CachePix is developed and operated by SmartLink Basics, LLC, which runs the website and billing and publishes the iPhone and Android apps on the App Store and Google Play. In this policy, "we," "us" and "our" mean SmartLink Basics, LLC, and "CachePix" means the CachePix website, apps and account service (the "Service" in our Terms of Service). SmartLink Basics, LLC is the data controller for the account information described below. Your photos and your catalog stay on devices you own and control, and we don't receive or process them.
The short version. We don't sell your personal data. Period. Your photos, previews and catalog stay on your own computer and phone unless you choose to share or export them. The catalog syncs from your computer to your phone over your local network and never passes through our servers. Online, we keep what runs your account and answers your messages: your email address, an account ID, your sign-in sessions (each with the IP address and device or browser type that signed in), your plan status, a Stripe customer ID and any support messages you send. Stripe handles payments, and we never see your card number. There's no facial recognition, no analytics, no ads and no tracking. You can delete your account from the desktop app, from the phone app or by email.
1. Information we collect
We collect only what we need to run CachePix. Here's exactly what we collect and why:
| Data type | What we collect | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Your email address, an account ID created when you first sign in, and a record that the account uses CachePix. | To sign you in and to link your plan to your account. |
| Sign-in | The 6-digit code we email you, and the sign-in session (access and refresh tokens) your app or browser keeps after you enter it. There's no password. | To confirm you own the email address and to keep you signed in. |
| Plan | Your plan (Monthly, Annual or Lifetime), its status (for example trial, active or canceled), its renewal or end date, and the Stripe ID of the subscription or payment behind it. | So the apps open for an active plan and can show when it renews or ends. |
| Billing link | A Stripe customer ID. When you first choose a plan, we give Stripe your email address and your CachePix account ID. Your card details go straight to Stripe. We never see or store your card number. In our Stripe account we can see the name and billing details you enter at checkout (such as country and postal code), your card's brand, last four digits and expiry date, and your payment history. | To connect your payments at Stripe to your CachePix account, to answer billing questions, and to cancel your plan when you ask. |
| Support messages | If you use the contact form: your name and email address (both optional), your message, and your browser's user agent (its name and version). If you email us: your email address and your message. | To answer you. The contact form also uses your IP address for a short time to limit spam, and doesn't store it with your message. |
| Technical data | When your browser or one of our apps connects to cachepix.com, downloads.cachepix.com or our account service, those servers receive your IP address and standard request details, such as the browser or app making the request. Our account service also stores the IP address and device or browser type (user agent) with each sign-in session, until you sign out on that device or your sign-in record is deleted (Section 10). | To deliver the page, download or response, and to protect these services from abuse. |
We never receive your photos, previews, thumbnails or catalog, and we never receive your file or folder names, keywords, captions, people names or any other metadata from your files.
2. How we use your data
We use the data we collect only to provide CachePix to you. We don't use it for any unrelated purpose. Specifically, we use it to:
- Run your account: send your sign-in code, keep you signed in, and confirm the account uses CachePix.
- Check your plan: the apps read your plan status so they open for an active plan. A verified plan keeps working for up to 14 days without reaching our account service.
- Handle billing: open Stripe Checkout or Stripe's billing portal when you ask, keep your plan status in step with Stripe, and cancel your plan when you delete your account.
- Communicate with you: send sign-in codes, answer support requests, and tell you about changes to your plan, our prices, this policy or our Terms.
- Keep the apps current: check the minimum supported app version and, on the desktop, whether an update is available.
- Maintain security: prevent unauthorized access, spam and abuse.
3. What we do not do with your data
Our commitments.
- We don't sell your personal data to any third party, for any reason.
- We don't upload your photos. CachePix doesn't send your photos, previews or catalog to us or to any cloud service.
- We don't use your photos or your data to train AI models. CachePix has no AI features.
- We don't perform facial recognition or create biometric data (Section 8).
- We don't share your data with advertisers, and the apps and this website show no ads.
- We don't track you across other apps or websites.
- We don't send marketing emails unless you ask for them.
4. Analytics
We don't use analytics. This website runs no analytics script, and the desktop and phone apps include no analytics, advertising, tracking or crash-reporting SDK. If you've allowed your iPhone or Android device to share diagnostics with app developers, Apple or Google may make crash reports available to us, as the publisher of the apps, under their own policies. If we ever add analytics, we'll update this policy before we do.
5. Third-party service providers
We use a small number of service providers to run CachePix:
- Supabase: hosts our account database and sign-in service in the United States, and runs the small server functions that handle billing requests and the contact form.
- Stripe: runs Checkout, the billing portal and payments, and keeps your billing records. Stripe receives your email address and your CachePix account ID from us, and your payment details from you. Stripe's own privacy policy covers how it handles your payment details.
- Cloudflare: hosts cachepix.com, the desktop app downloads and the desktop update feed at downloads.cachepix.com.
- Resend: delivers the emails that carry your sign-in code, and may deliver a message you send with the contact form to our support inbox.
- Apple and Google: distribute the phone apps through the App Store and Google Play. What they collect when you download an app is covered by their own privacy policies.
Supabase, Cloudflare and Resend act only on our behalf and don't use your data for their own purposes. Stripe, Apple and Google also handle some of your data under their own privacy policies. We do not share your data with any third parties beyond what is described here.
6. iPhone and Android apps
CachePix offers free companion apps for iPhone and iPad (Apple App Store) and Android (Google Play). They use the same CachePix account as the desktop app and this website, and you sign in with a 6-digit code sent to your email. The phone apps don't sell anything and have no purchases inside the app. The sample catalog works with no account and no computer.
What leaves the phone. Your email address, the sign-in code, your sign-in session tokens and your account ID go to our account service over HTTPS, to sign you in and read your plan status. The app also reads cachepix.com/app-config.json to check the minimum supported version. That request carries no account information. Everything else stays on your local network.
Device-to-device sync only. The catalog syncs one way, from your computer to your phone, over your local network. Pair once by scanning a QR code. What syncs is thumbnails, HD previews and metadata from your files, such as filenames, capture dates, folder and drive names, keywords, captions and people names. It travels from your computer to your phone and nowhere else. None of it passes through, or is stored on, our servers. Full-size originals stay on your drives and are never sent to the phone.
What's stored on your phone. A catalog database, cached thumbnails and HD previews, the pairing token that lets your phone reach your computer (in the Keychain on iPhone, and in the app's private storage on Android), your sign-in session, a cached copy of your plan status, and your favorites, collections, pinned folders and settings. Favorites and collections stay on the phone and never sync to the computer. On iPhone, cached images are excluded from backups, but the rest of the app's data, including the catalog database, your settings, the pairing token and your sign-in session, can be included in your iPhone backups. On Android, cloud backups of the app are turned off, but a direct transfer to a new phone may copy the app's data. To remove CachePix data from a phone, use Unpair & Remove Data and Sign out, then delete the app.
Permissions.
- Camera: used only to scan the pairing QR code shown by the desktop app. The app doesn't save a picture.
- Local network (iPhone): used only to reach your paired computer on your network. On Android, the app uses standard network access, and it checks whether the phone is on Wi-Fi to explain a failed sync.
- Photos (iPhone, add only): used only when you save an HD preview to your Photos library. The app never reads your Photos library. On Android, sharing uses the system share sheet and needs no storage permission.
The apps don't ask for your location, contacts or microphone, and they don't send push notifications. You can turn off any permission at any time in your device's settings.
Background sync. The apps can also sync in the background: on iPhone when iOS allows background refresh, and on Android about once an hour on an unmetered network such as Wi-Fi. Background sync gets catalog updates only from your paired computer on your local network. When the system starts the app in the background, the app may also refresh your sign-in and re-check your plan with our account service, as it does when you open the app.
No background data collection. The apps don't collect location data, access your contacts, track your activity across other apps, or send anything about you in the background other than that sign-in and plan check.
App Store and Google Play disclosures. Apple's App Privacy section and Google Play's Data safety section give a short summary of what the apps collect. This policy is the full description.
7. Desktop app (macOS and Windows)
The CachePix desktop app runs on your own computer, and that matters for your data.
Your photos stay on your computer. The desktop app reads the photos on your own drives to build a catalog. Your photos aren't uploaded to us, stored in a cloud, or sent to any third party. The catalog database, thumbnails and HD previews are stored in the app's data folder on your computer, or in a folder or drive you choose for the previews. The catalog database always stays on your computer, and catalog backups go only where you choose.
Your files. Cataloging never modifies, moves, renames or deletes your files. Some versions of the desktop app let you edit photo metadata. When you use that feature, CachePix writes only the fields you changed, as standard XMP, to the file or to a sidecar file next to a RAW file. Removing a folder or forgetting a drive only clears CachePix's own catalog entries and cached previews. Your files stay exactly where they are.
What the desktop app sends to us. The desktop app goes online only to: (a) sign you in, with your email address and the code we send; (b) confirm your account uses CachePix and read your plan status; (c) open Stripe Checkout or Stripe's billing portal in your browser when you choose a plan or Manage billing; (d) check cachepix.com for the minimum supported version; (e) check downloads.cachepix.com for updates; and (f) delete your account when you ask. None of these requests include your photos, previews, catalog, file names or metadata. The desktop app has no analytics or telemetry. Its Diagnostic Report is text that you copy, and it reaches us only if you choose to send it.
What the desktop app keeps. Your sign-in session and a cached copy of your plan status, stored on your computer.
Phone sync. Phone sync is off until you turn it on in Pair Phone. When it's on, your computer answers requests from your paired phones on your local network. It sends thumbnails, HD previews and metadata, never full-size originals. Regenerate pairing code disconnects your paired phones.
8. No facial recognition
CachePix has no facial recognition, face detection or AI tagging, on your computer, on your phone or on our servers. It doesn't detect, scan or group faces, and it creates no face embeddings, faceprints or other biometric identifiers.
People names in CachePix come from the metadata in your files, or, in desktop versions that let you edit metadata, from names you type. Search and browsing work from that metadata and your own folder structure.
9. Data security
We take the security of your data seriously and use industry-standard measures, including:
- Connections to our account service, this website and our downloads use HTTPS (TLS) encryption
- Stripe handles card data directly, and we never see or store your card number
- Sign-in uses one-time codes sent to your email, so there's no password to steal
- Sign-in tokens are short-lived and refreshed automatically
- Database row-level security limits each account's records to that account
Phone sync works differently. It stays on your local network and is protected by a pairing token, but the connection itself isn't encrypted. Use phone sync on a network you trust.
While we use reasonable security measures, no system is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security of your data.
10. Data retention and account deletion
We keep your account information for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account at any time from the desktop app (Settings, Account, Delete account), from the phone app (on Android, Delete Account on the Sync tab; on iPhone, the account button at the top of the Sync tab, then Delete Account), or by emailing support@cachepix.com from the address on your account.
When you delete your account:
- Any plan on it ends first. A Monthly or Annual plan is canceled right away, and a Lifetime plan ends. If the plan can't be canceled (for example, you're offline), nothing is deleted and the app tells you so.
- Your CachePix plan record, the link to your Stripe customer ID and your CachePix membership are deleted.
- Your sign-in record (your email address and account ID) is deleted too. Our sign-in service is shared with other apps from the same developer. If you use the same email address to sign in to one of those apps, your sign-in stays for that app.
- We keep a record of the deleted account ID and the date, with no email address, for 3 years, so we can show the deletion was carried out. Copies in our automatic database backups are deleted within 30 days. An older copy of our account database that we're retiring, and its final archive copy, will be deleted by March 31, 2027.
- Stripe keeps your customer record (your email address and CachePix account ID) and your billing records, for refunds, disputes and tax records, under Stripe's policies and as the law requires.
- Contact-form messages and support emails aren't tied to your account, so deleting your account doesn't remove them. We delete them 24 months after our last reply, or sooner if you ask.
- Your photos, catalog and previews on your own devices aren't touched. Remove them by deleting your files or the apps' data.
SmartLink Basics, LLC keeps billing and tax records for up to 7 years, as US tax law requires. We may keep other limited records where the law requires it. Request logs kept by Supabase and Cloudflare (your IP address and request details) are deleted automatically after a limited period set by those providers.
11. Your rights
You have the right to:
- Access your data: your email address and plan show on the account page and in the apps. Contact us for a copy of the account information we hold.
- Correct your data: contact us to fix inaccurate account information.
- Delete your data: delete your account at any time (Section 10).
- Control your photos and catalog: they're on your own devices, so you can view, move, back up or delete them directly.
To exercise any of these rights, use the features in the apps or contact us.
12. International users and GDPR
CachePix is operated from the United States and is primarily intended for users in the United States. Our account database is hosted in the United States. If you use CachePix from outside the United States, your account information is transferred to and processed in the United States, and our service providers may process it in other countries as their own policies describe. Your photos and catalog aren't transferred, because they stay on your devices.
If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom or another jurisdiction with data protection laws (such as the GDPR or UK GDPR), you may have additional rights, including:
- Right of access: request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
- Right to rectification: request correction of inaccurate personal data
- Right to erasure: request deletion of your personal data
- Right to data portability: receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format
- Right to object: object to certain types of processing
- Right to restrict processing: request limits on how we process your data
To exercise any of these rights, contact us. We will respond to requests within 30 days.
By using CachePix from outside the United States, you consent to the transfer of your personal data to the United States for processing as described in this policy.
Governing law. This Privacy Policy is governed by the laws of the State of Oregon, United States, the same law that governs our Terms of Service (Section 17). This doesn't limit any rights that data protection laws where you live give you.
13. Children's privacy
CachePix is not directed at individuals under the age of 18, and you must be 18 or older to create an account (see our Terms of Service). We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe someone under 18 has given us personal information, contact us and we'll delete it. Photos in your own library may show people of any age. They stay on your devices, and you're responsible for how you use and share them.
14. Cookies and browser storage
This website doesn't use analytics or advertising cookies, and our own pages don't set cookies. When you sign in on the account page, your sign-in session is kept in your browser tab's session storage, not in a cookie. It's cleared when you sign out or close the tab. Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, may set a strictly necessary security cookie to protect the site from abuse. Stripe's checkout and billing pages are run by Stripe and use Stripe's own cookies under Stripe's privacy policy.
15. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by email or with a notice in the apps or on this website. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page shows the most recent revision.
16. Contact
Questions about this Privacy Policy or your data? Email support@cachepix.com or contact us. For setup and billing help, see CachePix help. CachePix is operated by SmartLink Basics, LLC.