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.

So there are up to two copies of the index: the one on each device, and — whenever the device is signed in to iCloud — one in your own private iCloud database (see below). Deleting the app removes the copy on that device; it does not remove the iCloud copy.

iCloud sync

Whenever your device is signed in to iCloud, Rekall syncs your index — the OCR'd text, classifications, tags, pinned items, and collections, never the images — to your own private iCloud database using Apple's CloudKit, so your organized library follows you to your other devices signed in to the same iCloud account. This copy is stored by Apple 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.

Sync is on by default and can be turned off at any time with the iCloud Sync switch in Rekall's Settings → Privacy & Security, which keeps everything on that device only. Signing out of iCloud has the same effect. Either way 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. Everything is under your control:

• Open the app → Settings → Erase all Rekall data. This clears the index on the device and, while sync is on, removes the iCloud copy as well.
• Or delete the app — iOS removes the on-device index and App Group container automatically. This does not remove the iCloud copy.
• To remove the iCloud copy by hand — for example after the app is already deleted — go to iOS Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Storage → Rekall and delete its data from iCloud.

Third-party services

Rekall does not integrate any third-party SDKs or services, and shares nothing with any third party. The only other party that holds any of your data is Apple, which stores the iCloud copy of your index under your own Apple Account, as described above. The only frameworks Rekall links are Apple's first-party ones: SwiftUI, SwiftData, CloudKit, 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.