Privacy Policy

The short version

This policy covers the BooClean iPhone app and the booclean.app website. It is written to describe what the shipping app actually does; where you find a difference between this page and the app's behaviour, treat the app's behaviour as authoritative and tell us so we can correct the page.

Photo library access

BooClean asks iOS for access to your photo library the first time you start a scan, after an in-app screen that explains why. The system prompt shows this reason:

BooClean needs access to your photo library to find similar photos, screenshots and large videos, and to let you review items before deleting them.

Access is requested as read and write because deleting a photo requires write access — iOS does not offer a "read plus delete" level. BooClean's only write operation is a deletion you have explicitly confirmed. It never edits, moves, favourites, re-tags or exports your media.

You can grant Full Access or Limited Access. With Limited Access, BooClean only ever sees the photos you selected, and the app says so on its home screen rather than pretending it scanned everything. You can change or revoke access at any time in iOS Settings › Privacy & Security › Photos › BooClean. If you deny access, BooClean cannot scan and simply says so.

On-device processing

All of the following happens on your iPhone and nowhere else:

• Reading your library. BooClean uses Apple's PhotoKit to enumerate your photos and videos and read their dimensions, duration, dates and media type.
• Finding similar photos. Comparison uses Apple's on-device Vision framework together with a local perceptual hash. Both run inside the app on your device; neither sends an image anywhere.
• Estimating sizes. Sizes come from the file where iOS exposes it, and from a local calculation otherwise. Estimated figures are labelled with a ~ in the app.
• Thumbnails. Previews are requested from PhotoKit and held in memory while a screen is open. BooClean does not write copies of your media to its own storage.
• Shrinking a video. Compression uses Apple's AVFoundation on your iPhone. The video is read, re-encoded and written back to your Photos library locally. Nothing is uploaded, and no external service is involved at any stage.
• Grouping bursts. Best of the Burst uses the burst information your camera recorded, read through PhotoKit. Choosing a recommended shot uses the same on-device sharpness and resolution signals as similar-photo grouping.
• Insights. Clutter Score, Storage Runway and Camera Roll Personality are calculated from counts and sizes already computed on your device.

Storage Runway is an estimate derived from how your own device storage has changed over the days you have used the app. It is a simple projection of local numbers, not a prediction produced by any external service, and the app marks it as estimated.

Deleting media

Nothing is deleted as a side effect of scanning, reviewing or playing a Keep or Drop session. Items you set aside collect in a review queue. Deletion happens only when you open Final Review and confirm it, at which point BooClean asks iOS to delete those specific assets. iOS then shows its own confirmation, which you must also accept.

Deleted items move to Recently Deleted in the Photos app, where iOS keeps them for 30 days before removing them permanently. That window, and any recovery within it, is handled by iOS and iCloud — BooClean has no copy of your media and cannot restore anything itself.

Subscription information

BooClean Pro is sold through Apple's App Store using StoreKit. Apple processes the payment, handles renewals and issues refunds under its own terms and privacy policy.

BooClean never receives your payment card details, billing address or Apple Account credentials. What the app receives from StoreKit is an entitlement: whether an active subscription exists, which plan it is, and when it expires. That result is cached on your device so the app knows your status without asking Apple on every launch. It is not sent anywhere.

What is stored on your device

BooClean keeps a small amount of data locally, in the app's own sandbox. It is removed when you delete the app. It contains no images, no video and no filenames.

One feature is an exception worth stating plainly. Boo Box — where you park a decision to make later — has to remember which item you postponed, so it stores that item's local photo identifier. That identifier is the reference iOS itself uses; it is meaningless outside your device, it never leaves it, and it is never included in any diagnostic or analytics event. No copy of the photo or video is made.

Preferences

Whether you have completed onboarding, whether sound effects are on, whether the accessible Keep or Drop mode is on, whether monthly reminders are enabled, and the date of your last scan.

Scan snapshots

Counts and total sizes from previous scans — how many photos, videos and screenshots were found, how much was recoverable, and the resulting Clutter Score. Numbers only.

Cleanup history

For each completed cleanup: the date, how many items were removed, how many bytes were freed, and the Clutter Score before and after.

Boo Box

For each postponed decision: the item's local photo identifier, when you set it aside, which screen it came from, its approximate size, and whether it is a video. No media is copied. If you delete the item elsewhere, the entry is removed the next time BooClean looks.

Space Goal

If you set one: the target you chose, how much you have actually recovered toward it, your device's free space when you started, and the dates. Numbers only.

Shrink It usage

How many videos you have compressed and how many bytes that saved in total, which is what the one free compression on the free plan is counted against. Numbers only.

Storage snapshots

Periodic readings of your device's available and used space, which is what Storage Runway charts over time.

Free allowance

How much of the one-time introductory cleanup allowance (50 items and about 500 MB) you have used.

Subscription status

The cached entitlement described above.

Analytics

BooClean ships no third-party analytics and sends no analytics off your device.

The app does record product events internally — a scan started, a paywall was shown, a cleanup completed. They are written to the iOS unified log on your own device, where they are used during development and testing, and they are never transmitted. The set of events is fixed in the source code, and the type system permits an event to carry only a number, a true/false value or a fixed label. There is no mechanism by which a photo, a filename, an identifier or any piece of image data could be attached to one.

The booclean.app website carries no analytics, no advertising pixels and no third-party tracking cookies. It sets no cookies of its own.

Notifications

BooClean can send you one reminder a month to tidy up. It is off by default, it is requested only when you turn it on in Settings › Monthly tidy reminder, and it is scheduled entirely on your device — there is no push server involved and no device token is sent anywhere. Turning the toggle off cancels the pending reminder, and you can also revoke notification permission in iOS Settings.

Third parties

The app bundles no third-party software development kits: no advertising network, no analytics provider, no crash-reporting service, no social login. Its only external dependencies are Apple's own frameworks.

The parties involved in BooClean at all are:

• Apple. Distributes the app, processes subscription payments, and — if you opted in at the operating-system level under Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements — may share aggregated crash and usage reports with developers. That sharing is controlled by Apple and by your iOS settings, not by BooClean, and those reports contain no photo data.
• The website host. booclean.app is served as static files. Like any web server, the host processes standard request information such as your IP address and browser user agent in order to deliver the page and keep the service running.

Children's privacy

BooClean is a general-audience storage utility. It is not directed at children, it contains no content aimed at children, and it does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone — including children — because it does not collect personal information at all. If you believe a child has provided information to us through a support message, contact us and we will delete it.

Your choices

Because BooClean holds no personal data about you on any server, there is no account to close and no profile to export. In practical terms:

• Revoke photo access at any time in iOS Settings. The app keeps working; it simply cannot scan.
• Erase everything BooClean stores by deleting the app. That removes the local database and preferences described above.
• Manage or cancel your subscription through Apple, in Settings › your name › Subscriptions.
• Contact us about anything in this policy using the details below. If you email us, we hold that message for as long as it takes to answer you.

Security

Your media stays inside iOS's own protections: BooClean reads it through PhotoKit within the app sandbox, and everything the app persists is stored in that sandbox with the file protection iOS applies by default. Because nothing is transmitted, there is no transport of your photos to secure and no remote store that could be breached. No system is perfect, and we do not claim otherwise — but the surface area here is deliberately as small as it can be.

Changes to this policy

If BooClean's behaviour changes, this page is updated to match before the change ships, and the date at the top is revised. Material changes will also be described in the App Store release notes for the version that introduces them. The current version always lives at booclean.app/privacy.

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