Developed Privacy Policy
Last updated: 11 September 2026
Developed collects nothing about you. There is no account, no server and no analytics, and the app has no network access of any kind. Nothing you do in it is sent anywhere, because there is nowhere for it to be sent.
That is the whole policy. The rest of this page says what the app does with what stays on your phone, so you can check the claim rather than take it.
Your photographs
The photographs you take stay on your phone. Until a roll comes back from the lab they sit in the app’s own storage, where only the app can read them.
When you open the envelope, the prints and the negatives strip go into an album called “Developed” in your Photos library. That is the only place the app puts them, and it is the point at which they become yours to do what you like with. iOS asks your permission first, and if you say no the app carries on without saving anything.
The app asks for read and write access to Photos rather than add-only access. Read access is used for one thing: finding the “Developed” album again next time, so a second roll joins the first instead of making a new album. The app does not look at the rest of your library, and it could not send what it found if it did.
Undeveloped film is left out of your device backups on purpose. That is not a privacy measure, it is the promise of the app: a roll is not meant to survive a restore as a way round waiting for the lab.
If you have iCloud Photos switched on, Apple syncs the “Developed” album the way it syncs everything else in your library. That is Apple’s, between you and them, and the app has no part in it.
The camera
Developed uses your phone’s back camera while you have the app open, to be the viewfinder and to take the photographs. It does not run in the background and it does not use the microphone or the front camera.
What the app stores on your phone
- The photographs described above.
- A file recording the state of your camera: which frames you have taken, when a roll went to the lab, and when it is due back.
- Whether you have seen the leaflet that opens on first launch, so it does not open twice.
Deleting the app deletes all of it. Prints already in your Photos library are yours and stay where they are.
Notifications
Developed schedules two notifications on your phone when you send a roll off: one when the lab has your film, one when the prints are ready. They are scheduled by the app on the device and there is no push server, so no information about you leaves the phone to make them happen.
They are asked for provisionally, which means they arrive quietly in Notification Centre and you decide from there whether to keep them.
What the app does not do
No tracking, across this app or any other. No advertising and no advertising identifiers. No analytics or crash reporting. No third-party code at all: the app uses Apple’s frameworks and nothing else. No accounts, no sign-in, no cloud sync of its own. Nothing is sold or shared with anyone, because nothing is collected in the first place.
Children
Developed is rated 4+ and there is nothing in it aimed at children in particular. It collects no data from anyone, of any age.
The licence
Developed is MIT licensed.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version replaces this page and the date at the top changes with it.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about anything the app does: email me at alex@alexecollins.com.
Help with the app itself is on the support page.