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On any given day you may have spent at most 90 days inside the Schengen area within the last 180 days. It's a rolling window, not a calendar one: every day, the window slides forward, so days you spent more than 180 days ago "fall off" and free up again. Both your entry and exit days count as days present. Perch counts this exactly and shows how many days you've used, how many remain, and the next date you could legally enter.

The counting is done by a day-counting engine that's covered by a large suite of automated tests, including cases cross-checked against an independent brute-force calculation. It uses whole-day math in UTC so there's no timezone or daylight-saving drift, and it merges overlapping trips so no day is ever counted twice. The number you see is the number the rules produce from the dates you entered.

Perch tracks the countries that make up the Schengen zone for the 90/180 rule. When you add a trip, mark whether it was inside the Schengen area — only those days count toward your 90. Trips to non-Schengen countries are still useful for the separate 183-day tax-residency tracking.

Many countries treat you as a tax resident once you've spent 183 days there in a given period (often a calendar year). Perch keeps a per-country day bar so you can see how close you are. This is a planning aid, not tax advice — residency can also depend on ties, treaties, and split-year rules, so confirm with a professional before filing.

Open the Trips tab and tap the add button, or tap any trip to edit it. Set the country and the entry/exit dates — an open-ended trip (no exit yet) is fine, Perch counts it up to today. As you type, the impact preview shows how the trip changes your Schengen count before you save.

When you tap to detect your country — or turn on "detect on open" — Perch reads your device location at that moment only, converts it to a country on your device, and throws the precise coordinates away. It never tracks you in the background and never sends your location anywhere. You can decline or revoke location permission in iOS Settings and the app still works fully.

Alerts are scheduled locally on your device, so they need notification permission. Check iOS Settings → Notifications → Perch and make sure Allow Notifications is on. Alerts also require Perch+. If you just changed your trips, reopen the app once so it can reschedule based on your latest data.

The core Schengen counter, trip editing, and one tax country are free forever. Perch+ adds the what-if planner and window strip, detect-and-auto-log location, approaching-limit and tax alerts, unlimited tax-residency countries, and CSV export. It's $19.99/year or $2.99/month, with a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan.

Perch+ is billed by Apple. Manage or cancel anytime in Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions on your iPhone. For refunds, go to reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in with your Apple ID, find the Perch transaction, and choose "Request a refund" — Apple decides based on their policies. If something failed on our side, email us and we'll help.

Your trips are stored on the device, so use an iCloud or encrypted local backup when setting up the new phone to bring them across. To move just your Perch+ access, install Perch and tap Restore purchases on the paywall — your subscription unlocks again with the same Apple ID. To take your travel history with you as a file, use Settings → Export CSV (Perch+).

Everything lives on your device. Settings → Delete all trips clears your travel data, and deleting the app removes the rest. We hold no server-side copy of your trips to delete. If you want purchase data tied to your anonymous subscription identifier removed, email us and we'll forward the request to RevenueCat. See the Privacy Policy.