Legal
Privacy Policy
Effective October 22, 2026
Photostead is built so that your photos never come to us. The app sends your photos and videos only to the Photostead server you pair it with: a server that you or your household runs. We, Atom Tan Studio, don’t collect any personal data through the app, don’t run analytics, and don’t show ads.
1. Who we are
This policy covers Photostead for iPhone (the “app”), the Photostead server software, and this website, photostead.com, including its live demo. They are published by Atom Tan Studio (“we”, “us”). You can reach us at hello@photostead.com.
2. Photostead for iPhone
What the app does with your information
The app backs up your photo library to your own Photostead server and lets you browse, search and organize what’s there. It sends your library only to that server. The exceptions are things you do yourself: Share hands a photo or video to the app you pick, and tapping a photo’s location opens it in Apple Maps, which then receives those coordinates. We never receive your photos or their details, and we get nothing about how you use the app beyond the anonymous statistics Apple may provide (see below).
| Information | Why the app uses it | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Your photos and videos (originals, including Live Photos), with the details stored in them, such as when and where they were taken and with which camera | To back them up and show them to you | Your Photostead server; and, only when you choose, the app you share to or Apple Maps |
| Your device’s name and type (for example, “Sam’s iPhone”, iOS) | So the server can list your paired devices and you can recognize this one | Only to your Photostead server |
| Changes you make, such as favorites, albums, searches and items moved to the trash | To carry them out on your library | Only to your Photostead server |
| The pairing code you scan or type | To pair the app with your server once | Only to your Photostead server |
Permissions the app asks for
- Photos: to read your photos and videos and back them up. With limited access, the app sees only the photos you choose. The app never deletes or changes anything in your Photos library.
- Camera: only to scan the pairing code that Photostead shows on your computer. Nothing the camera sees is kept or sent anywhere.
- Local network: to reach your Photostead server on your home network.
- Background activity: so backups can carry on when the app isn’t open.
You can change any of these in the iPhone’s Settings at any time. Without Photos access the app can still show the library on your server; it just can’t back up.
What stays on your iPhone
The app keeps a few things on the device so it can work quickly and offline: a pairing token in the iPhone’s Keychain, a list of your server’s addresses, a copy of your library’s index (so the timeline opens instantly), cached thumbnails and previews (up to 1 GB), a record of what has been backed up, your recent searches, and your settings. Deleting the app removes all of it except the pairing token: iOS keeps that in the Keychain, where no other app can read it, until the app is installed and paired again. To retire it completely, unpair the phone before deleting the app, or sign the phone out in Photostead on the web under Devices & remote access.
What the app doesn’t do
- No analytics, advertising or tracking, and no third-party software development kits that collect data.
- No advertising identifier, and no tracking across other companies’ apps or websites.
- No selling or sharing of personal information, with anyone, ever.
If you’ve chosen in your iPhone’s settings to share analytics with app developers, Apple may give us crash reports and usage statistics about the app. Apple provides these in a form that doesn’t identify you, and we use them only to fix problems.
3. The Photostead server
The Photostead server is software that runs on hardware you control, such as a home server, NAS or computer. Whoever runs it (you, or a member of your household) controls the data on it: your photos and videos, the accounts of the people who use it, and everything Photostead works out from your library, such as recognized faces, text read from pictures and search indexes. That work happens on your server. The server doesn’t send any of it to us, and we have no way to reach it.
A few things reach other services:
- AI models. When it first needs them, the server’s built-in AI downloads its model files from Hugging Face (huggingface.co) and GitHub (github.com). These downloads carry no photos or personal information, only what any download reveals, such as your server’s IP address.
- Fonts. Photostead on the web loads its typefaces from Google Fonts, so a browser that opens it contacts Google, as it would for many websites.
- Services you set up, such as Tailscale for reaching the server away from home, or your own Immich server if you import from it.
4. This website and the demo
photostead.com has no accounts, no cookies, no analytics and no advertising. Its pages, fonts and images all come from photostead.com itself. Like any website, it’s delivered by a hosting provider, Cloudflare, which processes technical information such as your IP address and browser type to deliver the site and protect it from abuse. Cloudflare handles this information under its own privacy policy, and we don’t use it to identify or track you.
The live demo runs entirely in your browser on a sample library. Nothing you do in it is sent to us or anyone else. Your changes disappear when you reload the page; the demo only remembers display preferences, such as light or dark appearance, in your browser’s storage. The people, places and pictures in the demo are fictional, and the pictures were made with AI.
If you email us, we receive your email address and whatever you choose to write, and we use them only to reply to you and help with your question.
5. Third parties
We don’t share personal information with third parties, because we don’t collect it. Apple distributes the app through the App Store under its own privacy policy, and Cloudflare hosts this website. The services described above (Hugging Face and GitHub for model files, Google Fonts for Photostead on the web, Apple Maps and the apps you share to when you choose them, and services you connect to your own server, such as Tailscale) work under their own terms and privacy policies.
6. Keeping and deleting data
- On your server: your photos and everything about them stay there for as long as you keep them. You delete them by moving them to the trash and emptying it; anything left in the trash is deleted for good after 30 days. Removing a person’s whole account from a server isn’t in Photostead yet; if you need that, write to us and we’ll help.
- On your iPhone: unpairing (tap your picture at the top right, then Unpair this phone) removes the pairing token, the copy of your library’s index and the record of what was backed up. Cached thumbnails and previews, recent searches and settings stay until you delete the app (iOS may also clear cached pictures when it needs space). Unpairing never deletes anything from your Photostead library or from your iPhone’s Photos.
- Paired devices: you can see and sign out any device in Photostead on the web, under Devices & remote access.
- Email: we keep our correspondence with you only as long as needed to help you, and delete it sooner if you ask.
7. Your rights and choices
Depending on where you live, laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA give you rights to access, correct, delete or move personal information about you, and to object to how it’s used. Because your library lives on your own server, you can exercise these directly: everything is in your hands. For anything we might hold, such as an email you sent us, write to hello@photostead.com and we’ll respond within 30 days. You can withdraw any permission you gave the app at any time in the iPhone’s Settings.
8. Children
Photostead is a family photo library and isn’t directed to children under 13. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children; in fact, we don’t collect personal information through the app at all. Parents and guardians decide what’s stored on their own server.
9. Security
The app keeps its pairing token in the iPhone’s Keychain, and it checks that it’s talking to the same server it paired with before sending anything. Away from home, traffic to your server travels through Tailscale’s encrypted network or your server’s secure (HTTPS) address. On your home network the app may connect over plain HTTP if that’s how your server is set up. How the server itself is protected, including its disks and backups, is up to whoever runs it.
10. Changes and contact
If this policy changes, we’ll post the new version here with a new effective date, and if a change is significant we’ll say so in the app or on this site. Questions about privacy are welcome at any time.
Questions about privacy?Atom Tan Studio · hello@photostead.com
Email us