How Clarity keeps your photos private and your deletions reversible

Clarity analyzes your photo library entirely on your device, uploads nothing, requires no account, and makes manual approval structural, so no photo can be deleted without your confirmation, and any deletion is recoverable for 30 days. This page proves those claims rather than asserting them, because I think a tool that touches your entire photo library should show its work. I'll also name the honest limits.

On-device architecture: no network I/O for your media

Clarity's analysis runs locally on your iPhone using Apple's own frameworks, PhotoKit to read the library you authorize, Vision for the feature prints behind near-duplicate detection, and AVFoundation for video compression. None of this requires a server, so there's no network I/O for your media. Concretely:

  • No photos, videos, thumbnails, file names, or media metadata are uploaded, shared, or persisted off-device.
  • There's no account and no cloud upload, the app works entirely offline on your library.
  • The detection that powers it (perceptual hashing, Vision feature prints, blur scoring) runs on your device's silicon, which is why nothing needs to leave the phone.

The App Store privacy label: Data Not Collected

Apple requires every app to declare what data it collects. Clarity's label is Data Not Collected. No analytics SDK, ad SDK, or tracking ships in the app by default. That's not a marketing line, it's the declaration the label is built on, and it's checkable on the App Store listing.

Manual approval is structural, not a setting

The safety claim people care about most: Clarity never deletes anything automatically. Every destructive action is confirmed by you and routed through a single safety-guarded path in the app. That design choice matters, because there's one controlled path for deletion, manual approval isn't a toggle you could accidentally turn off; it's how the app is built. There is no "auto-clean" mode.

The specific guards

On top of manual approval, Clarity refuses to auto-select things you're likely to want:

  • Favorites and hidden photos are protected and excluded from auto-selection.
  • Low-confidence clusters are never auto-selected, if it isn't confident two photos are duplicates, it won't pre-tick them.
  • Screenshots from the last 7 days are never auto-selected, because recent screenshots are often still needed.

Your deletions are reversible for 30 days

When you do approve a deletion, the item goes to iOS Recently Deleted, where it stays for 30 days before being permanently removed (Apple Support). So a mistake is recoverable, open Photos > Recently Deleted and tap Recover. This is iOS's own behavior, and Clarity relies on it rather than inventing its own bin.

Honest limits

Trust means stating what Clarity is not:

  • It's a private cleaner, not a security product. No virus or malware scanning, no whole-phone protection, no device-level security.
  • Photos library only. It doesn't read or clean system files, app caches, or anything outside the Photos you authorize.
  • iCloud-only assets are analyzed from metadata and low-resolution thumbnails; full verification needs a user-initiated download, and Clarity never auto-downloads over cellular.
  • Results are local to the device, there's no cross-device sync of scans or preferences.

A real trust signal: in-app refund help

For Pro subscribers, Settings includes Restore Purchases, Manage Subscription via Apple, and an in-app Get a refund link that takes you to Apple's own reportaproblem.apple.com. I added that on purpose, a tool confident in its value shouldn't hide the exit. Apple, not me, processes all subscription billing, renewals, cancellations, and refunds.

All analysis runs on device; nothing is uploaded. App privacy: Data Not Collected. The app never deletes anything automatically; you confirm every deletion and deleted items go to iOS Recently Deleted for 30 days. Apple processes all purchases, renewals, and billing; refunds are handled by Apple via reportaproblem.apple.com.

Get Clarity

Clarity is coming to the App Store. If you want your photo clutter gone without trusting a server with your library, this is the one built around that promise. See the FAQ or the privacy-first overview for privacy-conscious users.