CleanSwipe — Privacy Policy

Your photo library

The app asks for access to your photo library because that is the thing it cleans. iOS shows you that prompt and you can grant full access, grant access to selected photos only, or refuse. If you grant access to a selection, the app only ever sees that selection.

Photos are read to show you a thumbnail, to show you a full preview before you decide, and — only after you tap through a confirmation that names the count — to delete. Nothing is deleted because the app thought it should be. Every deletion is a thing you did.

No photo is ever copied out of your library, uploaded, or written anywhere the app can reach. The app holds a photo's local identifier — the reference iOS uses for it on your device — and not the picture.

Your files and folders

For files, the app can only see a folder you have handed it yourself through the system file picker. iOS gives it a security-scoped bookmark for that folder, which is stored in the app's own container so you do not have to pick the folder again next time. You can revoke a folder at any time in the app's settings, and the bookmark is discarded with it.

The app cannot browse your device. It cannot see a folder you have not granted. If a grant has been revoked or has expired, the app deletes nothing from it and reports that as a failure rather than passing over it silently.

How the app decides what is clutter

Three Apple on-device frameworks do the work, all of them running inside your phone with no network involved:

• Image feature prints — a compact mathematical description of what a picture looks like, used to tell that fourteen photos are fourteen shots of the same sunset. Comparing two prints gives a distance; nothing about the content is recovered or recorded.
• Aesthetics scoring — Apple's own quality score, used to suggest which frame in a group is the keeper. It is a suggestion; the pick is yours.
• Face detection — see the next section.

Faces

The app asks one question about a photo: is there a face in it, yes or no.

It does this because photos of people should be grouped differently from photos of sunsets — you want to see your kids at different ages, not have five years of them collapsed into one pile. So a face answer changes how tightly the app groups by date, and nothing else.

The app does not recognise anyone. It does not identify people, does not match one face against another, does not build a face print, does not name anybody, and does not store anything about who is in a picture. What is stored is a single yes-or-no flag against a photo's identifier. There is no face data in this app to leak, sell or hand over, because none is ever produced.

What the app stores, and where

Everything below lives inside the app's own container on your device — the area iOS erases completely when you delete the app.

• An analysis cache. Feature prints, face yes/no answers and aesthetics scores, keyed by photo identifier, so a second scan does not redo minutes of work. Capped at 10,000 entries, oldest evicted first. Clearing it in Settings costs you nothing but time on the next scan.
• Your keep decisions. A list of identifiers for photos you chose to keep, so the app stops asking you about them first. Capped at 20,000.
• The bin. Items you have staged but not yet confirmed, held until you confirm or put them back.
• Your history. What you have deleted and how much space it freed, so the log in Settings can show you.
• Folder bookmarks for folders you granted, as described above.
• Settings — your theme choice, reminder preference and so on.
• An install identifier — a random value in the device Keychain, so app state survives correctly across reinstalls. It is not an advertising identifier, it is not linked to you, and it is never transmitted.

What the app sends

Nothing. The app contains no networking code and links no networking component. There is no Norvela account, no Norvela server, no analytics service, no crash-reporting service, no advertising network, and no third-party SDK of any kind. If you put the phone in airplane mode, every feature except buying the unlock works exactly as it does otherwise.

What "delete" actually does

Photos and videos go to Recently Deleted in the Photos app, where iOS keeps them for about 30 days before removing them for good. That is iOS's behaviour, not ours, and it means a mistake is recoverable for a month. Note that this also means deleting a photo does not free the space immediately.

Files in a folder you granted are removed by the app. Depending on the folder and how it is configured, a removed file may go to the Trash or may be erased. The app tells you which before you confirm, and it counts what it actually freed rather than guessing.

Overnight scanning

With the unlock, the app can ask iOS to run an analysis pass while the phone is charging, so an answer is waiting when you open it. iOS decides whether and when to run it; the app cannot force it.

That pass does exactly one thing: it fills the analysis cache described above. It deletes nothing, decides nothing, and sends nothing. Every deletion still needs you, awake, tapping a confirmation.

Reminders

The app can offer an occasional reminder to have another pass at your library. These are local notifications: iOS schedules them on the device from a request the app made. There is no push server, no token registered anywhere, and nothing about you is sent to arrange them. Turn them off in Settings or in iOS and they stop.

Purchases

The unlock is a one-time purchase handled entirely by Apple's App Store. We never see your payment details, your billing address, your name or your Apple Account. Apple returns a receipt to the device saying the product is owned, and that is the whole of what the app knows.

The unlock is tied to your Apple Account, so it restores on a new phone with the Restore a previous purchase button, and it is shared with your Family Sharing group. Apple's own privacy policy governs the transaction.

Tracking and advertising

There is none. The app does not track you across apps or websites, does not use the advertising identifier, does not show advertising, and does not sell or share anything with anybody, because it does not have anything and could not send it if it did. Its privacy manifest declares no collected data types and no tracking domains, and that declaration is true.

Crash reports and diagnostics

When something fails, the app writes a short technical record — an error code and where it happened — to a file in its own container, so that if you write to us there is something to look at. No analytics recorder is configured, so that record is never transmitted anywhere. It goes nowhere unless you choose to send it to us yourself.

Separately, if you have Apple's Share iPhone Analytics turned on in iOS Settings, Apple may share crash reports with developers. That is a setting you control, between you and Apple, and you can turn it off at any time.

Children

The app is not directed at children and collects nothing from anybody, regardless of age. It has no account, no profile, no messaging and no content from anyone else.

Removing everything

Delete the app. iOS removes its container and everything described on this page goes with it: the analysis cache, your keep decisions, the bin, the history, the folder bookmarks and the settings. There is no copy anywhere else, because there is nowhere else.

Photos you already deleted stay in Recently Deleted on their own 30-day clock, because they belong to the Photos app and not to us.

If you only want a fresh start, Settings has separate controls to clear the analysis cache, clear the keep decisions and clear the history without deleting the app.

Your rights

Laws such as the GDPR, the UK GDPR and the CCPA give you rights to access, correct, export and erase personal data a company holds about you, and to know whether it is sold or shared.

Norvela LLC holds no personal data about users of this app. We cannot produce a copy of your data because we do not have one; we cannot delete it from our systems because it was never in them. We do not sell or share personal information, and we never have. If you want to exercise a right anyway, write to us at the address below and we will answer honestly, including telling you that there is nothing to hand over.

Changes to this policy

If the app ever changes in a way that makes something on this page untrue, this page changes first and the date at the top changes with it. A version of the app that sent something anywhere would be described here before it shipped, not after.

Contact

Norvela LLC, United States. Write to support@norvela.app and a person will answer.