What PlumageSort knows about you
Last updated 17 September 2026
Nothing. PlumageSort identifies birds entirely on your own computer — a Mac or a Windows PC — makes no network requests while sorting, and sends no photograph, no filename and no usage data anywhere.
That is unusual enough to be worth stating precisely rather than in general terms, so the rest of this page says exactly what happens to your data — and what does not.
Your photographs
Photographs are read from the folder you choose and sorted into folders you choose, on storage you control. They are never uploaded, never copied off the device, and never sent to any server, including ours. There is no account and no sync.
On a Mac, identification runs on Apple's on-device machine learning; on Windows, on ONNX Runtime on your PC. Either way the species model ships inside the app; it is not fetched, and it does not report what it saw.
What the app stores, and where
On a Mac, all of it stays on your Mac (for Windows, see below):
- Your chosen region and burst-handling preference, in the app's settings.
- A resume file in your destination folder if a sort stops early, recording the folder paths and settings of that run so it can continue.
- A review page in your destination folder listing what was sorted.
- How many photographs you have sorted, and which species, to apply the free trial and any photographs you have bought. This is counted on your device and never transmitted.
What we do not do
- No analytics. No usage tracking, no event logging, no session recording.
- No crash reporting. Crashes are not transmitted anywhere.
- No advertising, and no data shared with or sold to anyone.
- No third-party SDKs. The app bundles no analytics, advertising or attribution libraries.
The two times the Mac app does use the network
Neither involves your photographs.
- Checking your licence. When you activate a key, and occasionally afterwards, the app asks this site whether that key is valid, and this site passes the question to our payment provider. The request carries the key and a one-way hash of a machine identifier — enough to tell two computers apart, not enough to identify which computer it is — and, as any web request does, your IP address. It carries nothing about your photographs. If there is no network the app keeps working on the last answer it had.
- Checking for updates. The app asks this site whether a newer version exists. That request carries what any web request carries, including your IP address, and nothing about you or your photographs.
Payment
On a Mac, purchases are handled by our payment provider, who acts as merchant of record. They take your payment details; we never see your card number. Their handling of that transaction is governed by their own privacy policy.
On Windows
The Windows app is sold only through the Microsoft Store. Everything above about your photographs, and about what we do not do, applies unchanged. What differs:
- What it stores. The same resume file and review page in your destination folder. And, in the app's own data folder on your PC: the species your free trial has already included and how many trial photographs you have sorted, your photo-pack balance, and whether your subscription was active when last checked. None of this is transmitted. If you have turned on Windows' own backup to OneDrive, Windows may include that folder in your backup.
- The network. The Windows app never contacts this site — there is no licence check, and updates come from the Microsoft Store. It talks only to the Microsoft Store, through Windows itself: when the app opens or comes back to the front, to see whether your subscription is active and what is for sale; when you buy something; and to confirm a photo-pack purchase. Those requests are made by Windows under your Microsoft account and carry nothing about your photographs.
- Payment. Microsoft handles every purchase. Microsoft takes your payment details; we never see them. Microsoft's handling of the transaction is governed by the Microsoft Privacy Statement.
Children
PlumageSort is not directed at children and collects no personal information from anyone, including children under 13.
Your rights
Rights to access, correct, export or delete personal data — under the GDPR, India's DPDP Act 2023 or the CCPA — apply to data a company holds about you. Beyond your licence key and the email address you bought with on a Mac, we hold none; for the Windows app we hold nothing at all. Everything the app creates is a file on your own computer, and deleting the app and its folders removes all of it.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date above changes with it. If the app ever begins collecting anything, that will be said here plainly and before it happens, not after.