Privacy Policy

Last updated: 7 October 2026 · Applies to Santa Gallery for Android (app.santagallery)

The short version. Your photos stay on your phone. We never upload, store or share your pictures. Everything the app works out about your photos — who is in them, where they were taken — is computed on your device and stays there. We do collect anonymous usage data and show ads, both described below.

1. Photos and videos

Santa Gallery needs access to your photos and videos so it can show them to you. That is the whole reason for the permission.

Your photos and videos are never uploaded to us or to anyone else.
Face grouping, when you switch it on, runs entirely on your device. We store small numeric descriptors locally so the app can tell faces apart. We never store face images, and these descriptors never leave your phone.
Place grouping reads location information that is already embedded in your photos by your camera. It is read on your device and is not transmitted.
Face grouping is off by default. You choose whether to enable it, and you can clear the results at any time.

2. Information we do collect

What	Why	Who
App usage events — screens opened, features used	To understand which parts of the app people use and to fix problems	Google Firebase Analytics
Advertising identifier	To show ads and measure their performance	Google
Device and app information — model, Android version, app version, language	Diagnostics and compatibility	Google Firebase Analytics
Install source	To understand where installs come from	Google Play Install Referrer

We deliberately do not collect your name, email address, phone number, contacts, file names, album names, search terms, or the list of apps installed on your device. Where the app reports which kind of app you opened, it reports only a broad category such as "productivity" — never the app itself.

3. Advertising

Santa Gallery is free and supported by advertising delivered through Google. Google may use your advertising identifier to show ads that are more relevant to you. You can reset or delete that identifier at any time in Settings → Google → Ads on your device, and you can opt out of personalised advertising there too.

Google's own handling of this data is described in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.

4. Permissions and what they are for

Permission	Used for
Photos and videos	Showing your gallery and organising it on your device
Media location	Grouping photos into places and trips, read on device only
Internet & network state	Loading ads and app configuration
Notifications	Optional status messages from the app
Set wallpaper	Setting a photo as your wallpaper when you ask for it
Vibrate	Haptic feedback, which you can switch off

5. Children

Santa Gallery is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

6. Your choices

Turn off face grouping — in the app, under the gallery's discovery settings. Existing groupings can be cleared.
Reset your advertising ID — in your device settings, as above.
Revoke photo access — in Android's app permission settings. The gallery will stop working, the launcher will continue.
Delete everything — uninstalling the app removes all data it created on your device, including the on-device photo index.

7. Data retention

Everything the app creates about your photos lives on your device and is removed when you uninstall. Analytics events held by Google Firebase are retained according to Google's retention settings for the project.

8. Changes

If this policy changes, we will update the date at the top of this page.

9. Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request to delete data, can be sent to privacy@santagallery.app.