Privacy & Data

privacy, but cooler

Effective 12 August 2026

no accounts, no ads, no tracking, no profile. here's the long version.

stays on your mac

• Folders you drag in get read and written only on your Mac. Their names and paths are never sent anywhere.
• The bundled icon library is on-device. Browsing it, favouriting, and applying an icon involve no network at all.
• Icons you generate are saved inside the app's own folder on your Mac, and — if you leave iCloud sync on — in your own iCloud Drive, so they survive reinstalling and follow you to your other Macs. That is Apple's storage under your Apple Account: we have no access to it and no copy of it. You can switch the sync off in Settings.
• Favourites, settings, and history live in your local app preferences.
• No accounts, no sign-in, no password. Nothing to forget.

what leaves your mac

Exactly one thing, and only when you ask for it: the photo you drop into the icon generator, at the moment you press generate.

It travels over an encrypted connection to our server, which passes it straight to our AI provider, gets the finished icon back, and hands it to your Mac. The photo is never written to disk on our side — not to a database, not to file storage, not to a log. It exists in memory for the seconds the request takes and is gone.

If you never use the generator, Foldicon never sends anything anywhere.

what we store

A small amount, and none of it identifies you:

• A random device ID. Generated on your Mac the first time the generator runs. It is not your Apple ID, not your hardware serial, and not an advertising identifier — it is a random string whose only job is to know which credit balance is yours.
• Your credit balance, and the purchases that topped it up.
• A one-line record per generation: the device ID, which style you picked, whether it succeeded, an error message if it didn't, and the time. Not the photo. Not the icon. Not the prompt.

We keep that so credits can't be spent twice and so we can tell whether the service is broken. It is deleted on request — see below.

who else is involved

Four companies, each doing one job:

• xAI — runs the image model that draws your icon. Your photo is sent to them to fulfil your request. Their handling is governed by xAI's privacy policy and their API terms.
• Cloudflare — hosts our server and the credit database. Your photo passes through their network in transit; the database holds only the records listed above.
• RevenueCat — processes the App Store receipt when you buy credits, so we know a purchase was genuine. They receive purchase data and an anonymous identifier, never your name or card details.
• Apple — the store you downloaded from and the only party that touches your payment method. We never see your card.

There is nobody else. No analytics SDK, no crash reporter, no ad network, no attribution provider.

what we'd never do

• Sell, rent, or trade your data.
• Store the photos you generate from.
• Use your photos or icons to train a model — ours or anyone else's.
• Track you across other apps or websites.
• Ship ad or ad-attribution SDKs.
• Build a profile about you.

photos of people

The generator is built for photos of people, so it is worth being blunt about two things.

Only upload photos you have the right to use. If someone else is in the picture, that means their permission. We have no way to check this, so it rests with you.

Foldicon uses your photo to draw a cartoon. It does not run face recognition, does not build a faceprint, and does not attempt to identify anyone. Nothing about you or the people in your photos is retained after the icon comes back.

ai-generated output

Icons made by the generator are created by an AI model. They are stylised drawings, not photographs, and they will not be a perfect likeness of anyone. Treat them as illustration.

Where required, generated files carry metadata marking them as AI-generated. Foldicon does not publish, share, or post your icons anywhere — they are saved to your Mac and applied to your folders.

money

Generating icons costs credits, bought as an in-app purchase. Apple processes the payment. We never see or store your card number, billing address, or Apple ID.

Apple tells us that a purchase happened, via RevenueCat, so we can add credits to your balance. That's the whole exchange.

your rights, no lawyer needed

Laws like the GDPR and CCPA give you the right to access, correct, delete, export, or object to the processing of your personal data. Because the only thing tied to you is a random device ID and a credit balance, exercising them is quick.

• Delete everything: email us and we'll erase the device ID, the balance, and the generation records. Any unused credits go with them.
• Get a copy: ask, and we'll send you the handful of rows we hold.
• Delete it yourself: uninstalling Foldicon removes every favourite and setting from your Mac. Generated icons kept in iCloud stay in your iCloud Drive until you delete them — from inside Foldicon, or in Finder under iCloud Drive.

Our lawful basis for the processing described here is performing the service you asked for. We do not process your data for marketing, and there is nothing to opt out of.

where your data goes

Our provider infrastructure is global, so your photo may be processed on servers outside your country, including in the United States. It is in transit and in memory only — nothing is stored at rest at any location.

kids

Foldicon isn't aimed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect anything from them.

if this changes

The effective date up top changes with it, and anything material gets called out in the app's release notes.

say hi

Questions, suggestions, or just want to argue about folder icons — contact us.