Your photos stay yours.

The essentials

Paw Cleaner runs entirely on your phone. The app never sends any photo, video, or data to a server, to us, or to anyone else. The one exception, and only if you choose it: the Email tab talks directly to Google when you connect your Gmail inbox there (see “If you connect your Gmail inbox”). Outside of it, there is no network call anywhere in the app.

What the app reads

Paw Cleaner accesses your photo library's metadata (identifier, date, dimensions, duration for videos) through the system's Photos API, in order to show you photos and videos to sort. The content itself (the image or video) is only loaded for on-screen display while you sort — never copied or sent anywhere.

What the app keeps, and where

Your sorting decisions (kept, favorited, marked for deletion) are stored in a local database on this device only. None of it ever leaves your phone — no account, no sync, no third-party backup.

Deletions

A deletion is never automatic: Paw Cleaner only deletes a photo or video after your explicit confirmation, through iOS's own native dialog. It's the operating system, not the app, that performs the actual deletion.

If you connect your Gmail inbox

The Email tab is optional. If you connect your Gmail inbox there, Google asks you to allow Paw Cleaner to access your inbox, with its wording for full access: “read, compose, send, and permanently delete all your email from Gmail”. It is the only access Google grants for emptying the trash. The app only uses it for what you ask it to do: count the emails in Gmail's categories, show them to you, move them to the trash, empty the trash and help you unsubscribe.

For each email, the app reads the sender, the subject, the date, Gmail's labels and the unsubscribe link provided by the sender. It never reads the content of your messages or their attachments. This information goes directly from Google to your iPhone: no Paw Cleaner server receives it, we have no access to it and no one reads it. It is never used for advertising or to train artificial intelligence.

Deleting moves emails to the Gmail trash, where they stay for 30 days. They are only permanently deleted if you empty the trash yourself from the app, after two confirmations. The app never sends an email. To unsubscribe, it uses the sender's one-click link when there is one, which notifies the sender; otherwise it opens the sender's page, or moves the sender's future emails to the trash.

On your iPhone, the app only keeps the address of the connected inbox, your choice for each sender (kept or unsubscribed) and your filters. You can disconnect your inbox anytime in the Email tab, and remove access from your Google Account (myaccount.google.com/permissions).

Paw Cleaner's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Permissions

The app requests access to Photos (read and write, to sort and delete). You can choose limited access to a selection of photos instead of your entire library — Paw Cleaner adapts to that choice and only ever offers to sort what you've authorized. You can change this access at any time from iOS Settings.

If you turn on reminders, the app also asks for permission to send notifications. These reminders are scheduled on your iPhone, with no server involved, and you can turn them off at any time in the app's settings (Reminders) or in iOS Settings.

If you connect your Gmail inbox, Google asks for permission on its own screen. You can remove it at any time from your Google Account.

No tracking, no advertising

Paw Cleaner does not integrate any usage analytics, advertising, or third-party tracking tool. The app itself collects no usage data.

When you write to us

If you write to support@pawcleaner.app, we receive your email address, your name if it appears, and the content of your message. This information is used only to reply to you, based on our legitimate interest in handling your request. It is kept for one year after our last exchange, then deleted. It passes through our email providers (our domain's email forwarding service, then our inbox), which may process it outside the European Union, notably in the United States, under the safeguards provided by the GDPR. We don't share it with anyone else.

What Apple shares with us

If you have turned on Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements > Share With App Developers, Apple shares usage statistics and crash reports with us, aggregated or presented in a way that doesn't identify you. Apple also gives us overall App Store and download statistics in App Store Connect. During the TestFlight beta, Apple shares the email address of invited testers and the feedback, screenshots and crash reports they choose to send. We use this only to fix and improve the app.

Your rights

The controller of this processing is Lionel SARAVANAN, sole trader (see the Legal Notice). You can ask to access your data, have it corrected or deleted, or object to its processing by writing to support@pawcleaner.app. If you believe your rights are not respected, you can lodge a complaint with the CNIL, the French data protection authority.

The pawcleaner.app website

This website sets no cookies and uses no audience measurement tool. It is hosted on GitHub Pages: as GitHub states, each visitor's IP address is logged and stored by GitHub for security purposes.

Questions

If anything here is unclear, contact us at support@pawcleaner.app.