identifier pointing at that photo in your phone’s OS photo library. After a restore, SENDO asks for library access and tries to re-link each one.

It works when the original is still in that library, so the same phone, or one sharing the same iCloud Photos library. It can’t work if you deleted the photo, denied library access, or moved to a genuinely different phone and photo library.

Photos it can’t find show a broken-image placeholder. Everything else about the climb is unaffected, and you can remove the placeholder or attach a new photo.

No, and that was a considered call rather than an oversight. Meaningful encryption needs a passphrase, which trades a mild privacy risk for a real data-loss risk: a forgotten passphrase bricks the very safety net you made the backup for.

The file carries no credentials either, so no passwords, tokens or keys, and it can’t be used to get into your account. What it does carry is your contacts, meaning other climbers’ names and your private notes about them.

So treat it as a private file. Keep it in your own storage rather than a shared folder, and don’t post it anywhere.

No, and SENDO refuses on purpose. A log export contains no favorites, milestones or contacts, so “restoring” from one would silently wipe all three.

The picker only accepts a real backup file. Anything else is rejected before a single row is touched.

A backup from the same version or an older one restores fine. A backup written by a newer build than the one you’re restoring on is refused outright, with a “made by a newer version” message, rather than half-applied. Update the app and try again.

The version check runs before anything is wiped, so a rejected file leaves your current data exactly as it was.

The replace is treated like any other change you make on the device. It’s journaled and pushed to the server on the next sync, so your other synced devices converge on the restored state too.

The same goes for “Delete all data”: with sync on, it deletes from the cloud copy and every other synced device, not just this phone. Both confirmation dialogs say so explicitly.

A manual backup is a snapshot rather than a continuous safety net. Take one before you switch phones, before a reinstall, and every so often if you don’t use cloud sync.

If you’d rather not have to remember, that’s what cloud sync is for.

An optional subscription feature that keeps your log on our servers so it follows you between devices: sessions and climbs, favorite gyms, milestones, contacts, your profile, and route-photo metadata.

The photo and video files themselves stay on the device.

No. Your log is on your device either way, and the free backup gives you a portable copy of all of it.

What cloud sync adds is that it’s automatic, continuous and multi-device, and that it survives a phone that’s lost, stolen or dead. A backup you never got round to taking doesn’t.

Yes. Writes always land locally first and journal into a queue, which drains whenever you have a connection.

Sync also pauses while a session is in progress and uploads the whole session when you end it, so nothing competes with logging while you’re on the wall.

No. Photo and video files never leave your device. Only the metadata row syncs, covering which climb, which library asset, annotations and position, and that’s what makes re-linking possible after a reinstall.

Syncing is an ongoing server cost, so it needs an active subscription behind it. The one-time purchase unlocks every other Pro feature permanently, and adding a subscription on top switches sync on.

With cloud sync: install SENDO on the new phone, sign in with the same account, and your log pulls down.

Without it: on the old phone take a backup (Profile → Your data → Back up all data), move that file across, then use “Restore from backup” on the new one.

Three things, plus cloud sync on the subscription tiers:

• Deeper progress analytics: custom date ranges, the 12-month trend, the energy × performance correlation, the tag × grade cross-filter, and the full set of performance insights instead of a single teaser
• Premium share-card layouts and video export, so you can put a card over your own trimmed clip
• Gym-arrival detection
• Cloud sync, on subscriptions only and not the one-time purchase

The parts you use every session:

• The whole logger, with no climb limit
• Your complete history and session detail
• Grade conversion across V-scale, Font and kyu/dan
• Core progress: pyramid, trends, volume, hardest sends, style profile, plus one performance insight
• Achievements and milestones
• Standard share cards
• Presence at your gym
• Export, backup and restore

Through the App Store or Google Play. Profile → SENDO Pro → “Manage subscription” opens the right place for your platform.

Cancelling leaves your local log untouched. You keep every climb, minus the Pro extras.

Profile → SENDO Pro → “Restore purchases” looks the purchase up on your store account.

If nothing turns up, check that you’re signed into the same Apple or Google account that made the purchase. Entitlements live with the store account rather than with SENDO.

No. Purchases run entirely through the App Store or Google Play, and we only ever learn which entitlements are active. Card details never reach us.

In the app’s own storage on your device. They aren’t uploaded to our servers; see the Privacy Policy for the full picture.

A reinstall wipes the app’s sandbox on both iOS and Android, and the app’s copies of those photos go with it.

If the originals are still in your phone’s photo library, SENDO can bring them back. After a cloud pull or a backup restore it asks for library access and re-materializes whatever it can find. Photos you’ve since deleted from the library can’t be recovered.

Yes, with share cards for a climb, a session, your progress and your milestones. Extra premium layouts and video export are Pro.

No. The card is composed on your device and handed to whichever app you share it to. Nothing passes through us.

Nobody but you. There’s no feed, no followers, and no public profile.

The only thing other climbers ever see is the anonymous head-count at a gym you currently have a session at, and only while presence is on, plus your avatar if you set one.

Worth knowing before you tap it. Signing out clears the log stored on that device.

With cloud sync it comes back when you sign in again. Without cloud sync it’s gone unless you exported or backed it up first, which is why the confirmation offers an “Export first” shortcut.

They’re separate, and the difference matters:

• “Delete all data” (Profile → Your data) wipes logged sessions, climbs, favorite gyms, home gym and contacts, and with sync on it clears them from the cloud and other synced devices too. Your account and app settings stay.
• “Delete account” (Profile → Privacy & account) removes the account and everything it owns from our servers, then wipes the device and starts you fresh.

Yes, under Settings → Privacy → “Share usage data”. It’s on by default, it never contains your notes, name, photos or anything you type, and turning it off stops events immediately.

Crash reporting is separate from analytics, so switching one off doesn’t affect the other.

No. If you set an avatar it’s uploaded and served from a publicly addressable URL so it can appear next to your presence at the gym, and anyone with that URL can fetch the image.

So don’t upload something you wouldn’t want seen. You can replace or remove it at any time, and deleting your account deletes the file.

The in-app tools cover both directly: export for a copy, “Delete account” for erasure. Neither is paywalled or rate-limited.

For anything else, such as access requests or corrections, email contact@getsendo.app. The full detail is in the Privacy Policy.

Pending means changes are queued locally but haven’t reached the server yet. Nothing is lost while it waits, because the queue replays.

Tap the badge next to Cloud sync in Profile to force a sync now. Also check the obvious: sync needs a connection, a signed-in account and an active subscription, and it pauses by design while a session is running.

Three usual causes, in order of likelihood:

• It isn’t a SENDO backup, and a CSV or a log JSON export is rejected on purpose
• It was written by a newer version of the app than the one you’re restoring on
• The file was altered in transit, since some chat apps re-encode attachments. Move backups as files instead, through Files, Drive or email

The photo’s metadata survived but the file didn’t, which typically happens after a reinstall or restore where the original is no longer in your phone’s photo library, or where library access was denied.

Grant photo access and trigger a sync or restore again. If the original was deleted from the library, that photo can’t be recovered. The climb itself is intact, so you can remove the placeholder or attach a new photo.

In order:

• If you had cloud sync, sign in with the same account and let it pull your log down
• If you have a backup file, use “Restore from backup”
• If neither applies, the data only ever existed on that device and we can’t recover it, because we never had a copy

Profile → Send feedback reaches us straight from inside the app, which is the fastest route because your app version comes attached. Otherwise email support@getsendo.app.