Your photos never leave

Cleanly does not collect, store, or transmit any personal data to us. There is no account system, no sign-in, and no Cleanly server of any kind.

To do its job, Cleanly needs access to your photo library through Apple's Photos framework. On-device analysis, powered by Apple's Vision framework, examines each photo to flag likely junk (blurry shots, empty frames, screenshots) and to group duplicates and bursts. This produces things like review status, a duplicate group ID, and a sharpness score, stored locally on your device using Apple's SwiftData framework. Cleanly never stores the pixels of your photos themselves, only these small pieces of metadata about them, keyed to the photo's identifier in your library.

If you delete the app, this data is deleted with it. We have no way to access, recover, or view it.

If your photo library is set to optimize storage on your device, some photos exist locally only as thumbnails, with the full-resolution version held in iCloud. To analyze such a photo, Cleanly asks Apple's Photos framework to fetch the full-resolution copy down to your device, the same way opening that photo in the Photos app would. This is a download, never an upload: no photo, thumbnail, or derived data ever leaves your device through Cleanly.

Cleanly never removes a photo from your library on its own. Photos you choose to delete first move into Cleanly's own Trash, a safety net inside the app. Removing them from your photo library permanently requires an explicit two-step confirmation inside Cleanly, in addition to the system deletion prompt iOS itself shows you.

If you mark a photo as a favourite in Cleanly, that status is written directly to Apple's own Favourites in the Photos app, so it stays in sync and outlives the app. This is the only write Cleanly makes to your existing photos, and it never affects which photos appear in your review queues.

Cleanly does not use analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting services, and does not share data with any third party. The only outside service it ever talks to is Apple's own Photos framework, described above.

Cleanly is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Continued use of Cleanly after a change means you accept the updated policy.