Zero collection. No Rekall servers. By design.
What data Rekall touches
Rekall reads the screenshots in your iOS Photos library and indexes them locally on your iPhone or iPad. To do this, it asks for:
- Photo Library access — to read your screenshots so it can OCR and categorize them on-device.
- Calendar access — only when you tap "Add to Calendar" on a Detail page. The event is created in your local calendar; nothing is sent anywhere.
- Reminders access — only when you tap "Create Reminder" on a Detail page. The reminder lives in your local Reminders app.
- Notifications — for Live Activities (e.g. boarding-pass countdowns on your lock screen) and for the silent pushes Apple's CloudKit uses to tell the app another of your devices changed the index. Rekall never shows you a notification of its own.
Where your data is stored
Rekall keeps an on-device index in iOS's Application Support container. The index includes the OCR'd text, classification (kind, tags, title), and the screenshot's PHAsset identifier — never the image bytes themselves. Pinned items, user-created collections, and your appearance preferences live alongside it.
The index is shared with iOS Spotlight so your screenshots appear in the system search. It is also mirrored into a Widget App Group so the home-screen widgets and Live Activities can render. None of this data is sent to us.
iCloud sync
If you are signed in to iCloud, Rekall syncs your index — the OCR'd text, classifications, tags, pinned items, and collections — to your own private iCloud database using Apple's CloudKit, so your organized library follows you across your devices and survives a new phone. This data lives in your personal iCloud account, governed by Apple's Privacy Policy. We cannot see it, and it is never sent to a Rekall server — there is no Rekall server. Sync requires no account or signup of any kind. If you are signed out of iCloud, Rekall works exactly the same, entirely local to your device.
Network usage
Rekall has no backend, no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, and no ad network. The only network activity Rekall performs is Apple's own iCloud/CloudKit sync described above (and, if you purchase Rekall Pro, Apple's App Store for the transaction). Indexing, search, and every AI feature keep working with no connection at all — you can verify this by running Rekall in airplane mode.
AI features
All AI features — query expansion, semantic ranking, classification, Smart Collections — use Apple's on-device Foundation Models framework. These models run inside the secure Apple Intelligence sandbox on your device. No prompts, completions, or screenshots ever leave the device.
Children's privacy
Rekall is intended for general audiences and does not knowingly collect data from anyone — including children under 13.
Your rights
Because Rekall never has your data on a server, there is nothing for us to delete on your behalf. To remove Rekall's local index:
- Open the app → Settings → Erase all Rekall data
- Or delete the app — iOS removes the App Group container automatically.
Third-party services
Rekall does not integrate any third-party SDKs or services. The only frameworks it links are Apple's first-party ones: SwiftUI, PhotoKit, Vision, FoundationModels, CoreSpotlight, WidgetKit, ActivityKit, EventKit, and AppIntents.
Changes to this policy
If we ever change anything that affects what data Rekall touches, we'll update this page, bump the date at the top, and ship an in-app notice in the next version.
Contact
Questions about this policy? Email [email protected]. Please don't attach screenshots — we can't access them and you shouldn't need to share them.