Privacy Policy

Nevervault is a local-first Mac app. It's built so your photo and video archive stays on your Mac and under your control. In plain terms: your images never leave your device, and we never sell your data.

Your photos and videos

Nevervault reads the files you point it at on a strictly read-only basis to build a search index. It never modifies, moves, copies to the cloud, or deletes your originals. The small previews and the search index it generates are stored only on your Mac, in the app's private container. None of this is ever uploaded.

What leaves your Mac

Nevervault connects to the network for these narrow purposes:

• Purchases. Subscriptions are handled by Apple's App Store (StoreKit) or, for the version downloaded from this site, Stripe. Foundnone never receives your full card number. The direct version stores an opaque license identifier and anonymous device-slot records so a license can be limited to the number of Macs stated at purchase.
• Free-trial activation. The app sends an ephemeral Apple DeviceCheck token and a random app-generated UUID to nevervault.com. Our server asks Apple whether that Mac has already used the offer, stores the random UUID plus the trial's start, expiry, and last-check times, and returns a signed offline trial grant. The Apple token is never stored. Apple retains one yes/no DeviceCheck bit for this offer. Trial requests also use a one-hour abuse counter whose key is a one-way hash of the request IP address; the raw address is not placed in that counter.
• Licensing and updates. The direct version may check its signed license, device slot, revocation list, and signed update feed with nevervault.com. A previously activated license and trial continue to work offline through their applicable terms.
• Your own iCloud Photos. If you connect your iCloud Photo Library and enable "Fetch from iCloud when needed" (on by default, off in Settings), Nevervault downloads from your own iCloud account through Apple's Photos system: small versions while indexing, and a photo's original only when you open or edit that photo. These are downloads of your own content, handled entirely by Apple's frameworks. Nevervault never uploads anything, anywhere.

There is no behavioral analytics, advertising, or sale of data. Drive and folder archives index and search fully offline; none of the requests above contain your photos, videos, previews, search terms, transcripts, filenames, folder paths, or index.

Accounts and personal data

Nevervault has no in-app profile system. You don't provide an email address to activate the free trial. If you buy the direct version, Stripe and Foundnone use the email address you provide for receipts, license recovery, and subscription management.

Data retention and deletion

Your previews, transcript, and search index live only on your Mac. The anonymous trial record is retained to enforce the one-trial-per-device rule; license device records remain until the slot is removed. Short-lived abuse counters expire automatically. Purchase records are retained by Apple or Stripe under their policies and as required for billing and legal compliance.

Children

Nevervault is a professional tool and is not directed to children under 13.

Changes

If this policy changes, we'll update the date above and post the new version here.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Email hello@nevervault.com.