Privacy policy
Effective 10 November 2026
- Dote reads your photos on your iPhone. We do not receive them.
- Dote has no account, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking.
- Face data stays on your iPhone. Face recognition is off until you turn it on.
- Photos leave your iPhone only when you share them with family through your own iCloud.
- You can erase everything Dote made, in Settings.
1. Who this policy covers
This policy covers the Dote app for iPhone and this website. In this policy, "we" means the developer of Dote. You can reach us at hridyaagrawal4@gmail.com.
We do not operate a server that stores your data. For that reason, we cannot see, read or recover anything that Dote stores.
2. What Dote stores on your iPhone
Dote stores the data below in its own storage on your iPhone. None of it is sent to us.
| Data | Why Dote stores it |
|---|---|
| An index of your photo library: dates, sizes, place coordinates, quality scores, content labels and image fingerprints | To find the best photos, group them by day and event, and remove duplicates |
| Face data, if you turn on face recognition: the position of each face and a numeric template of it | To group photos by person |
| The names, birthdays and roles that you enter for family members | To show ages and to make a page for each person |
| Firsts and growth readings that you enter | To show milestones and a growth chart |
| Search data: a numeric description of each photo | To let you search your photos with words |
| Your activity in the app, such as favorites, hidden photos and how long you view a photo | To learn which photos you like. This learning runs on your iPhone. |
| Stories, stickers, widget images and photos that family members shared with you | To show them in the app, in Messages and on your Home Screen |
| Crash and hang reports from iOS | To help you report a problem. They stay on your iPhone. |
Dote does not change or delete the photos in your library. Dote adds a photo to your library only when you save one, or when your partner shares one with you.
3. Face data
Face recognition is optional. Dote asks you before it starts, and it records the date of your choice on your iPhone.
- If you turn it on, Dote measures the faces in your photos and stores a numeric template for each face. This is biometric data.
- The templates are made on your iPhone and stay on your iPhone. Dote does not upload them, share them or sell them, and we cannot access them.
- Dote uses the templates for one purpose: to group your photos by person.
- Dote keeps the templates until you turn off face recognition, erase all Dote data, or delete the app. Each of these actions deletes the templates permanently.
To turn it off, open Dote, then Settings, then Faces. When you turn it off, Dote deletes all face templates and the people that it built from them.
You are responsible for the photos in your library. Turn on face recognition only if you have the right to do so for the people in your photos, including your children.
4. What leaves your iPhone
Sharing with a partner or family, through iCloud
Sharing is off until you send or accept an invitation. Dote asks you to confirm before it joins a share.
- Partner sharing. Dote sends your best recent family photos, and the video of a Live Photo, to a private iCloud zone that you and your partner share. Dote saves the photos that your partner shares to your library.
- Family feed. Dote sends up to 12 photos each week to a private iCloud zone. The people you invite can view these photos. Each photo carries its date and a caption with the first names and ages of the family members in it.
Dote removes location data from a photo before it sends the photo. The photos are stored in your iCloud account, under Apple's privacy policy. We do not have access to your iCloud data. To stop, open Settings in Dote and choose the stop option. Dote then deletes the shared zone that you own.
Search model download
The first time search is needed, Dote downloads a search model from Hugging Face (huggingface.co) over Wi-Fi. The request contains no data about you or your photos. As with any download, Hugging Face can see your IP address.
Apple services
Dote adds the names of your family members to Spotlight and Siri on your iPhone, so that you can open a person's page from search. Apple handles this data on your device under its own privacy policy. If you share a crash report with us by email, we receive what you send.
5. What Dote does not do
- Dote does not create an account for you and does not ask for your name, email address or phone number.
- Dote contains no analytics, advertising or tracking software.
- We do not sell data, and we do not share data with data brokers or advertisers. We have no data to sell.
- We do not use your photos to train models.
6. Children
Dote is for parents and guardians. It is not directed to children, and children are not expected to use it.
The app handles information about your children: their photos, names, birthdays, firsts and growth readings. This information stays on your iPhone and in the iCloud shares that you create. We do not collect it.
7. How to delete your data
- Face data only: Settings, then Faces, then turn off face recognition.
- Everything: Settings, then "Erase all Dote data". Dote deletes its index, face data, people, firsts, growth readings, search data, stories, stickers, widget images and received photos. It also stops sharing and deletes the iCloud zones that you own.
- The app: when you delete Dote from your iPhone, iOS removes the data that Dote stored on the device.
Photos that your partner already saved to their own library stay there. Ask your partner to delete them.
8. Security
Dote stores its data in the protected storage that iOS gives each app. iOS encrypts this storage when your iPhone is locked with a passcode. Data in iCloud is protected by Apple.
9. Your rights
Privacy laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA give you rights to access, correct and delete personal data. Because your data is on your own device and in your own iCloud account, you can use these rights directly in the app. If you need help, write to us and we will answer within 30 days.
10. This website
This website uses no cookies and no analytics. Our hosting provider, Vercel, keeps standard server logs, which include IP addresses, for security and operation.
11. Changes
If we change this policy, we will publish the new version on this page and change the effective date. If a change affects how Dote handles face data or sharing, the app will ask for your consent again.
12. Contact
Send privacy questions and requests to hridyaagrawal4@gmail.com.