Sift collects nothing.

Who this is from

Sift is developed and published by Richard Nelson, an independent developer. "Sift", "we" and "the app" below all mean the same thing: the Sift app on your iPhone or iPad.

What Sift accesses on your device

To do its job, Sift asks for permission to read and write your photo library. iOS shows you that request, and you can withdraw it at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Photos.

With that permission, Sift can:

• read your photos and videos in order to display them for review;
• delete photos you have chosen to delete, after you confirm;
• add photos to albums you choose;
• mark photos as favourites.

Sift never modifies the content of a photo. It does not edit, crop, re-compress or re-encode anything.

What Sift stores, and where

Sift keeps a small amount of information so that you don't have to review the same photo twice. All of it is stored locally on your device, inside the app's own private container, and it is included in your device backups exactly as any other app's data is.

• A review record — a list of which photos you have already dealt with, and how. This is what lets Sift reopen on the next unreviewed photo instead of starting over.
• The delete pile — which photos you have staged for deletion but not yet confirmed.
• Visual fingerprints — for photos taken moments apart, Sift computes a compact mathematical summary used only to tell near-duplicates apart. These are derived on your device, are not images, and cannot be turned back into a photograph.
• Your settings — such as your pinned albums and whether haptics are on.

None of this is transmitted anywhere. You can erase all of it at any time from Settings → Reset review history inside the app, or by deleting the app.

What Sift does not do

• No accounts, sign-in, or user profiles.
• No servers or backends operated by us — there are none.
• No analytics, telemetry, or usage tracking of any kind.
• No third-party SDKs, advertising libraries or trackers.
• No advertising, and no advertising identifier.
• No selling or sharing of data, because there is no data to sell.
• No tracking of you across other apps or websites.
• No in-app purchases or payment processing.

Sift's App Store privacy label is "Data Not Collected", and that is a complete description rather than a summary.

Network activity

Sift makes no network requests of its own. It contains no code that connects to the internet.

One kind of network activity can still occur while you use it. If you use iCloud Photos with "Optimize iPhone Storage", your full-size originals live in iCloud rather than on the device, and iOS downloads them as needed so they can be displayed. That transfer is between your device and your own iCloud account, performed by Apple's own photo system. It does not pass through us, and we cannot see it.

Children

Sift is rated 4+ and is safe for all ages. Because it collects no information from anyone, it collects no information from children either.

Your rights

Data-protection laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA give you rights to access, correct, export and delete the personal data a company holds about you. We hold none, so there is nothing for us to produce or erase.

The data Sift keeps on your own device is already entirely under your control: reset it inside the app, or delete the app to remove it completely.

Changes to this policy

If Sift's behaviour ever changes in a way that affects this policy, this page will be updated and the effective date at the top will change. Since the app has no analytics, the honest way to see what changed is to read this page — it is deliberately short enough to re-read.

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