Heirloom Privacy Policy
In short: your photos, captions and the text on the back of your prints stay on your iPhone. Heirloom has no accounts, no analytics and no servers, and the developer collects no data about you. If you have more than 50 photos and haven't bought Heirloom Unlimited, the app shows a small non-personalized Google ad, and Google's ad software receives some device and ad data (described below). It never receives your photos.
Who we are
Heirloom: Photo Scanner ("Heirloom", "the app") is made by Michael Morrone, an independent developer ("we", "us"). This policy explains what happens to your information when you use the app.
Your photos and notes stay on your device
Everything you put into Heirloom is stored only on your iPhone, inside the app:
- photos you scan with the camera (fronts and backs) and photos you import from your photo library;
- captions, dates and other notes you add, and the text Heirloom reads from the back of a print;
- the smart-album information described below (people groups and the names you give them, scene labels, and dates and locations read from photo metadata).
Heirloom does not upload any of this anywhere. We run no servers and cannot see your photos or notes. Like other app data, it may be included in your iPhone's own backups (for example iCloud Backup), which Apple handles under its own privacy policy.
On-device features
- Reading the back of a print. Handwriting and stamps are read with Apple's on-device text recognition (Vision).
- Caption and date suggestions. Heirloom suggests a caption and date from the text on the back using Apple's on-device language model (Apple Foundation Models, when Apple Intelligence is available and turned on) or, otherwise, a text parser built into the app. This runs entirely on your iPhone. You review every suggestion before it is used, and you can turn suggestions off in Settings.
- Smart albums and face grouping. Heirloom sorts photos into people, events, dates and scenes on your iPhone using Apple's Vision framework. For people albums it finds faces and computes a numeric description of each face (a Vision "feature print") so that similar faces can be grouped. Faces are grouped by likeness only; Heirloom does not identify who anyone is, and a group only has a name if you give it one. Face data is stored only on your device, is never uploaded or shared with us or anyone else, and is never used for advertising. You can turn off "Group photos by face" in Settings; doing so deletes all face data and people groups Heirloom created. Your photos are not affected.
- Location. Heirloom does not ask for your location. If a photo already contains GPS coordinates in its metadata (for example a photo imported from your camera roll), Heirloom reads them on your device to help group photos into events.
Camera and photo library
- Camera: used only to scan your printed photos and their backs.
- Importing photos: Heirloom uses Apple's photo picker, so it only receives the photos you choose and does not get access to the rest of your library.
- Saving to Photos: when you choose "Save to Photos", Heirloom asks for permission to add photos to your library and saves your scans there. It does not read your library through this permission.
Exports and sharing
Heirloom only shares your photos when you ask it to. When you export a batch as a ZIP archive (photos plus a captions file) or save it to Photos, the files go only where you choose, for example Files, AirDrop, another app or your photo library. Exported files include your captions and dates and may contain photo metadata such as dates, and any location already stored in an imported photo. Once you share files outside Heirloom, the app or service you send them to handles them under its own terms.
Advertising (Google AdMob)
Heirloom is free to use. The first 50 photos are ad-free. If you have more than 50 photos and haven't bought Heirloom Unlimited, the app shows a small banner ad at the bottom of the batch list, provided by Google AdMob through the Google Mobile Ads SDK. The ad software is not started at all unless ads are shown.
- Heirloom requests non-personalized ads only, limited to content suitable for general audiences.
- Heirloom does not ask for permission to track you (App Tracking Transparency), so the device's advertising identifier (IDFA) is not available to Google or to us.
- Google never receives your photos, captions, back-of-print text or face data.
When an ad is requested or shown, the Google Mobile Ads SDK may collect and process, under Google's own privacy policy: your IP address (which can be used to estimate your general location), app-scoped device identifiers, information about the ads you see and interact with, and diagnostic information such as crash and performance data. Google uses this to deliver and measure ads, prevent fraud and abuse, and for analytics. Even non-personalized ads may use this kind of information, for example your general location, to choose an ad. We do not receive this data in a form that identifies you.
Learn more in Google's Privacy Policy and How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.
In-app purchase
"Heirloom Unlimited" is an optional paid one-time purchase that removes ads; the App Store shows its price before you buy. Purchases and restores are processed entirely by Apple through the App Store. We never receive your name, payment details or Apple Account information; the app only checks with Apple whether the purchase is active on your device.
What we collect
Nothing. We have no accounts, no sign-in, no analytics and no servers, and we do not collect, store, sell or share personal information. The only third party that may receive data from the app is Google, for the ads described above, and Apple, which processes purchases and provides iOS services under its own policies.
Children
Heirloom is a general-audience app and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. Heirloom itself collects no personal information from anyone.
Deleting your data
- Delete a photo or a whole batch inside Heirloom to remove it, its back scan and its notes from the app.
- Turn off "Group photos by face" in Settings to delete all face data and people groups.
- Delete the Heirloom app from your iPhone to remove everything it stored on the device.
Copies you have already exported or saved to Photos are not removed by deleting them in Heirloom; manage those where you saved them. Because we hold no data about you, there is nothing for us to delete on our side. For data Google may hold from ads, see Google's privacy policy.
Changes to this policy
If we change how Heirloom handles information, we will update this page and its effective date. If a change is significant, for example a new kind of data or a new third party, we will also mention it in the app's release notes.
Contact
Questions about this policy or about Heirloom's privacy: mmorrone@nunchuckdesigns.com