Privacy Policy — Tend Photos

Tend Photos is an app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone built to help you clean up, enhance, and organize your iCloud Photos library. This policy explains what information the app collects (very little), how it uses your Photos library (locally only), and what you can expect when you use it. We've written this in plain language, not legalese, because we think you deserve to actually understand it.

1. What information is collected

Almost nothing.

Tend Photos does not collect your name, email address, location, or any personally identifying information. There are no Tend accounts, sign-up forms, or logins. The app transmits only the anonymous usage analytics described in Section 6 and the encrypted continuity records described in Section 4. Neither includes your name, photos, filenames, or library contents.

Tend Photos stores a local action history file — a JSON file saved on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone that records what actions have been taken within the app (scans run, deletions approved, enhancements saved). This file exists so you always have a record of what changed in your library. It lives on your device, under your control. Private Sync never uploads this file or any pending deletion selection.

2. How your Photos library access is used

Tend Photos requests access to your Photos library the first time you open the app. This access is required for the app to work — it uses Apple's PhotoKit framework to read your library, analyze photos for duplicates and quality, and make changes you explicitly approve.

Everything that happens with your Photos library stays on your device:

Photo analysis (duplicate detection, quality scoring, Smart Insights categorization) runs entirely on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone.
No photos, thumbnails, metadata, filenames, or any other library content is transmitted to any server.
Tend Photos does not share your Photos library data with any third party.
You can revoke Photos access at any time — on Mac in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Photos, or on iPad or iPhone in Settings > Privacy & Security > Photos.

3. Local data storage

Tend Photos stores one file locally on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone: an action history log in JSON format. This file records actions you have taken within the app — such as scans completed, duplicate groups reviewed, photos marked for deletion, deletions approved, and enhancements saved. It does not contain copies of your photos or any data from your Photos library beyond action records.

This file is stored in the app's local data container on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone. It is not backed up to iCloud by Tend Photos (though it may be included in a standard device backup, like any other app data). You can review, export, or delete this file from within the app at any time.

4. Encrypted cross-device continuity

When iCloud is available, Tend Photos automatically carries your rank progress, Keep and Restore choices, and a small set of app preferences between your own Apple devices. Your local history remains authoritative and every review action continues to work offline.

Before any continuity record leaves your device, Tend Photos encrypts it with a key stored in your iCloud Keychain. Apple CloudKit stores the encrypted record in your private iCloud database. Tend Photos does not operate a sync server, and the Tend Photos team cannot read those records. They never contain photos, previews, filenames, locations, photo metadata, pending deletion selections, or deletion approvals. A Photos cloud identifier used to match the same asset on another device is kept inside the encrypted record.

This continuity uses your existing Apple Account and iCloud Keychain; Tend Photos does not receive your Apple Account identity or create a Tend account. If iCloud is unavailable, the app keeps working locally and retries later. Signing into a different Apple Account starts a separate encrypted continuity space and never merges records between accounts.

5. In-app purchases

Tend Photos is free, with no in-app purchases at launch. If paid features are introduced in a future update, all payment processing would be handled entirely by Apple's App Store. Tend Photos does not receive, store, or process any payment information — no credit card numbers, no billing addresses, nothing.

6. Analytics

The Mac, iPad, and iPhone apps use Google's Firebase Analytics to collect anonymous usage data — which features you use, how often you open the app, and how review sessions go — to help us understand what's useful and improve the app. This never includes your photos, filenames, or anything about your library's contents, which always stay on your device regardless of analytics.

The website (tendphotos.com) uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, a privacy-first, cookieless analytics tool. It reports aggregate page-visit and traffic trends only — it sets no cookies, collects no personal data, does not fingerprint visitors or track them across sites, and needs no consent banner. Because it stores no personal information, there is nothing for us to sell or share. This is the privacy-respecting analytics tool referenced in earlier versions of this policy; as promised, the policy was updated before the tool was enabled.

The website also offers optional Google Analytics, used only if you click "Accept" on the banner shown on your first visit. Until you accept, nothing is sent to Google at all — not even an anonymous ping. If you accept, Google Analytics records page views and a small set of interaction events (for example, which App Store button you clicked, or which blog post you opened) to help us understand what's useful on the site. It does not track you across other websites, does not support ad personalization, and we do not enable any advertising features in it. You can decline the banner, or clear your browser's local storage for this site, to opt out at any time.

7. Children's privacy

Tend Photos is a general-purpose photo utility. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. The anonymous usage analytics described in Section 6 are not linked to a user's name, age, or personal information, and continuity records are encrypted in the user's private iCloud database.

8. Changes to this policy

If we make meaningful changes to this privacy policy, we will update the effective date at the top of this page. For significant changes — for example, if we ever add any data collection — we will provide a more prominent notice. The current version of this policy is always available at tendphotos.com/privacy.

9. Contact

Questions about this policy or about how Tend Photos handles your data? Email us at [email protected]. We'll reply within 48 hours.