This policy covers SortClean, an iPhone app, and this website (sortclean.app). “We” and “us” mean the makers of SortClean. In short: the app keeps your photos, and everything it learns from them, on your iPhone, and we collect no data. The only exception is this website, which counts visits without cookies.
The data we collect
In the app: none. SortClean has no account and no server of ours behind it. It shows no ads and contains no tracking, analytics or advertising code, from us or from any other company. Its App Store privacy label is “Data Not Collected”. This is the same for everyone who uses the app, including children. The website counts visits without cookies; see This website below.
Your photos and videos
SortClean analyzes your photos, screenshots and videos on your iPhone, with a model built into the app, and works offline. Your photos, and everything the app works out from them (categories, similar groups, the best shot, sizes and places), stay on your iPhone. They are never uploaded or sent to us.
The words and numbers the app reads in screenshots are used to sort them and to find identical ones. They are stored only as fingerprints (short codes), not as readable text.
If you share the “space cleared” card, it goes only where you send it. It shows the app’s name, the space cleared and the number of items, not your photos.
What stays on your iPhone
To work quickly, the app keeps a few things in its own storage on your iPhone:
- Its index of your library: each item’s category, size, similar group and place (from the photo’s location data), plus the fingerprints above. It is stored with iOS data protection.
- Your corrections, when you move an item to another category, so the app can learn from them.
- Your settings, such as appearance, language and the weekly reminder.
- A few totals, such as the space used, for the home screen widget.
Deleting the app removes all of this from your iPhone. Albums the app saved in Photos stay there, because they are part of your photo library; you can delete them in the Photos app. Like any app’s data, the index can be part of your own iPhone backup (iCloud Backup or a backup on your computer) if you use one. We have no access to it.
Photo access
SortClean asks for access to your photo library, because sorting and cleaning it is what the app does. You can allow all photos or only a selection (limited access); with limited access, the app sees only the photos you picked. The app uses this access to:
- Read your photos and videos and sort them, on your iPhone.
- Save categories as albums in the Photos app when you ask. This needs access to all photos.
- Delete items, or replace a video with a smaller copy, only after you confirm. iOS asks you to confirm too, and deleted items stay in Recently Deleted in Photos for 30 days.
You can change or remove access at any time in Settings › Privacy & Security › Photos › SortClean. The app doesn’t ask for your iPhone’s location, camera, microphone or contacts.
Places and the map
If your photos have location data, the app reads it from your photo library to group photos by city, country and trip. It finds the city in a list built into the app (from GeoNames), so no location is looked up online.
The map view uses Apple Maps. To draw the map, iOS loads map images for the area on screen from Apple. Your photos and their locations are not sent; the pins are drawn on your iPhone.
iCloud Photos
If you use iCloud Photos, some originals may be stored only in iCloud. Scanning uses the copies already on your iPhone. When the app needs an original that is only in iCloud, for example to show a photo at full size or play a video, it asks Apple’s Photos framework, and iOS downloads it from your iCloud account, just as the Photos app would. That download goes between your iPhone and Apple, not through us.
Notifications
SortClean uses only local notifications. They are scheduled on your iPhone; no server sends them. If you allow notifications for the app, there are three kinds:
- The weekly reminder on Sunday evening, if you turn it on.
- A notice when a long scan finishes in the background, if you said yes when it started.
- A reminder the day before a free trial ends, if your plan includes one.
You can turn them off at any time in Settings › Notifications › SortClean.
Subscriptions
SortClean Pro is an auto-renewing subscription (weekly, monthly or yearly) sold by Apple through the App Store. Apple handles the payment with StoreKit. We never receive your name, email address or payment details; the app only asks the App Store whether this Apple Account has an active subscription. Apple gives us aggregated sales reports. You manage and cancel the subscription in your Apple Account settings (see support).
Apple services and analytics
Some features work through Apple’s own services: App Store purchases, iCloud Photos downloads, map images and the App Store rating prompt. Apple handles that data under Apple’s privacy policy.
If you choose to share app analytics with developers in your iPhone settings, Apple may share anonymous, aggregated usage and crash statistics with us. You can turn this off at any time in Settings.
This website
sortclean.app does not use cookies, advertising or tracking scripts, and it loads nothing from other companies, with one exception: Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits. It does not use cookies or your browser’s storage, and it does not follow you from site to site. It shows us only totals, such as page views, the site that linked to us, country, browser type and how fast pages load. Nothing in those totals identifies you.
This counting happens only on the website. The SortClean app itself collects no data, as described above.
When you open the site without a language in the address, it reads the language your browser asks for and opens the page in that language. It does not save this choice and does not use your location.
Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, processes technical information such as IP addresses to deliver the site and protect it from abuse. We do not use that information to identify you.
Contact and changes
If you write to social@sortclean.app, we use your email address and message only to reply to you. Our email is hosted by Zoho Mail. We do not sell or share your messages, and you can ask us to delete them. For help with the app, see SortClean support.
If we change this policy, we will update this page and the date at the top.