Privacy Policy
Desktop for iOS · Effective 29 September 2026
Desktop is a place to keep the things you save. Your library lives on your device. There is no account to create, and nothing you save is ever tied to your identity — because Desktop never learns it.
This policy explains exactly what stays on your phone, the few things that leave it and why, and who else is involved when you view something you saved. It describes the app as it actually works, not a category of app in general.
Desktop is published by VRKIVE LLC. "We" and "us" below mean VRKIVE LLC.
No account, no identifiers
Desktop has no sign-up, sign-in, profile or cloud library. It does not assign you a user ID. It does not read your device's advertising identifier or vendor identifier. It contains no analytics, attribution or crash-reporting service, and no third-party SDKs at all.
Desktop does not track you as the App Store defines tracking: nothing it sends is linked to you or your device, and nothing is shared with data brokers or advertisers. We do not sell or rent information about you, because we do not hold any.
What stays on your device
All of it, unless this policy says otherwise. Specifically:
- Everything you save — links, images, videos — along with their titles, captions, creators and thumbnails.
- Your folders, topics, ordering, wallpaper and appearance settings.
- Whether you've finished onboarding, and your lifetime count of saved items (the number behind the free allowance).
Saved media is written to Desktop's own app container and to the App Group container it shares with its share extension. We run no backup or sync service, and we hold no copy of your library. Photos and videos you save from your own library stay here and are never sent anywhere. The one exception to this section is automatic topic sorting, which sends details of a saved post or link for classification; that is described in full below.
What leaves your device
Four things, in specific moments. None of them carries an identifier for you or your device.
1. Fetching details about a link you saved
When you save a link, Desktop needs its title, creator and cover image to show you a real card instead of a bare URL. The link's address is sent to our enrich service, which requests the publicly available details for it. For ordinary web pages, your device fetches the page preview itself, so that request goes to the site directly and not through us.
Our service keeps no record of the link. Its operational logs record only the site's hostname (for example "youtube.com"), the provider used and whether the lookup succeeded — never the full address.
2. Sorting a save onto the right Desktop
Desktop files each save under a topic for you. It does this by sending a short description of what you saved to our classify service, which passes it to a hosted AI model and gets back a single topic word.
Your own photos and videos are never sent. Anything you save from your camera roll or from a file stays on your device and is never transmitted for sorting. Those saves stay in Unsorted until you choose a topic for them yourself, which you can do from the viewer at any time.
What is sent is drawn from the post or page you saved — material that was already published at the address you saved it from:
| If you saved… | Desktop sends… |
|---|---|
| A post or link | Its title, caption, creator name and handle, community (such as a subreddit) and host, plus the post's cover thumbnail where the platform provides one. |
| One of your own photos or videos | Nothing. These are never sent. |
It is used for nothing but choosing the topic word. We store none of it: the service holds it only for the moment it takes to answer, and its logs record only the source type, the model used and the outcome.
The request is passed to a hosted model provider (currently OpenAI; if that ever changes we will update this policy before it does). We have turned off retention on our side of that account, and they do not use it to train their models. They may retain it briefly for their own abuse monitoring before deleting it. Because that window is longer than the request itself, we disclose this as data collection on the App Store rather than treat it as purely transient.
No account, user ID or device identifier accompanies the request, and we attach nothing that would let it be joined to anything else you saved.
We would rather be precise than reassuring about what that does and does not mean. It means we do not label the request with who you are. It does not mean the content itself is anonymous: a title or caption can carry a name, and the page you saved may say something about you simply by being the page you saved. What it does mean is that the material in question was already public at the address you saved it from before Desktop ever touched it. That distinction is why your own photos and videos are excluded from this entirely rather than merely disclosed — a picture out of your library was never anywhere, and no wording in a policy would make sending it the same kind of act.
Sorting is not retroactive: a library that accumulated before this feature existed is not sent, and those saves stay in Unsorted until you file them.
You can set a topic yourself on any save, from the ⋯ menu in the viewer, and a topic you choose is permanent — automatic sorting never overrides it. Your saves also group by app independently of any of this, under Apps.
3. Checking the app's configuration
Desktop asks our config service for current settings, such as the size of the free allowance. This request sends no information about you or your library.
4. Viewing something you saved
When you open a saved post or page, Desktop loads it from its original source — Instagram, TikTok, X, Reddit, YouTube, or the website itself. Those requests go from your device to that platform, not through us. As with opening the same link in a browser, the platform receives your IP address and any cookies your device already holds for it, and what they do with that is governed by their privacy policies rather than this one. Desktop adds no identifier of its own to these requests and cannot see their contents.
Subscriptions and payment
Desktop's subscription is sold through the App Store. Apple handles the entire transaction. We never receive or have access to your payment method, card number or billing address. The app only asks iOS on your device whether a subscription is currently active; that answer never leaves your phone.
Your count of saved items is also kept in your device's keychain, so that reinstalling the app doesn't hand out a fresh set of free saves. It is stored only on that device, is never synchronised to iCloud or to us, and is a number — it contains nothing about what you saved.
Permissions Desktop does not ask for
Desktop requests no access to your photo library, camera, microphone, location, contacts or notifications, and does not ask permission to track. Items arrive through the iOS share sheet: you choose each one, and Desktop receives only what you shared with it.
Deleting your data
- Delete any saved item inside the app. Deleting it removes the item and its media — including any reduced copy kept for sorting — from your device.
- Deleting a folder removes only the grouping. The saves inside it stay in your library; delete them individually to remove their content.
- Delete Desktop from your phone to remove its library, media and settings entirely.
Since we hold no library and no account, there is nothing for us to delete on your behalf and no account deletion request to make. The only value that deliberately outlives an uninstall is the lifetime save count described above.
If you'd like confirmation of any of this, or want to ask what we hold about you, write to us at the address below. The honest answer will normally be "nothing".
Children
Desktop is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. Desktop can display the pages and posts you save, which come from the open web, so its App Store age rating reflects that its content is not filtered by us.
Changes
29 September 2026: automatic topic sorting no longer sends photos or videos from your own library. Only saved posts and links are sent for sorting, and only the details that were already public at the address you saved them from; camera-roll media now stays on your device in every case. The model provider is named directly, we have turned off retention on our side of that account, and we have set out that sorting is not retroactive. Clarified that a saved item's content can itself contain personal information even though we attach no identifier to it, and that deleting a folder does not delete the saves inside it.
If this policy changes in a way that affects what leaves your device, we will update the effective date above and describe the change here. Material changes will be noted in the app's release notes rather than made quietly.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about Desktop generally: support@arkive.tech. See also the support page.