Privacy Policy

Effective September 14, 2026 · Applies to PDFChest for iOS

PDFChest is a local-first document utility. There is no account, and the app makes no network requests. Your files, the text read out of them, and everything you type about them stay on the iPhone you are holding.

1. What is not collected

The developer does not collect, transmit, or sell:

• Name, email, phone number, or sign-in details — the app has no registration or login
• Receipts, invoices, warranty cards, repair records, manuals, PDFs, or photos
• On-device OCR text, amounts, merchants, dates, notes, or categories
• Location, contacts, or calendar
• Analytics, crash reports, or remote logs

The app bundles no advertising, analytics, attribution, or crash-reporting SDK of any kind. Every framework it links against ships with iOS: Vision and VisionKit for recognition, PDFKit for documents, UserNotifications for reminders, and LocalAuthentication for the optional Face ID lock. Under Apple’s definition of “collected” data — information that leaves the device — this app collects none.

2. What is stored on your device

When you scan, import, or edit a document, the following stays on the current iPhone:

• Images and PDFs you scan or import
• Text recognized by on-device OCR
• Titles, merchants, product names, amounts, dates, categories, and notes you enter or confirm
• Return-window and warranty dates, plus the reminder preferences you enable
• A few interface preferences in UserDefaults: the Face ID lock switch (appLockEnabled), your chosen interface language (appLanguage), and your chosen display currency (appCurrency)

Records are written to vouchers.json and the attached PDFs to a LocalDocuments folder, both inside the app sandbox with complete file protection, and both excluded from iOS backup. They generally do not appear in iCloud Backup or in computer backups. Deleting the app removes all of it.

3. System permissions

Each permission is requested only at the moment you use the feature that needs it, and the processing stays on device:

• Camera — only when you start scanning a paper document. Images are not uploaded.
• Photos — only when you choose to import from your library. The app never reads Photos in the background.
• Notifications — only when you switch on a return or warranty reminder. Alerts are scheduled locally and may include the title and expiry date you saved.
• Face ID — optional, used to confirm it is you when opening the app. iOS performs the check; the app never reads or stores biometric data.

You can revoke any of these in iOS Settings. The related feature stops working; documents already saved on the device are not deleted.

4. Recognition and reminders

Text recognition uses Apple’s Vision framework on this device. There is no cloud OCR. The keyword matching that classifies receipts, invoices, and warranties runs locally against a dictionary bundled inside the app; it recognizes English and Chinese terms and never learns from your documents.

Reminders use UserNotifications. The fire time is derived from the expiry date and the lead time you pick, at 9:00 a.m. on the reminder day. Turning a reminder off, or deleting the record, cancels the matching notification.

5. Sharing

The app never shares a document on its own. Export happens only when you open the system share sheet and pick a destination such as Files, Mail, or another app. From that point the destination’s own privacy policy applies.

6. Third parties and children

There are no analytics, sign-in, advertising, or cloud-storage SDKs in the app, and no data is sold. PDFChest is a general-purpose local document utility and does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

7. Your choices

• Edit or delete an individual record together with its attachment
• Delete all local documents, recognized text, and reminders from Settings
• Turn off the Face ID lock, notifications, camera access, or Photos access
• Uninstall the app to remove every trace of sandbox data

8. Changes

If a future version changes how information is handled — by adding a network feature, for instance — this policy will be updated with a new effective date before that version ships. Until then, the app continues to keep everything on this device.