Photonkeeper collects nothing about you. This page explains, in detail, what that means and where the data you create actually lives.
The short version. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no advertising, no account to make, no licence to check, and no tracking of any kind. There are no third-party SDKs in the app at all. Nobody, me included, learns what you photograph or when. Your images never leave your control.
Photonkeeper is written and published by Dale Forster, an independent developer in the United Kingdom. Questions about anything on this page go to support@chryse.co.uk, which is a real address a person reads.
Nothing. Not a reduced amount, not anonymised or aggregated — none. The app has no code that reports usage, no unique identifier for your installation, no first-run ping, and no mechanism for sending your data anywhere.
Because there is nothing to collect, there is also nothing to sell, share, rent or hand to a third party, and nothing to hand over in response to a request. That is a property of how the app is built rather than a promise about how it is operated.
This is the complete list, and it differs slightly depending on where you got the app.
One kind of connection: your own telescope, on your own network.
The App Store build makes no other outbound connection of any kind. The version check described below is not merely switched off in that build — it is removed at compile time, so the binary does not even contain the address.
Everything above, plus one more, because a directly downloaded app has no store to update it:
version.json, a small file naming the current release, and compares it with itself. It sends nothing about you, your computer or your archive — the request discloses what every web request discloses, an IP address and the fact that a request happened. It downloads no code and installs nothing; if something newer exists, the app shows a banner and you decide what to do. Turn it off in Settings → Check for updates and the app makes no outbound connection at all beyond your own telescope.The same single kind of connection as the App Store version: your own telescope, on your own network, over USB or over Wi‑Fi, exactly as described above.
The version check does not exist in this build at all. It is not switched off and not removed at compile time — the Windows app was never written with update-checking code in it, because the Microsoft Store handles updates. Beyond your own telescope, the Windows app makes no outbound connection of any kind.
On your own computer, in places you can see:
None of it is transmitted anywhere. There is no cloud component, no sync service and no backup service in this app. If you want your archive backed up or on a NAS, that is your own storage under your own arrangements, and the app is happy to live there.
The App Store version runs inside the macOS App Sandbox. It can read and write the archive folder you picked and a telescope volume you have specifically granted through an open panel, and nothing else on your disk. Those grants are remembered so you are not asked repeatedly, and you can withdraw them in System Settings.
The Windows version is not sandboxed in that sense — a packaged Windows desktop app runs with your own permissions, so in principle it could read anything you can. In practice it reads and writes two things: the archive folder you chose, and a telescope you connected. It asks Windows for no special capability beyond running as a normal desktop application; in particular it does not request broad file system access, which would have meant asking for every file on the machine in order to use one folder.
On either platform the app asks for no access to your photo library, contacts, calendar, camera, microphone, location, or any other system data, because it needs none of it.
Purchases are handled entirely by the store you bought from — by Apple under Apple's privacy policy, or by Microsoft under Microsoft's privacy statement. Payment happens in their systems, and neither passes your name, address or payment details to me. I receive sales and financial reports that count purchases by territory. Nothing in them identifies a customer, and there is no way for me to connect a purchase to a person or to anything the app does on your computer.
Then I have whatever you chose to put in that email, held for as long as it takes to sort the thing out and no longer. I do not add correspondents to any list, because there is no list. Nothing you send is passed to anyone else.
Worth knowing before you send something: a screenshot of the Activity pane is the single most useful bug report there is — but it names your targets and file paths, so glance over it first if that matters to you.
Photonkeeper is a utility for telescope owners and is not directed at children. It collects nothing from anyone, of any age.
Under UK GDPR you have rights to access, correct, export and erase personal data a company holds about you. In this app's case those rights have nothing to act on: I hold no personal data about users of Photonkeeper, and the app creates none for me to hold. The only exception is an email you have sent me, which I will delete on request — just ask at support@chryse.co.uk.
If the app ever does something new that touches this page, the page changes with it, in the same release. The date below says when it was last true. Material changes will also be noted in the release notes, because a privacy policy that changes quietly is not much of one.