Browsing anonymously

You don’t need an account to use Swirl. Browsing, RSVPs, your Interested list — all of it works signed-out. No sign-up wall to push through.

Works without signing in

• Browse the home page, categories, and search — every public event is reachable.
• Open any event page — full description, time, venue, address, cover, the lot.
• Change location and radius — your picks persist in browser storage.
• Interested list — bookmark whatever catches your eye; it lives at /watching. Browser-local, never touches our servers.
• RSVP — name + email is enough; no account step. We email a confirmation if you say “Going”.
• Download to your calendar — every event page has an .ics link.

Needs sign-in

• Posting and editing events. We use the email on file for confirmations, edit notifications, and RSVPs flowing back to you.
• Your host dashboard at /dashboard — your events, RSVP counts, management actions.
• Claiming an event — see Claiming an event.

How sign-in works

Stytch magic links. Type your email, we send a link, tap it, you’re in. No passwords, ever.

• Sign in: swirl.events/signin
• One-time link, expires after a short window.
• Sessions ride on a first-party cookie. No third-party trackers.

Is there a session for anonymous visitors?

Nothing server-side. Everything that “remembers” your filters and location lives in your browser:

• Location pill — the city, radius, unit you picked
• Interested list — event slugs you bookmarked
• Recent searches and recent locations — for the autocomplete dropdowns
• Theme preference — dark / light / auto

Clear your browser data and we lose the thread. No IP-based tracking, no cross-site cookie.

Note

One exception: on your very first visit we make a single IP geolocation call (to a third party, ipapi.co) to guess your starting city. The result is cached in your browser. We never see your IP and we don’t store the result on our servers.

See Privacy for the longer version.