Privacy Policy

What Zouti Photos collects

Nothing today. Zouti Photos has no account system, no sign-in, and no analytics or telemetry. It does not send us your photos, videos, thumbnails, file names, metadata, faces, locations, albums, searches, or usage data.

Reading metadata, searching, finding duplicates, scoring, editing, and exporting all happen on your Mac. Changes go through Apple's supported Photos interface, and files leave the app only when you choose to export them.

When Zouti Photos uses the network

Which version you have decides this. The Mac App Store version makes no network requests of its own at all.

The version downloaded from this site makes exactly two kinds of request, and nothing from your photo library is in either:

• Update checks send the app version and the macOS version to downloads.zouti.app, hosted on Cloudflare, so the app can tell you when a new version is ready. The app asks before checking automatically, and you can turn it off. Cloudflare sees your IP address as any web host does; we see aggregate download counts, not who downloaded.
• License activation sends your license key and this Mac's name to Polar, the store that sells Zouti Photos, when you activate, when the app confirms the key (about once a month, in the background), and when you deactivate. Polar keeps your order, email and activations under Polar's privacy policy. The 14-day trial itself needs no account, no email, and no network: it is a date stored on your Mac.

When you ask Photos to download an original from iCloud or sync a change, macOS may contact Apple. Apple handles that connection under Apple's privacy policy. Zouti adds no data collection of its own.

AI assistants and MCP

Zouti Photos includes an optional MCP server that lets you connect an AI assistant to your library. It is off until you turn it on, listens only on your Mac, and is protected by a token you can rotate. Separate controls decide what an assistant may see, and access beyond basic metadata starts off.

If you connect a cloud-based assistant, the information you choose to share with it is sent to that provider under its privacy policy. It is not sent to us. Zouti logs each MCP request locally so you can review it.

Purchases and crash reports

Zouti Photos is sold two ways. On the Mac App Store, Apple handles your purchase and never gives us your payment details or Apple Account. We receive aggregate sales reports, such as the number of copies sold in a country, not the identities of buyers. On zouti.app, Polar handles your purchase. We see your name, email address, and order, but never your card details.

Crash reports reach us only through Apple: from the Mac App Store version when you choose to share analytics with app developers in macOS settings, and automatically from TestFlight beta builds. Apple handles them under Apple's privacy policy. A report may contain technical information about the crash, but Zouti does not add the contents of your photo library to it.

Beta testing

Beta builds of Zouti Photos are distributed through Apple's TestFlight. They behave like the Mac App Store version and make no network requests of their own. TestFlight itself shares some information with us: your name and email address if we invited you by email, crash reports, basic usage such as installs and sessions, your Mac's model and macOS version, and any feedback you send through TestFlight, including screenshots. Apple handles this under its privacy policy and TestFlight's terms.

Screenshots of Zouti Photos can show your photos and their details. We use them only to understand the problem you reported, never share them, and delete them when it is resolved. If you would rather not share a screenshot, describe the problem in words instead.

Email

We have your email address only if you write to us, join the mailing list, buy Zouti Photos from zouti.app, or join the beta by invitation. We keep support and feedback threads so we can follow up, and use the mailing list for release announcements and occasional Zouti news. Every mailing includes an unsubscribe link. Our emails contain no tracking pixels or tracked links: we do not record whether you open an email or which links you click.

Help ▸ Send Feedback… in Zouti Photos opens an email to hello@zouti.app in your own mail app. It is filled in with diagnostics (app and macOS versions, memory, the number of items in your library, and a few app settings) and the app's log for that session, which can include your library's name and folder paths. Nothing is sent until you send it, and you can edit or remove any of it first.

Our email provider processes addresses for us. We do not give it permission to use them for anything else, and we do not upload them to advertising platforms. Please do not send photos or library files to support unless we ask for something specific to diagnose a bug. If you do, we delete them when the bug is resolved.

This website

zouti.app is a set of static pages hosted on Cloudflare Pages. It sets no cookies, loads no third-party scripts, and runs no analytics, advertising, or tracking.

Like any web host, Cloudflare may keep basic access logs, such as IP addresses and requested pages, for security and reliability. That data is handled by Cloudflare under Cloudflare's privacy policy. We do not use those logs to build profiles or combine them with other information.

Possible future telemetry

Zouti Photos collects no usage data today. We may add basic telemetry in a future version to learn which features are useful. If we do, it will follow these rules:

• It will be optional, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings.
• It will record only basic feature-use events, such as whether a feature was used, along with the app and macOS versions. Reports will be pooled so we see totals, not individuals.
• It will never contain photo content or anything that describes your library: no names, thumbnails, dates, locations, people, keywords, captions, albums, searches, templates, or library counts.
• It will not be tied to your name, email, account, advertising ID, device serial number, or activity in other apps.

Before collecting anything beyond that, we will update this policy and ask you first.

What we do not do

We do not sell, rent, barter, or use your information for advertising. We do not look inside your photo library, use it to train anything, add advertising to our apps, or make you create an account to use software you bought.

If the law requires us to provide information, we can provide only what we have — generally an email address and support correspondence, never your photo library. If Zouti is sold or transferred, that limited customer information may transfer with the business so support can continue. A buyer would have to honor this policy for information collected before the transfer, and we would announce the change before it takes effect.

Your choices

Wherever you live, you can ask what information we hold about you, request a copy, correct it, or have it deleted. You can also unsubscribe from the mailing list at any time. Because we collect so little, the answer is usually an email address and a support thread.

Our apps are not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Changes

If this policy changes, we will post the updated version here with a new date. If a change meaningfully expands what Zouti collects, we will also explain it in an app or mailing-list update.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or want your information deleted? Email support@zouti.app. Feedback and ideas are welcome at hello@zouti.app.

Zouti Technologies LLC. osxphotos is free, open-source software that runs on your own machine and collects nothing.