Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective date: July 23, 2026 Last updated: July 27, 2026

Archyvist (“we”, “us”, “our”) operates the Archyv macOS application (“Archyv”, “the App”) and the website at archyv.app (“the Website”). This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and your rights.

Summary

Archyv is designed to operate locally on your Mac. The App does not collect, transmit, or store your photos, metadata, or personal files on any server we operate. We collect minimal information only when necessary to deliver the App, process purchases, and respond to support requests.

1. Information We Do Not Collect

Archyv processes all photos, metadata, and files locally on your device. We do not:

• Upload, scan, or analyze your photos on our servers
• Track which files you open, edit, or organize
• Read or transmit your image metadata (EXIF, IPTC, XMP)
• Collect telemetry about your usage of features within the App
• Use third-party analytics or advertising trackers inside the App

The only diagnostic data the App can send is the optional crash reporting described in Section 2.6 — and only if you enable it.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Purchase Information

When you purchase a license for Archyv, our payment processor (Polar Software, Inc., “Polar”) collects and processes:

• Name and email address
• Billing address (where required by tax law)
• Payment method details (handled directly by the processor; we do not store card data)
• Country and applicable tax information

The payment processor acts as Merchant of Record for the transaction. Their privacy practices are governed by their own privacy policy: https://polar.sh/legal/privacy.

We receive:

• Your name and email address (to issue the license key)
• Country (for tax records)
• A transaction reference

2.2 License Activation

When you activate your license in Archyv, the App contacts our licensing service — which we operate on Cloudflare’s network, with license and activation records stored in a Cloudflare database located in the European Union — and sends:

• Your license key
• A device identifier: a salted SHA-256 hash of your Mac’s hardware identifier (IOPlatformUUID). The raw hardware identifier never leaves your Mac; only the hash is transmitted, and it is used solely to enforce per-seat activation limits.
• A device label you can edit (to help you recognise your activations)
• Your macOS version and the Archyv app version

This is used solely to verify the license and enforce per-seat activation limits. Polar does not receive any of this activation data. No photos, metadata, file paths, or usage information is transmitted.

After activation, Archyv performs a periodic (roughly weekly) re-validation of the license to confirm it is still active and has not been revoked or refunded. Aside from this license check, update checks (Section 2.3), and optional crash reports (Section 2.6), the App does not phone home during normal use.

The email address associated with your license is stored by Polar (as the purchase record) and in our licensing database, and the App keeps a copy in your Mac’s Keychain as part of its activation record. If you lose your key, you can ask our licensing service to re-send it to that email address; Cloudflare processes standard request metadata (such as IP address) to rate-limit those requests.

The free 14-day trial requires no account and no activation; it is managed entirely on your Mac and sends us nothing.

2.3 Automatic Updates

Archyv uses the Sparkle update framework to check for new versions, approximately once per day. When checking, the App fetches a version manifest from our update feed, hosted on Cloudflare. The request identifies the App and its current version; as with any web request, Cloudflare processes standard request metadata (IP address, user agent, timestamp) as described in Section 2.4. No other information is transmitted, and no identifiers are attached to update checks.

2.4 Website

The Website (archyv.app) is served through Cloudflare. Cloudflare may log standard request metadata (IP address, user agent, timestamp) for security and abuse prevention. We do not use website analytics that track individual visitors. No cookies are set for tracking purposes.

2.5 Support Requests

If you contact us — by emailing support@archyv.app or by using the contact form on the Website — we receive whatever information you choose to include (such as your name, email address, and message), and we use it only to respond to your inquiry. Messages sent through the contact form are checked for spam by Cloudflare Turnstile and delivered to us through our email provider, Resend.

2.6 Crash Reports (Optional)

Archyv includes an optional crash-reporting feature to help us find and fix bugs. Crash reporting is off by default — it stays off unless you turn it on. A one-time sheet at first launch lets you opt in; until you do, nothing is collected or sent, not even during your first session. You can change your choice at any time in the Diagnostics section of the App’s settings. When crash reporting is off, nothing is collected or sent.

When enabled, a report is sent only after a crash, an app hang, or a system-reported diagnostic event (such as out-of-memory), and includes:

• Stack traces of the failure — for the thread that failed and for the app’s other active threads at that moment (function names and offsets)
• Your macOS version and build number, the macOS kernel version, your Archyv version, and your Mac’s hardware model (for example, “MacBookPro18,3”) and processor type
• Your approximate location, worked out from your network connection as the report arrives — your country and region, and in some reports your city (for example, “Canada”, or “Vancouver, Canada”). How precise this is varies from one report to the next: the App itself sends no location at all; the crash-reporting service works it out when the report reaches it, and then discards the IP address. No GPS coordinates of any kind are sent, and nothing here is taken from the location data in your photos
• Your Mac’s language and region setting (for example, “English (Canada)”)
• Basic machine state at that moment: how much memory your Mac has and how much of it was free or available, whether Low Power Mode was on, and whether macOS reports itself as modified (a standard crash-reporting check; normally “no”)
• A randomly generated install identifier, used only to deduplicate reports from the same machine
• A second identifier, used only to group reports that come from the same Mac. It is created by one-way hashing your Mac’s network-hardware and model identifiers together with Archyv’s app identifier — only the resulting hash is sent, never those underlying values. It is a different value from the random install identifier above, and different again from the licensing device identifier in Section 2.2, which is never included in a crash report
• The time the event occurred, when the app was started, whether the app was in the foreground, and internal reference identifiers the crash-reporting service uses to file the report

Before anything is sent, the App strips file paths (including your user folder), EXIF GPS coordinates, and tool arguments from the report. Crash reports contain no personal information such as your name, email address, or Apple ID; no IP address (we have configured our crash-reporting project not to store IP addresses); no file names or paths; and no photo contents or metadata. The two identifiers described above are what the crash-reporting service uses to link one report to another, and neither identifies you: we cannot connect a crash report to your license, your purchase, or any way of contacting you. The only location information a report contains is the approximate, network-derived location described above — your country and region, and in some reports your city. A report never contains GPS coordinates of any kind, and none of its location information comes from the photos on your Mac.

Reports are processed by Sentry (Functional Software, Inc.) and stored in Sentry’s European Union data region in Frankfurt, Germany, where they are retained for 30 days. Sentry’s privacy policy: https://sentry.io/privacy/.

The list above was checked item by item against a real crash report from a shipping build of Archyv on July 24, 2026, so that it reflects everything a report actually contains.

Correction, July 24, 2026: an internal revision of this section drafted earlier that day described a report’s location as country and region only, and said no city was ever recorded. That was wrong, and the text above is the corrected version. A later crash report from the same Mac included the city as well, where an earlier report from that same machine had carried only the country and region. The mistaken claim rested on a search of our crash data in which the city column came back empty; an empty search result is not evidence that a city is never present, and we should not have treated it as such. That incorrect wording was never published on this page. The rest of this section was re-checked and stands: the IP address is still neither stored nor retrievable, no GPS coordinates are sent, and nothing in a report is taken from the location data in your photos.

3. How We Use Information

We use the limited information we collect to:

• Deliver and license the App to you
• Diagnose crashes and improve stability (only when you have enabled crash reporting)
• Process refunds and respond to billing questions
• Provide customer support
• Notify you of important updates (security fixes, license changes)
• Comply with tax and legal obligations

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties.

4. Third Parties

We share information only with service providers necessary to operate the App:

• Polar — payment processing and tax compliance
• Cloudflare — website hosting, DNS, content delivery (R2 storage for App downloads and updates), our licensing service (Cloudflare Workers and D1), and contact-form spam protection (Turnstile)
• Sentry (Functional Software, Inc.) — optional crash reporting; reports are stored in Sentry’s EU data region (Frankfurt, Germany)
• Resend — email delivery for license keys and contact-form messages

Each provider processes data only as necessary for their service.

5. Data Retention

• License records: retained while your license is active, plus a reasonable period thereafter for support and tax records (typically 7 years where required by law).
• Support emails: retained for up to 2 years.
• Payment records: retained by Polar per their policy and tax law.

6. Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have rights to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate information
• Request deletion of your information (subject to legal retention requirements)
• Export your information
• Object to processing
• Lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority

To exercise any of these rights, contact support@archyv.app. If you are in the European Union, the European Economic Area, or the United Kingdom, you can also contact our representative there — see Section 11.

7. Children

Archyv is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

8. Security

We use industry-standard measures to protect information we hold. License activation uses cryptographic signatures. The Website is served over HTTPS. Payment data is handled by PCI-DSS compliant processors. No system is perfectly secure; we recommend keeping macOS, the App, and your devices up to date.

9. International Users

Archyv is offered worldwide. Information may be processed in countries other than your own, including Canada, the United States, and the European Union (optional crash reports are stored in Germany). By using the App, you consent to this transfer.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy. Material changes will be announced via the Website and within the App. The “Last updated” date at the top of this document reflects the most recent revision.

11. Our EU and UK Representative

Archyvist is based in Canada. Because we offer Archyv to people in the European Union, the European Economic Area, and the United Kingdom, we have appointed a representative under Article 27 of the EU GDPR and Article 27 of the UK GDPR:

Data Protection Representative Limited, trading as DataRep — a company registered in the Republic of Ireland, company number 616588.

If you are in the EU, the EEA, or the UK, you may raise any question about how we handle your personal data — including exercising the rights described in Section 6 — with DataRep, in whichever way is most convenient for you:

• Email: datarequest@datarep.com, quoting Archyv in the subject line

• Web form: https://www.datarep.com/data-request

• Post: DataRep maintains a contact address in each of the 27 EU countries, in Norway and Iceland, and in the United Kingdom. For example:

  • Ireland — DataRep, The Cube, Monahan Road, Cork, T12 H1XY, Republic of Ireland
  • United Kingdom — DataRep, 107–111 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AB, United Kingdom

  For the DataRep address in your own country, email us at support@archyv.app and we will provide it.

If you write by post, please address your letter to “DataRep” — not to “Archyv” or “Archyvist” — or it may not reach them. Do mention Archyv in your letter so that DataRep can connect it to us. When we receive your request we will normally ask you for proof of identity, so that we do not disclose your personal information to anyone else.

DataRep acts for us only in this data-protection capacity. For anything else — questions about the App, purchases, refunds, or technical support — please contact us directly at support@archyv.app rather than through DataRep.

12. Contact

Questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices:

Archyvist support@archyv.app