Privacy Policy

Your photos never leave your phone.

Last updated: 1 August 2026

Who this applies to

This policy covers the PhotoLess mobile app ("PhotoLess", "the app", "we", "us") and this website. PhotoLess is an independent app. By using it, you agree to this policy.

Your photos and videos

To do its job, PhotoLess asks your operating system for permission to access your photo library. With that permission, the app reads your photos and videos locally, on your device, so it can display them and let you sort them into "keep" and "review to delete".

• No uploads. Your photos and videos are never sent to us, to any server, or to any cloud service. There is no backend to send them to.
• No AI analysis. Your photos are never scanned, classified, or processed by artificial intelligence.
• Nothing is deleted instantly. Swiping only adds a photo to a review list. Photos are removed from your library only after you review the list and confirm, through your device's standard deletion. Deleted items typically remain recoverable from "Recently Deleted" for a limited time.
• Local copies stay local. Optional features such as the Offline Stack create downscaled copies of photos you choose, saved to storage on the same device for connection-free review. These copies never leave your phone and are removed when you delete the corresponding photo.
• Photo location. The optional Photo Map reads the location metadata already embedded in your photos, on your device, to group them by place. This location data is used only to render the map locally and is never collected or shared.

Information that does leave your device

PhotoLess itself never transmits your photos. To run a sustainable app, a limited set of non-photo information is handled by a few trusted services. None of it can identify you personally, and none of it includes the content of your photos.

Anonymous usage analytics

We use Aptabase, a privacy-friendly analytics service, to understand how the app is used in aggregate — for example, how many people start a review session or open a tool. This helps us fix problems and improve PhotoLess. Aptabase is designed to be privacy-first: it does not use cookies or persistent cross-app identifiers, does not build advertising profiles, and does not collect personal data. No photo content is ever included in analytics.

Purchases and subscriptions

If you buy PhotoLess Premium, the purchase is processed by Apple through the App Store. We use RevenueCat to manage entitlements and validate purchases. These services receive the information needed to complete and restore a purchase (such as an anonymous app user identifier and transaction details). We never receive your full payment card details — those are handled entirely by Apple.

Advertising measurement

PhotoLess is a small, independent app, and we tell people about it by running ads on Meta's platforms (Facebook and Instagram). So we can see which of those ads actually bring people to the app — and stop paying for the ones that do not — PhotoLess includes Meta's measurement SDK, covered by Meta's privacy policy.

It reports a short list of non-photo milestones: that the app was installed and opened, that you reached a working photo library, and the amount and currency of a Premium purchase. It never receives a photo, a video, a filename, a location, or anything at all about what is in your library.

This, together with the optional rewarded ads below, is the part of PhotoLess that counts as tracking under Apple's definition, so on iOS the app asks your permission first, through Apple's standard App Tracking Transparency prompt. You are asked once, and the answer covers both. If you decline — and declining costs you nothing in the app — no advertising identifier is read, measurement falls back to Apple's aggregated reporting, which cannot identify you, and any ad you choose to watch is non-personalized. You can change your answer at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.

Optional rewarded ads

Free accounts get a set number of review sessions per day. If you run out and would rather not pay, PhotoLess offers an optional way to earn more: watch one short video ad and receive bonus sessions. These ads are served by Google AdMob.

This is the only advertising inside the app, and it only ever happens because you tapped a button asking for it. There are no banners, no interstitials, and nothing that interrupts a review session. If you never tap to watch an ad, no ad is ever loaded and no ad data is collected.

When an ad is shown, Google may collect device and advertising identifiers to deliver and measure it. If you declined the tracking prompt, PhotoLess explicitly requests non-personalized ads, which are chosen by context rather than by a profile of you. Google never receives a photo, a video, or anything about the contents of your library — the ad SDK has no access to them.

Never paywalled behind an ad: undo, reviewing your delete list, and confirming before anything is removed are free for everyone, always.

Optional reminders

If you allow notifications, PhotoLess schedules a few gentle reminders to come back and keep tidying. These are local notifications generated on your device — there is no server sending you push messages, and you can turn them off any time in Settings.

What we do not do

• We do not require an account, email, or login.
• We do not sell your data. We have no data about you to sell.
• We do not upload, store, or back up your photos anywhere.
• We do not use AI to look at your photos.
• We do not track you across other apps or websites unless you allow it in the App Tracking Transparency prompt — and even then, only for the advertising measurement and optional rewarded ads described above.
• We do not show banner or interstitial ads, and no ad ever interrupts a review session.
• We do not build a profile of you from your photos, and we never share photo content with anyone.

Permissions you control

Photo access, notifications, location metadata, and ad tracking are all controlled by you in your device's settings, and can be changed or revoked at any time. If you grant "limited" photo access, PhotoLess can only see the photos you specifically selected. Revoking tracking permission stops the advertising measurement described above; the app itself keeps working exactly the same.

Children

PhotoLess is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age required in your country) and does not knowingly collect information from them.

This website

This website is informational. It does not set advertising or tracking cookies. Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which may receive your IP address as a normal part of serving the font files.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app evolves. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date above. Material changes will be reflected here before they take effect.