Belong Switzerland, Terms and Conditions

These terms are the agreement between you and Belong Europe ApS for the use of Belong Switzerland. By downloading or using the app you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use the app.

Who we are

Belong Switzerland is made by Belong Europe ApS, a company registered in Copenhagen, Denmark, CVR number 46649044, at Øster Søgade 32, 3. tv, 1357 København, reachable at hello@belongeurope.com.

What Belong Switzerland is

Belong Switzerland is a personal tracker. It helps you see your own distance to Swiss citizenship by organising the information you enter against published rules, and by showing honestly which part of the journey you control and which part you do not. Everything you enter stays on your device.

Belong Switzerland is an iPhone app. It has no account, and it lets you keep a second count for another adult on the same phone.

Belong Switzerland is not legal advice

Belong Switzerland is an information tool, not a lawyer and not an authority. Nationality law changes and practice varies between cantons and communes. This app may contain errors or be out of date. Nothing here creates any right, decides anything or binds any authority.

Verify your own situation with the bodies that actually decide it. Your commune and your canton check your application and decide on your naturalisation. Your canton’s migration office decides on your residence permit. The State Secretariat for Migration, SEM, grants the federal naturalisation permit. You use Belong Switzerland at your own risk, and decisions about your file remain yours.

Practice is practice, not the exam

The questions in the Practice tab are written by Belong Switzerland from the four areas the Swiss Citizenship Ordinance names: geography, history, politics and society. They are not written or endorsed by any authority and they can contain mistakes. There are 418 of them, across four chapters.

Switzerland has no national citizenship test. Your canton decides whether and how it checks your knowledge, in writing, in an interview or both, and many cantons also ask about the canton and the commune, which this app does not cover. So there is no mock exam here and no pass mark: a score is a score, not a verdict, and a good one does not mean you would pass your canton’s test. Knowing the answers does not replace the separate proof of a national language.

Today’s five, the schedule that decides when a question comes back and the run of days it keeps are a study aid. The run counts days on which you practised and nothing else: it is not progress toward citizenship, it is not an assessment and no authority sees it or takes it into account. A sitting date you add is one you enter yourself, and the countdown to it is only as right as the date you put in: your canton or commune sets the real one.

What if is a sandbox

The What if feature runs the same rules on a hypothetical copy of your situation so you can see how a decision would move your finish line. It is an illustration, not a prediction, not a promise and not a commitment by any authority. Nothing you try in it is saved.

Documents you attach

You choose what to attach on the Path tab, and what you attach is your responsibility. We do not read, verify, validate or store your documents, and attaching one does not satisfy a requirement or prove anything to anyone. Only the authority deciding your case can do that. The count of requirements that carry a document is a count of attachments, nothing more.

Belong Switzerland is not a backup service. Documents live only on the phone you added them on. If you remove one or delete the app, or if you lose or replace the device, it is gone and we cannot recover it, because we never had it. Your own device backup will not save it either: documents are deliberately kept out of that backup, so restoring a new phone does not bring them back. Keep your own copies of anything that matters.

Dates, reminders and alerts

What’s coming lists dates worked out from what you have entered and from rules the authorities have published. A date shown as the earliest possible one is a projection, not a commitment: rules change, calendars change and nothing shown here binds any authority.

You can also enter a trip dated ahead. A planned trip is kept apart and marked as planned. It counts for nothing until it starts: the figures in the trip sheet run the real rules on a copy that includes it, and like What if they are an illustration, not a prediction. Once the trip has happened, check its dates, because the app counts what you entered, not where you were.

Alerts for those dates are local notifications scheduled on your device and delivered by iOS at its discretion. They can arrive late or not at all, and your system settings, a Focus mode or Low Power Mode can hold them back. They stop if you turn notifications off. Do not rely on them as your only reminder. Meeting a renewal or any other deadline remains yours.

A second person on your phone

You can add a second adult and keep their count next to yours. Enter another person’s details only with their agreement, and only for an adult: Belong Switzerland is not for tracking children. Everything said on this page about your own count applies to theirs. It is a tracker, not legal advice, its figures bind no authority and what you enter about them is your responsibility. Practice, documents, reminders and widgets stay with the phone’s owner; a second person gets a count, not a second copy of the app. A trip logged for both of you is one entry read against each person’s own rules, so check its dates for both.

Stage one and your permit

Stage one on the Path tab reads the requirements for a C permit, the settlement permit, against what you have entered. Where a row can be read from your entries, such as your years of residence, the app fills it in. Every other row is your own check: I meet this records what you tell the app, it verifies nothing and it is not an assessment by any authority. Telling the app you hold a C permit verifies nothing either: it removes the permit card and its reminders, and where your citizenship route asks for that permit, the citizenship count takes your word for it. The requirements, fees and other routes shown there are a dated reading of the official sources linked on the screen, and they change: check them there before you apply or pay. Your canton’s migration office decides, not the app.

The permit card counts down to the day your residence permit ends, a date you type in yourself, and works out from it, by the published rules, when you can apply to extend it, the last day the law asks you to apply by and what applying late can mean. Those dates are a projection from your own entry, not advice and not a decision: the permit you hold and the authority that issued it are what count. Its reminders are local notifications like the others on this page and can arrive late or not at all. Applying in time remains yours.

After you apply

Once you tell the app you have applied, the Dashboard follows the wait from the filing date you entered. The day count is arithmetic on that date, and the updates and reply windows it shows are the ones you logged, not anything received from an authority. No law sets a deadline for your commune and canton to decide, so the app shows no decision date and gives no estimate, because none is published. What it says about SEM’s part and the canton’s final decision restates the published rules; it is not a date for your case. A reply window is the date you read from the letter and typed in; meeting it remains yours. The letters you receive are the record of your case. The app is not.

Exam sittings and guides

The Practice tab says how your knowledge of Switzerland is checked and lists no sittings, because there is no national test and no national calendar: your canton decides. The guides are a dated reading of the Swiss Citizenship Act and Ordinance on fedlex.admin.ch and of SEM’s own pages. Authorities change dates, fees and rules, and an app update is the only way a change reaches your phone. Registering for a test is done with your canton or commune, never in the app: the app does not book anything. Check the authority’s own page before you register, travel or pay.

Widgets

A home screen or Lock Screen widget shows what the app held when the widget last refreshed. The system decides when that is, so a widget can lag behind the app by hours, and longer if your phone is short of power or you have not opened the app in a while. Where a widget and the app disagree, the app is right. A widget is a glance, not a record, and nothing it shows binds any authority.

News comes from The Local

The News segment shows stories from The Local Switzerland, taken from their public feeds for immigration and Swiss citizenship. The stories are The Local Switzerland’s own reporting, not ours. We do not write them, we do not verify them and we do not control what is published or how long it stays available; some articles may need a subscription with them. Nothing in that feed is legal advice, and a story is not a change in the rules until the authority says it is. The feed can be empty, late or unavailable, and the app says so rather than filling the gap.

Passport facts

The Passport tab shows facts about the Swiss passport (validity, fee, where to apply and dual citizenship), taken from the official pages of the Swiss authorities on ch.ch and from the law on fedlex.admin.ch on the date shown in the app. Fees and rules change, and nothing on that tab binds any authority: check with your cantonal passport office before you book or pay. The cover shown is an illustration, the holder name and any photo are ones you added yourself and none of it is a travel document or proof of anything. The notes on the passport’s design are descriptive only, and the line under the cover saying when you could apply restates the app’s own estimate. It is not a decision date and not advice.

Subscriptions

Belong Switzerland Pro costs CHF 34.00 per year in Switzerland. The price that applies is the one the App Store shows you when you subscribe. New subscribers get a 7-day free trial. The subscription renews automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends. Where the law permits, any unused part of a free trial is forfeited when you buy a subscription.

Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase; manage or cancel it in your Apple Account settings. We cannot do it for you.

Apple handles the sale, billing and refunds under its own terms: purchases are refunded by Apple under Apple’s policy.

No warranty

Belong Switzerland is provided as is and as available. We do not warrant that it is accurate, complete, uninterrupted, error-free or fit for any particular purpose, and we do not warrant that any date it shows will match the decision you eventually receive.

Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by law, Belong Europe ApS is not liable for any loss or harm arising from your use of Belong Switzerland or your reliance on the information in it, including any missed deadline, refused application or delayed decision. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

Acceptable use

Use Belong Switzerland personally and lawfully. Do not copy, resell, redistribute or sublicense it, do not reverse engineer it and do not use it to mislead anyone about their legal position or to provide immigration advice as a service.

Intellectual property

The app, its text, its rule summaries, its practice questions and its design belong to Belong Europe ApS. References to official sources are for information; the names and marks of SEM, of the cantons and communes and of The Local belong to their respective owners, and none of them endorses Belong Switzerland.

Changes

We may update these terms. The current version always lives on this page with its effective date, and material changes are announced in the app.

Governing law

These terms are governed by Danish law. If you are a consumer living in Switzerland, you keep every protection that Swiss law gives you and that a contract cannot take away, including where Swiss law does not allow this choice of Danish law, and you can bring a claim against us before the courts of the place where you live. If you are a consumer living elsewhere, you keep the mandatory protections of the law of the country where you live. Nothing here removes them.

Contact

Questions about these terms: hello@belongeurope.com.