near & here.
Last updated: September 4, 2026
near & here. society is a federally incorporated not-for-profit organization (under the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act), based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We build and operate near & here. (bundle identifier com.nearandhere.app), a free app that helps people find nearby places, transit, events, and community services around Toronto.
These terms are the agreement between you and us for your use of the app. By using the app, you accept them. If you don't accept them, please don't use it.
The app is free. There are no accounts, no advertising, no purchases, and nothing for sale. We take no revenue from it, and several of the data licences we depend on hold only for as long as that stays true.
Our Privacy Policy describes how the app collects, uses, and protects information. It forms part of this agreement. Questions about these terms can be sent to hi@nearandhere.ca at any time.
The app gathers public information about Toronto — places, events, restaurants and bars, transit, cycling, driving, fishing, and community support services — and puts it on one map.
We don't operate any of it. We don't run the transit system, the restaurants, the events, the crisis lines, the parking lots, or the bike share. We are not the source of most of what you read in the app: we collect it, tidy it, and show it to you.
Nothing in the app is professional advice — not medical, legal, financial, or safety advice.
You don't sign in. There is no account and no profile on our servers.
So everything the app remembers — your saved places, your bookmarks, your Passport, your search history, and your settings — lives only on your device. We can't see it, we can't restore it, and we can't move it to a new phone. If you delete the app, clear its storage, or lose the device, it is gone for good. You can also clear any of it yourself from Profile → Settings.
Please don't use the app to store anything you would be upset to lose.
Most of what is in the app comes from other organisations, under open-data licences or public API terms: the City of Toronto, the Toronto Transit Commission, Metrolinx (GO Transit and UP Express), the Government of Ontario, Environment and Climate Change Canada, OpenStreetMap, Overture Maps, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Mapillary, Open Charge Map, Ticketmaster, Bike Share Toronto, Open-Meteo, Pexels, and others.
Every source and its licence is listed in the app under Profile → Data & map attributions. That list forms part of these terms.
Metrolinx asks us to tell you this, and we are glad to:
Data used in this product or service is provided with the permission of Metrolinx. Metrolinx makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, with respect to the Data and assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or currency of the data used in this product or service.
We try hard, and we cannot promise the app is right.
Information reaches us on a schedule, not instantly, and some of it was already old when it reached us. Some of it is matched to a place by an automated process that occasionally gets it wrong. Hours, prices, accessibility details, and live availability go stale fastest, and we hold them for only some of the places we list.
Check anything that matters with the organisation itself before you rely on it. The transit agency, the restaurant, the venue, the City, the Province — they are authoritative. We are not.
What follows is not a complete list. It is where being wrong costs the most.
Directions are a suggestion. They can be wrong, out of date, or unsafe. Roads close, paths flood, construction moves, and our map of the street network is imperfect.
You are responsible for how you travel. Obey traffic law, signs, and signals. Watch the road, not the phone — do not interact with the app while driving or cycling. Use your own judgment about whether a route is safe and passable, particularly at night, in bad weather, or on a route we suggested for its scenery rather than its speed. Arrival times are estimates.
During active turn-by-turn navigation, the app keeps using your location while your screen is locked so directions keep working. That uses more battery than normal.
The app is not an emergency service. In an emergency, call 911.
The Support section lists shelters, food banks, crisis lines, health care, and legal aid. We don't run any of them and we are not affiliated with them. We can't guarantee that a listed service is open, reachable, accepting people, or right for your situation — hours and eligibility change, sometimes without notice. Please phone ahead before travelling to one.
Listing a service is not a recommendation or an endorsement of it.
Restaurant and bar pages may show DineSafe inspection results published by Toronto Public Health.
We match a DineSafe premises to a listing automatically, by name or by address, and that match can be wrong — the app shows you how it was made so you can judge it yourself. The result shown is from the last inspection we hold, which may not be the most recent one. Toronto Public Health's own DineSafe listing is authoritative.
Waterbodies, species, access points, and licence issuers come from Ontario government sources. Some of it is old: species records can be decades old, and most Toronto access points were last verified by the Province in 2013. An access point shown in the app may be unreachable, on private land, or no longer there.
The app does not tell you what is legal to catch. Ontario's fishing regulations are the authority. They change, and they differ by zone and by season. You need a valid Outdoors Card and fishing licence. Check the current regulations before you fish.
GO Transit and UP Express times in the app are scheduled times only — the app does not currently receive live GO or UP information. TTC times may be live or scheduled depending on the feed. Live data can be late, missing, or wrong. The agency's own app or station signage is authoritative.
Where the app says somewhere is wheelchair accessible, that comes from the source feed and we have not verified it in person. Please confirm with the place itself before relying on it.
Live bike-share availability, road closures, traffic cameras, weather, air quality, event dates, and prices are all time-sensitive and can be stale or wrong.
The app links out to other people's websites and apps — to buy a ticket, buy a PRESTO card, pay for parking, join Bike Share Toronto, buy an Ontario fishing licence, phone a business, or read an article.
When you follow one of those links you leave near & here. What happens next is between you and them, under their terms and their privacy policy. We are not a party to it, we receive nothing from it, and we can't help with a purchase, a booking, a refund, or a dispute. We don't review those sites and we don't endorse them.
Some information in the app reaches you under licences that carry conditions, and some of those conditions apply to you as well as to us.
When you use the app you agree to comply with all laws that apply to you, and with the terms of any third-party service you reach through the app or whose information the app shows you. Those sources and their licences are listed in the app under Profile → Data & map attributions.
This is a promise we have made to some of our data providers — Metrolinx in particular — and we are passing it on because we said we would.
You may use near & here. for your own personal, non-commercial use. That is what it is for, and it is also what our licences allow — some of the information in the app is licensed to us on non-commercial terms only, and commercial use would breach them.
Please don't:
Where something carries an open licence, that licence comes first. Much of what you see does: the Mapillary and Wikimedia photos under Creative Commons, the map under the Open Database Licence, much of the listing data under the Open Government Licences. What you may do with one of those individual photos or records is set by its own licence and not by this section — and several of them allow commercial use and redistribution outright. Those are not ours to narrow, and we are not trying to. Keep the credit with the material, because that is the licence's own condition rather than ours. And please take it from the source rather than from us — the rule above about our servers is about their capacity, not about your rights in the material.
Not everything is open-licensed. Event artwork, and some photos and records, reach us on narrower terms, and each item's licence is shown on the item and under Profile → Data & map attributions. What is ours is the catalogue — the selection, the matching, and the descriptions we write. That is what the list above is really asking about.
If you'd like to do something this section rules out, write to us. We're a non-profit, and we're usually glad to talk.
"Report a problem", the occasional feedback questions, and "cover my town" all send a message to us. What we receive, and how long we keep it, is described in our Privacy Policy.
Nothing you send reaches other users. The app has no public posts, comments, or profiles, and nothing you send is ever shown to anyone else.
Please don't include personal or sensitive information in a report, about yourself or anyone else. The app never asks for your name or email address, and because it doesn't, we usually can't reply. If you'd like an answer, use the support form on this website instead, where giving us a reply address is optional and separate.
By sending a report you allow us to use what you sent to check and correct the information in the app, at no cost and with no obligation on us. Please don't send us anything you don't have the right to send, and please keep it civil — abusive or fraudulent reports may be blocked.
Some photos in the app were supplied by event organisers or published under open licences, and we can't always verify who took them.
If something in the app is yours and the credit is wrong, or you'd rather we didn't show it, tell us. Use "Report a problem" on the item — there is a "This photo is mine / wrong credit" reason — or write to hi@nearandhere.ca. Tell us what it is, where it appears, and what you'd like us to do.
We act on these within 24 hours. A message of this kind raises an alert rather than waiting for the daily review, and taking something down comes before working out whether we had to — if you would rather it came down first and be discussed afterwards, say so and it will. Twenty-four hours is a promise we have made to one of our data providers, and we apply it to everyone, because the person whose work it is should not get the slower answer.
The same goes for a listing about your organisation that is wrong.
The app is free and we run it on a small budget. It may be slow, unavailable, or missing data from time to time. We don't promise any level of service, and we may add, change, or remove features, content areas, cities, or data sources at any time — sometimes because a provider changes their terms or stops publishing.
Occasionally a version of the app can no longer work correctly with our data. When that happens the app will ask you to update, and until you do, it won't open. We keep that for cases where the older version genuinely cannot work.
Not every part of the app is visible on every version. Newer content sometimes needs a newer build.
We may stop offering the app entirely. If we do, we'll try to say so in the app first.
The app itself, its design, its icons and artwork, the Passport stamps, and the descriptions we write are ours or licensed to us.
"near & here." and our logo are ours. Please don't use them as your own, or in a way that suggests we're connected to you.
Other names and marks in the app belong to their owners — GO Transit, UP Express, and PRESTO to Metrolinx; TTC to the Toronto Transit Commission; DineSafe to the City of Toronto; the 511 mark to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials; Green P and Bike Share Toronto to the Toronto Parking Authority; Ticketmaster to Ticketmaster. We show them to tell you what something is, and for no other reason. No trademark rights pass to us, or to you, through the app, and none of these organisations endorses or is affiliated with near & here.
The app includes open-source software. Those licences are listed in the app under Profile → Open-source licences.
The app and everything in it is provided "as is" and "as available", with no warranty of any kind — express, implied, or statutory — including any warranty that it is accurate, current, complete, uninterrupted, error-free, fit for a particular purpose, or non-infringing.
Our data providers give their own disclaimers, and those apply to their information as well. Metrolinx's is set out under Where the information comes from.
Some places do not allow warranties to be excluded. If you have rights that cannot be excluded — including under Ontario's Consumer Protection Act, 2002 — you keep them, and nothing here takes them away.
To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential loss, or for lost data, arising from your use of the app.
Because you pay nothing for the app, our total liability to you for any claim connected with it is limited to CAD $100.
Nothing here limits our liability for anything that cannot be limited by law, including death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or fraud.
If you use the app in a way that breaks these terms or the law, and that causes a claim against us, you agree to cover our reasonable costs of dealing with it. This does not apply to ordinary use of the app.
near & here. is for a general audience and requires no account. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children — see Children's privacy. If you are under the age of majority where you live, please read these terms with a parent or guardian.
These terms are governed by the laws of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. The courts of Ontario have jurisdiction, and you keep any right you have to bring a claim where you live.
If a court finds any part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies.
We may update these terms. If we make a material change, we'll update the "Last updated" date above and, where appropriate, call it out in the app itself. Using the app after a change means you accept it.
This section applies only where you downloaded near & here. from the Apple App Store.
near & here. society
Toronto, Ontario, Canada