Privacy statement
What we do, in plain English.
Last updated May 3, 2026
What we collect
Nothing. PhotoSeek has no servers and no account system. The app never reports back to us. We don’t know if you have it installed, and we don’t collect crash reports unless you choose to send one.
What goes to Google
To make your photos searchable, PhotoSeek sends each image to Google’s Gemini API and stores the embedding it returns. The embedding is a 768-number fingerprint — you can’t turn it back into a photo.
The connection to Google uses your own Gemini API key, which you generate for free at Google AI Studio. Google’s handling of that data is governed by their terms — read Gemini API Terms for specifics. PhotoSeek is not part of that relationship.
Search queries you type are also sent to Gemini, as text, to generate the matching fingerprint.
What stays on your Mac
- The original photos. PhotoSeek reads them but never copies them out of your library.
- The embeddings, in a single SQLite file under
~/Library/Application Support/PhotoSeek/. - Your Gemini API key, stored in macOS Keychain.
- Search itself — once a query has its fingerprint, the matching runs locally against your index.
What you can delete
Settings → Clear Index removes every embedding. Settings → Remove API Key forgets your key. Drag PhotoSeek to the Trash and the app is gone. Nothing remains anywhere we control.
Analytics
The PhotoSeek website uses privacy-respecting analytics (Plausible) to count page views and referrers in aggregate. It sets no cookies and does not identify you. Analytics ship disabled unless an environment variable is set, and the marketing site functions identically with or without them.
Contact
If you have a privacy question, email hello@photoseek.app.