Privacy Policy
Effective October 8, 2026. This covers the VidForAll apps for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Apple Vision Pro, and the website at vidforall.com.
The short version
- Your videos and pictures stay where they are: on your devices, in Photos, or in the storage you connect. VidForAll never uploads them to us.
- Finding faces, searching by picture and reading text in pictures all happen on your device.
- When you connect Google Drive or another service, videos stream straight from that service to your device. Sign-in tokens stay in your device's Keychain.
- A VidForAll account is optional. If you make one, we keep what's needed to keep your devices in step: your email, your name, your devices, and settings such as favorites and watch progress.
- No ads, no selling or sharing data for advertising, no tracking across apps or websites, and no outside analytics tools.
What stays on your devices
VidForAll is a library for your own videos and pictures. Everything it learns about them is worked out and kept on the device you're using:
- Your library. The list of your videos and pictures, with their dates, places, albums, titles you type, favorites and where you stopped watching, is kept in the app's own storage on each device.
- Folders and Photos. VidForAll reads the folders you add and, if you allow it, your Photos library. To make things quick, it keeps small thumbnails and screen-sized copies of pictures on your device, and you can turn those copies off in Settings. Deleting a source from VidForAll never deletes your files.
- People, Search by Picture and text. Recognising faces, matching what's in a picture to what you type, and reading words in pictures and videos are done by models that run on your device. Nothing is sent anywhere to do it, and the results stay on your device.
- Hidden pictures are kept encrypted on your device and shown only while Hidden is unlocked.
Services you connect
You can add videos from Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, S3-compatible storage (such as Amazon S3, Backblaze B2 or Wasabi), network shares (SMB or WebDAV), your own Plex or Jellyfin server, and VidForAll's own home server, vidserve. For each one:
- You sign in on that service's own page, or type its details into the app. Sign-in tokens, passwords and keys are kept in your device's Keychain and are never sent to us.
- VidForAll lists the videos in what you chose and plays them by reading them directly from the service. The videos don't pass through our servers.
- You can remove a source at any time in Settings. That deletes its sign-in from your device.
Google user data
This section explains how VidForAll uses data from your Google Account when you connect Google Drive.
What VidForAll can see
- Only what you choose (recommended). If you use "Choose from Google Drive", Google shows you its own picker. VidForAll can read only the videos and pictures you pick there, using Google's
drive.filepermission. Nothing else in your Drive is visible to it. - Your whole Drive, read-only (optional). If you choose "Sign in for All of My Drive", VidForAll gets read-only access, using the
drive.readonlypermission. With it, VidForAll finds the videos in the folder you choose, or in all of My Drive or Shared with Me. It never changes, moves, deletes or uploads anything.
How it's used
VidForAll uses this access only to show your Drive videos and pictures in your library, play the videos and show the pictures. To do that it reads file names, folder names, sizes, dates and file IDs, and it reads the files themselves. To recognise a video it has already seen, it reads small parts of the file to make a fingerprint. It also reads a video's details (length, size, date and place filmed) and makes a thumbnail. All of this happens on your device. Pictures are copied into VidForAll's storage on your device so they can be shown and searched, and they're removed when you remove the source.
Where it's kept
- Your Google sign-in token is kept in your device's Keychain.
- The names, IDs and details of your Drive videos, and their thumbnails, are kept in VidForAll's storage on your device.
- The videos themselves stream from Google to your device and aren't stored on our servers.
- If you're signed in to a VidForAll account, two things are sent to vidforall.com so your other devices can show them. One is the name you gave the Drive source and which folder it reads. The other is your own changes to a video: where you stopped, favorites, and titles or albums you set. No video content, file contents or Google sign-in is ever sent.
Sharing
We don't sell Google user data, and we don't share it with anyone. We don't use it for advertising, and we don't use it to develop, improve or train generalized artificial intelligence or machine learning models. No person reads it, unless you ask us to help with a problem and give your permission, or the law requires it.
VidForAll's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
Stopping access
Remove the Google Drive source in VidForAll's Settings to delete its sign-in from that device. To withdraw VidForAll's access from your Google Account altogether, go to myaccount.google.com/permissions.
Your VidForAll account
An account is optional. Everything above works without one. If you make one at vidforall.com or in the app, it keeps your devices in step, and here's what we keep:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Email address and name | To sign you in, to send a password-reset link when you ask for one, and to email you about a Pro subscription paid on vidforall.com. We don't send newsletters or marketing. |
| Password | Stored only as a one-way hash (bcrypt). We can't read it. |
| Your devices | Each signed-in device's name and type, and when it was last seen, so you can see and sign out of them on your account page. |
| What's kept in step | App settings, favorite films, shows and people, and the list of sources each device has (names and locations, never passwords). Also, for each video: where you stopped, whether it's watched or a favorite, and any title, date, place or albums you set. Videos are matched across devices by a fingerprint of their contents, not by uploading them. |
The website uses one cookie to keep you signed in. It's needed for signing in and isn't used for anything else. To send password-reset emails, we use an email delivery service, and it receives only your address and the message.
You can delete your account on your account page at any time. Deleting it removes your account and everything kept for it from our servers. Copies in our encrypted backups age out within the time described in Keeping data safe.
Movies & TV information
To show posters, cast and episode details for films and shows in your library, VidForAll asks vidforall.com's metadata service. That service looks titles up with TMDB, TVmaze and TheTVDB. A lookup includes the film or show's title, which may be worked out from a file name, along with the year or episode and your language. If you're signed in, it also carries your account's sign-in. Answers and pictures are cached so the next person asking doesn't have to wait. Some pictures are loaded straight from those services' image servers.
The app's Explore and news pages show public videos and headlines that vidforall.com collects from public feeds. Some shopping links point to Apple's stores with an affiliate code. We don't learn who taps them, but Apple may.
Apple services
- iCloud. If iCloud is on, VidForAll keeps your titles, favorites, albums and watch progress in step through your own private iCloud database, and through iCloud sharing for albums you share. Apple handles this under Apple's privacy policy. We can't see it.
- Place names. To name where a video or picture was taken, the app sends its coordinates to Apple's map services.
- Purchases. VidForAll Pro bought in the App Store is handled by Apple, and we never receive your payment details. If you’re logged in to a VidForAll account, the app sends vidforall.com Apple’s signed record of the purchase (which product, its purchase number, and when a subscription is paid to), so your account has Pro on your other devices and on the website.
Paying on vidforall.com
VidForAll Pro can also be bought on vidforall.com by card. Payments are taken by Stripe, under Stripe’s privacy policy. Your card details go to Stripe, never to us. From Stripe we keep what’s needed to give your account Pro: which plan you have, when it renews or ends, and Stripe’s reference for you as a customer. Stripe may ask for your billing address to work out sales tax. We email you about your subscription: when Pro starts, a few days before a free trial ends, and if a renewal doesn’t go through. Those emails go through the same email delivery service as password resets. If you delete your account, a subscription paid by card is cancelled. Stripe keeps its records of payments as the law requires.
Remote Access
Remote Access is optional. It lets your own devices and your own servers reach each other when you're away from home. vidforall.com's coordination service knows which of your devices belong to your account and how to reach them. The connections between them are encrypted end to end (WireGuard). If a direct connection isn't possible, the encrypted traffic may be relayed, but it can't be read on the way.
What we never do
- Upload your videos or pictures to our servers.
- Show ads, or sell or share personal data for advertising.
- Track you across other companies' apps or websites.
- Include outside analytics, advertising or tracking tools in the apps.
- Use your videos, pictures or Google data to train AI models.
Keeping data safe
Connections to vidforall.com use HTTPS. Account data is kept on our server. Each day it's backed up off-site to Cloudflare R2, encrypted before it leaves the server, and old backups are deleted on a rolling schedule. Our web server keeps ordinary logs, such as the IP address, time and page requested. They're used only to keep the site secure and working, and are kept only as long as needed for that.
Your choices
- Use VidForAll without an account. Nothing about your library is sent to us then, apart from the Movies & TV lookups described above.
- Turn off Photos access, iCloud, or any source in Settings, or in your device's settings.
- See and sign out of your devices, change your name or password, or delete your account on your account page.
- Ask us for a copy of what we keep for your account, or ask us to correct or delete it. Depending on where you live, you may have further rights under laws such as the GDPR or the CCPA, and we'll honor them.
Children
VidForAll isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them for an account. If you believe a child has made an account, contact us and we'll delete it.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new date. If a change affects what we do with data we already have, we'll say so in the app before it takes effect.
Contact
Questions or requests: privacy@vidforall.com