Privacy

What Shotlight does with your screenshots

Short version: it reads them on your phone and keeps what it reads on your phone. Shotlight has no server, no account system and no code that uploads a screenshot, the text read from it, or a search you type.

What the app reads and stores

• It reads the screenshots in your Screenshots album, and in any other folders you add in Settings.
• An image you share to Shotlight from another app is copied into the app’s storage and indexed the same way.
• For each one it stores the recognised text, where each word sits in the image, a small thumbnail, a category, and a fingerprint used to spot duplicates.
• All of that is kept in the app’s private storage on the phone, and it is left out of Android’s cloud backup.
• Your original screenshots are not copied, moved or edited. They are deleted only when you delete them.
• Text recognition uses Google’s ML Kit library, bundled inside the app, so it works offline. The telemetry components that come with that library are removed from the app.

The one time the app uses the internet

The app holds Android’s internet permission for a single purpose. Searching by description (“a cat”, “a map”) needs an image model of about 150 MB that is not shipped with the app. The download starts only when you ask for it in Settings.

• The files come from huggingface.co, from one fixed version, and each is checked against a SHA-256 checksum before it is used.
• The request contains no screenshot, no search and no identifier. Like any web server, Hugging Face can see the IP address the files were fetched from.
• After the download, picture search runs on the phone and works in airplane mode.
• You can remove the model again from Settings.

What the app does not do

• No analytics and no crash reporting.
• No accounts and no sign-in.
• No ads.
• No sending of screenshots, recognised text or searches to any server or language model. Categories come from simple rules that run on the phone.

What leaves the app when you ask

• Share. Tapping Share hands that screenshot to the Android share sheet and on to the app you choose.
• Links, numbers and dates. Tapping a link, email address, phone number or date found in a screenshot opens it in your browser, mail, phone or calendar app.
• Backup. Saving a backup writes the index as one unencrypted file to a folder you pick. It contains the recognised text, so keep it somewhere you trust.

Android permissions

Photos (read only)

To find and read your screenshots. On Android 14 and newer you can grant access to selected photos only, and Shotlight then works on those.

Internet

For the optional, one-time download of the picture search model described above. Nothing else in the app opens a connection.

Run at startup, keep the phone awake

So background indexing can read new screenshots while the app is closed, and so its schedule survives a restart. You can turn background indexing off in Settings.

Deleting your data

“Delete all app data” in Settings removes the index and the thumbnails. Uninstalling the app removes everything in its own storage, the picture search model included. Neither touches your screenshots, or a backup file you saved elsewhere.

This website

Everything above is about the app. This website is separate: if you accept the notice at the bottom of the page, it counts your visit with Vercel Analytics. If you decline, or make no choice, the analytics script does not load. You can change your choice at any time with Analytics settings at the bottom of the page.

• Vercel Analytics records the page you opened, the site you came from, your country, and your browser, operating system and device type.
• It sets no cookies and does not follow you to other sites. A visit is told apart from others by a hash of the request that is discarded after 24 hours.
• Google Search Console shows how the site appears in Google search results. It adds nothing to these pages and collects nothing from your visit.

Cookies

This site sets no cookies. It keeps two small values in your browser’s local storage, which never leave your device: your light or dark theme, if you switch it, and your answer to the analytics notice, so it is not asked again on every page. Clearing your browser’s site data removes both.

The download button links to a file hosted on GitHub, which, like the server hosting these pages, sees the request your browser makes.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or anything else: support@shotlight.dev

Last updated 22 October 2026. Back to the home page