Your photos never leave your PC.

Last updated October 18, 2026

Sorta runs on your PC. Your photos, videos and files stay there. Sorta has no account and no cloud. It never uploads your photos, their thumbnails, their names, where they were taken, when they were taken, or anything else about your library. It sends no analytics, usage data or crash reports. There is nothing to opt out of, because nothing is collected.

Your originals. Sorta reads the drives, folders and phones you choose. It never changes, moves or deletes your originals, and it never writes anything to your iPhone.

What stays on your PC

Everything Sorta knows about your photos lives in two places on your own disk: the library folder you chose, which holds ordinary copies of your photos in ordinary folders, and Sorta's data folder (%APPDATA%\Sorta), which holds its catalogue, thumbnails, your duplicate and sensitive-photo decisions, settings, your license key if you entered one, and, if you turn those features on, the face data and search data described below. Uninstalling Sorta leaves your library folder alone; delete the data folder yourself if you want it gone.

• Faces. If you turn on people, Sorta finds faces and works out which ones match, entirely on your PC. The names you give people and the face data are stored in the data folder and nowhere else.
• Search. If you turn on search by objects and scenes, Sorta works out a description of each photo on your PC and stores it in the data folder. Typing a search compares your words against that, on your PC.
• Sensitive photos. The optional check that blurs sensitive photos runs with a model built into the app. Nothing is sent anywhere to decide.
• Map. A map of the world ships inside the app and is read from disk. Where your photos were taken is read from the photos and never sent to anyone.
• The free trial needs no account and stores nothing about you. Its 1,000-photo limit is counted from the library folder itself.

When Sorta uses the internet

This is the complete list. Every one of these is a download or a small request; none of them carries your photos or anything about them. Like any download, each one shows your IP address to the server you are downloading from.

• Face recognition models (about 40 MB) download once from the OpenCV model zoo on GitHub, the first time you turn on people. After that, face recognition runs offline.
• Search models (about 785 MB) download once from Hugging Face, the first time you turn on search by objects and scenes. After that, search runs offline.
• Street-level map regions download from GitHub only when you ask for one. The request names the region file and Sorta's version number. The world map itself needs no download. Sorta suggests regions based on where your photos were taken, but that suggestion is worked out on your PC and the locations are not sent.
• Weather on the Scan page is off by default. If you turn it on, Sorta asks Windows for your PC's location, rounds it to about 1 km, and sends that rounded location to MET Norway (api.met.no) to get a forecast, at most once each time you open Sorta. No photo locations or dates are involved.
• Your license key. Once a day, if you've entered a license key, Sorta checks with sorta.photos whether any licenses were refunded. It downloads the short list of refunded license numbers and compares your key with it on your PC, so it sends no license id, no personal details and nothing about your photos; the request names only Sorta's version number. If it can't reach sorta.photos, nothing changes. Without a key, Sorta never makes the check.
• Updates. When automatic updates are switched on, Sorta asks sorta.photos once a day whether there's a newer version. The request carries nothing about you or your PC; only the version number and what's new come back. An update downloads from GitHub only when you choose, installs only when you say so, and runs only if its signature and fingerprint check out. (Automatic updates are switched off until Sorta's installer is code-signed; until then, new versions are downloaded from sorta.photos by hand.)
• Send to TV works only on your home network, only while you are sending a slideshow. Sorta serves display-sized copies with the metadata stripped to the screen you paired, and to nothing else.

Sorta reads your iPhone over the USB cable, through Apple's own device service on your PC when the Apple Devices app or iTunes is installed, and otherwise through Windows' built-in driver. Neither path uses the internet.

The installer itself is hosted on GitHub (our public sorta-releases page), so downloading Sorta shows your IP address to GitHub, as any download would.

When you buy Sorta

Our order process is conducted by our online reseller Paddle.com. Paddle.com is the Merchant of Record for all our orders. Paddle provides all customer service inquiries and handles returns.

At checkout you deal with Paddle, which collects what it needs to take payment and work out tax: your name, email address, country and postcode, payment details, and your IP address. Paddle is the controller of that data and its privacy policy explains how it is handled. We never see your card.

From Paddle we receive your email address, what you bought, and the purchase's transaction number. We keep those, with the license key we issued, in our website's data store (hosted by Netlify) and in our Paddle account. They are used for three things: to deliver your key, to find it again if you lose it (the recovery page needs your email and the transaction or invoice number from Paddle's receipt, and allows ten attempts per address per hour), and to stop a refunded or charged-back key from working. Your key carries your email address so Sorta can show who it is licensed to; treat the key like a receipt. The key email is sent through Resend (resend.com) under its privacy policy. We keep these records for as long as your license can be in use, so that recovery keeps working; ask us to delete them and we will, which also ends our ability to recover the key for you. We do not sell this data, share it with advertisers, or send marketing unless you have asked for it.

When you email us

Mail to support@, privacy@ or feedback@sorta.photos is read by a person and kept for as long as the conversation is useful, typically until the question is settled and for a while after in case it comes back. If you include screenshots, remember they may show your photos; crop them if you'd rather we didn't see them.

This website

No analytics or trackers, and no cookies of our own. The fonts and images come from this site itself. The one piece of third-party code is Paddle's checkout, loaded from cdn.paddle.com so the Buy buttons can open it; it runs under Paddle's privacy policy and may set Paddle's own cookies for payment and fraud prevention. Our web host, Netlify, keeps standard server logs, such as the IP address that asked for a page, for a short time for security. Links to the Microsoft Store, GitHub and Paddle take you to those companies' sites, with their own policies.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us what personal data we hold about you (it will be the purchase details above, and any emails you sent), ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it where the law lets us. Email privacy@sorta.photos. For checkout and payment records, Paddle is the controller, and its support at paddle.net handles those requests. If you live in the EU, UK or California, you also have the right to complain to your data protection authority; we would rather hear from you first.

Children

Sorta is sold to adults. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.

Changes

If Sorta ever starts using the internet for something new, this page will be updated before that version ships, with the date at the top and a note of what changed.

Who is responsible

Sorta Photos LLC, 18124 Deer Glen West Dr., Conroe TX, 77302, United States. Email privacy@sorta.photos.