Lumen collects nothing.

The short version

Lumen has no account, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. It does not send your photos, your faces, your search index or anything about how you use it to anyone, including the developer. There is no server that could receive it.

What Lumen keeps on your phone

To make search, Live Text and People work, Lumen stores these in its own private app storage:

• A search index: numbers that describe what is in each photo and video.
• The text read from your photos and videos, and where each line is.
• Face data and the names you give to people.
• Captions you write, subtitles you make, and your settings.

Other apps cannot read this storage. Uninstalling Lumen, or clearing its storage in Android's settings, deletes all of it. Removing a smart feature in Settings deletes its model, and removing Faces also deletes the people and their names.

When Lumen goes online

Lumen connects to the internet for these three things only:

Hugging Face

Downloads the smart feature models when you turn a feature on. Hugging Face sees your IP address and which files are downloaded. If you add a Hugging Face token in Settings, it is sent only to Hugging Face.

OpenFreeMap

Loads map tiles when you open a photo's map. The tile server sees your IP address and the map area shown. Turn off Maps in Settings, then Photos & Videos, then Location, and Lumen never contacts it.

GitHub

Checks for a new version of Lumen once a day, and downloads it if you choose to install it. GitHub sees your IP address. Turn off Check Automatically in Settings, then About, to stop the daily check.

None of these requests include your photos or any information from them. Each service handles your IP address under its own privacy policy.

Permissions

Photos and videos

To show the photos and videos on your phone.

All files access (optional)

To show hidden files and folders, and to change favorites quickly.

Media management (optional)

To delete photos and mark favorites without a question from Android each time.

Location in photos

To read where a photo was taken from the photo itself. Lumen never asks for your location.

Notifications

To show the progress of a download or of indexing.

Fingerprint or face

To unlock Hidden and App Lock. Android does the check; Lumen only gets the result.

Install apps

To install a new version of Lumen from Software Update.

Wallpaper

To set a photo as your wallpaper.

Internet

Only for the three things in "When Lumen goes online".

This website

lumen-photos.app sets no cookies. The fonts, images and videos all come from this site. It counts visits with Umami, a privacy-friendly analytics tool that the developer runs on their own server (analytics.fastlytics.app), so the numbers go to no third party: it records which pages are viewed and which download links are tapped, without cookies and without identifying you. It is hosted on Cloudflare, which processes each request to deliver the page and to protect the site from attacks. The download links go to GitHub.

Children

Lumen collects no data from anyone, including children.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the new version will be on this page with a new date. Lumen is open source, so you can check all of the above in the source code. For questions, open an issue on GitHub.