Cruise Buddy

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Sharing a Cruise ​

Cruise Buddy lets you share a cruise with anyone via an encrypted, expiring magic link — no accounts required on either side. There are two link types depending on how much you want to share.

📷 Screenshot needed: Share cruise screen (/images/cruises/share-dialog.png)

Tap the Share cruise icon (the share arrow in the cruise's app bar) to open the share screen. You'll see two link cards.

For someone travelling with you. The recipient imports a full, editable copy of the cruise including:

  • Cruise details (name, dates, ports, cabin, price, booking references).
  • Itinerary days and excursions.
  • Travel items — hotels, flights, parking, car hire, additions.
  • Payments and spend items.
  • Reminders.

What's not included in a Traveller link

Packing lists, ToDo lists and Journal entries are personal to your device and are not included in any share link. The recipient can build their own from scratch — or use the Copy from previous cruise option.

For someone following along from home — a family member who wants to track where you are, or a friend keeping an eye on your trip. The recipient sees a stripped-down, read-only view with:

  • Cruise name, cruise line, dates, ship and departure/disembarkation ports (no booking details, cabin, or financials).
  • Full itinerary days (no excursions, travel bookings or financial data).

A follower's cruise detail screen has only two tabs — Overview and Itinerary — both read-only. A Following badge in the top corner distinguishes it from owned cruises. The import button on the recipient's side says Follow cruise rather than "Import copy".

Followers can still write personal Journal entries for the cruise on their own device.

How encryption works ​

When you tap Generate link, Cruise Buddy:

  1. Builds a snapshot of the cruise data as an encrypted bundle — on your device, before upload.
  2. Encrypts it using AES-256-GCM with a freshly-generated random key.
  3. Uploads the ciphertext only to the Cruise Buddy share API. The server never sees the plaintext data.
  4. Returns a magic link that contains the share ID and the decryption key in the URL fragment. URL fragments are never sent to servers, so the key never reaches Cruise Buddy's infrastructure.

Anyone with the full link can decrypt and import the cruise until it expires. Treat it like a shared password.

Each link type (Traveller / Follower) has one active link at a time per cruise. The link is saved and displayed each time you open the share screen, so you can copy or share it again without generating a new one.

To replace a link before it expires — for example, after sending it to the wrong person — tap Generate new link. This invalidates the old link and creates a fresh one.

Expiry ​

Links expire automatically. The expiry date is shown on the share screen and on the recipient's import screen. After expiry, the encrypted blob is deleted server-side and the link shows "share not found". Generate a new link if you need to reshare.

The recipient opens the link on their phone. If Cruise Buddy is installed it opens directly to the Import cruise screen, showing:

  • Cruise name, line, dates.
  • Item counts — itinerary days, excursions, travel items, planning items, reminders (Traveller) or just itinerary days (Follower).
  • Link expiry date and time.

Tapping Import copy (Traveller) or Follow cruise (Follower) decrypts the bundle on their device and creates a new local cruise. The original on your device is unaffected.

If Cruise Buddy isn't installed, the link page prompts them to install from the App Store or Play Store, then re-open the link.

API status ​

Check whether the share service is reachable under Settings → Help → System Status. If it's unavailable, link generation will fail; cruises themselves are unaffected.

Privacy summary ​

  • Server-side: only encrypted ciphertext plus an expiry timestamp.
  • In the link: the decryption key in the URL fragment — never transmitted to the server.
  • On your device: the original cruise data, completely unchanged.
  • Packing, ToDo and Journal: never leave your device under any circumstances.