Privacy policy

1. Your photos and videos

FaceNest is a local-first application. The photos and videos you import are never uploaded and never leave your device. Face detection, face clustering, automatic tagging, the semantic index and search all run on your own computer.

The app does not need a network connection to run. Disconnect and you can still browse, search by person, by tag, by album, and search semantically.

2. Where the data lives

Everything FaceNest generates stays on your own computer: thumbnails, face embeddings, tags, the semantic vector index and the SQLite database. Which folder it sits in depends on the platform:

Platform	Where
Windows	The `data/` folder next to `FaceNest.exe` (plus `models/` and `logs/`). Portable — move the whole folder and your library comes with it.
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/FaceNest/` (holding `data/`, `models/` and `logs/`). Exports default to `~/Pictures/FaceNest`.

Your original photos and videos are never modified, moved or deleted. The app only reads them.
When you delete a photo, FaceNest deletes only its own thumbnails and index rows.
Export writes copies into the target folder.
To back up, copy that data folder. On macOS the .app itself holds no user data — replacing it does not touch your library.

3. What is sent when you activate

When you click "Activate", the app sends two things to our licence server at api.facenest.net:

Your licence key (the credential Creem issued to you)
A device fingerprint (used to bind the licence to this machine so one key cannot be shared without limit)

The server returns a signed token which the app then verifies locally — in other words, everyday use generates no further network requests.

4. The periodic licence check-in (every 45 days)

A subscription licence is verified offline. So that we can determine your licence status correctly when you switch computers, renew or request a refund, the app needs to connect to the internet at least once every 45 days to complete a licence check-in.

Frequency: At least every 45 days (about 8 times a year). Fully automatic — you do nothing.
What is sent: Only three things: licence key, machine identifier, app version
What is never sent: Photos, videos, files, file paths, search history, or anything unrelated to licensing
After 45 days offline: Pro features are paused; reconnecting restores them automatically. Your photos and index are never deleted and you do not have to buy anything again.

This check-in exists solely to determine licence status. It is not used for analytics, advertising, or training any model.

5. Diagnostic logs (sent only when you click the button)

The app has an "upload diagnostic logs" feature. It sends something only when you click it yourself, and what it sends is a log bundle — run records, error messages and environment details — so we can work out why a feature is not working on your machine.

If you do not click it, nothing is ever sent.
The log bundle does not contain your photos, videos or original files.
If you type a description when submitting, that text is sent along with the logs.

We deliberately write this as a separate clause from the one above, because the two behave completely differently: the licence check-in is automatic and sends three fields; diagnostic logs are manual and send a log bundle. Lumping them together as "we never send anything" would be neither accurate nor honest.

6. Payment and billing

Payments are handled by Creem, which acts as the legal Merchant of Record. We never see or store your card number. Your name, email, billing address and payment details are processed by Creem under its own privacy policy — please read Creem's terms as well.

What we receive from Creem is the payment email address, the order reference, the subscription status and the expiry date — the minimum needed to issue and maintain a licence.

7. This website

This site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Like every website, the server keeps ordinary access logs (IP address, user agent, request time). We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits — it is cookie-free, does not track you across sites and does not build a profile of you.

This site uses no advertising networks and no third-party tracking scripts.

8. Children

FaceNest is not a product for children and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

9. Your rights and deletion requests

You can ask us to delete the activation records and subscription associations we hold on our side at any time. Email support@facenest.net with your payment email or licence key.

After deletion: that licence key can no longer be activated or re-validated (so switching computers or reinstalling will be affected), but the copy of the app already installed on your machine and its local data are unaffected.

If you are in a jurisdiction with data-protection legislation (EU, UK, California and others), you also have the right to access, correct or export the information we hold about you. The same email address handles those requests.

10. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially we will update the "last updated" date at the top of the page and note it in the changelog.

Any questions: support@facenest.net.