Privacy, by design

Iris (the app)

Iris runs entirely on your Mac. Your photos are read from the folders you point Iris at and stay where they are. The library database lives on your disk. Face recognition, scene classification, audio transcription, and EXIF parsing all happen using on-device machine learning.

Iris does not send your photos or their metadata (including face recognition or location data) to a server. I do not have a server. (Well, I do have this web server that you're reading this website on. But there are no accounts, no signups, no ads, no gross stuff like that.)

Telemetry & analytics

Iris collects anonymous telemetry data about app usage using TelemetryDeck. This helps me understand how customers are using Iris. Example data collected includes: app version, macOS version, system language, device type (laptop vs desktop), screen size, etc. and basic library statistics such as total number of photos (rounded to the nearest 10,000).

Iris connects to our web server to check for app updates and validates your serial number when you register the app.

Crash logs are collected and submitted to BugSnag for processing so I can fix crashes.

Once again, Iris does not upload or share any of your photos or videos without your consent — ever. Your data is yours. Full stop.

You can opt out of telemetry, crash reporting, and automatic update checks in Iris's Settings.

This website

This website collects privacy-friendly analytics using Plausible.io.

Email

When you email hello@irisphotos.app, I keep your message and my reply. I don't share it with anyone, and I don't add you to any mailing list. If you'd like a thread deleted, just ask.

Updates to this policy

If this policy changes, I'll note it here and bump the date.

Last updated: July 31, 2026.

• Crash reporting now uses BugSnag instead of Sentry.