Design Wave at protests and sensitive events
Taking a phone to a protest is a personal choice with real tradeoffs. A phone is less conspicuous than a placard, quicker to change as events move, and already in your pocket. It also carries risks a sign doesn't. Most of those risks can be minimized with a few minutes of preparation.
This page isn't legal advice. If you expect to be searched or detained, look up guidance specific to your jurisdiction before you go.
What Design Wave does and doesn't do
Design Wave was built without analytics or tracking of any kind — a deliberate privacy decision. There are no user accounts, no login, and no server. The app never asks for your contacts or your location.
Composing a message and waving it works fully offline. You can keep the phone in airplane mode for the entire event and the app behaves normally.
Being offline does not, by itself, disable paid content. If you leave your phone in airplane mode for a long time (more than a few days) and your subscription comes up for renewal, you might temporarily lose access to your paid content. Free content, and permanent unlocks, are never affected.
Anything you wave is public. A lit message held overhead is legible to cameras and bystanders, and it ties that message to you in any photo or video. Treat it exactly as you would treat shouting the same words.
Location history: turn it off, airplane mode is not enough
Airplane mode stops the phone from transmitting, but it does not stop it from recording your location. The phone continues to track your position by GPS and store that history on the device, where it can be retrieved later.
To stop this, turn off location tracking before you go: Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services, and toggle it off. Turn it back on afterward.
Before you go
- Set a strong alphanumeric passcode, not a 4- or 6-digit PIN.
- Consider disabling Face ID / Touch ID for the day. On iPhone, briefly holding the side button and a volume button disables biometric unlock until the passcode is entered again.
- Turn off lock-screen previews for messages and email.
- Remember that a powered-down phone is in its most protected state.
At the event
- Keep the phone in airplane mode, with location tracking already turned off.
- Lock the phone before putting it away; don't leave it unlocked in a pocket.
- If you would rather not carry your main phone at all, you could install Design Wave on a spare device that holds nothing personal. That's a bigger step than most people need, but the option is there.
After
Design Wave keeps no message history. The message you wave lives in a single input field; clear that field and no trace of it remains on the device.