iPhone App Privacy Report: turn it on, read it, act on it

Turn it on today

The report records nothing until you switch it on, so the best time is now, before you have a question.

1. Open Settings and tap Privacy & Security.
2. Scroll to the bottom and tap App Privacy Report.
3. Tap Turn On App Privacy Report.

Apple says it gathers information only from that moment and fills in as you keep using your apps. Come back in a day or two for anything useful. It keeps a rolling week.

The four parts, and what to look for

Apple describes four sections, each covering the past 7 days.

Data & Sensor Access. Which apps read your photos, location, camera, microphone or contacts, how often and when. This is the part that matters most for photos. Tap an app to see a timeline.

• An app reading Photos in the middle of the night is worth a look, unless it is a backup app that runs in the background.
• A game or a shopping app with photo access you don’t remember giving is a reason to visit its switch.

App Network Activity. The domains each app contacted, directly or through content shown inside it (Apple). A news app that loads ads from a dozen domains will show all of them.

Website Network Activity. Domains contacted by websites you opened inside apps. Apple notes that private browsing in browser apps is left out, but private modes in other apps are shown.

Most Contacted Domains. The domains all your apps reach most often. Names like an analytics or ad company near the top tell you which apps share data with the same third parties.

Act on what you find

The report only shows. The fixes live one screen away.

1. Turn off access you didn’t mean to give. In Settings, Privacy & Security, tap Photos (or Camera, Location, Microphone) and change the switch for that app. Apple’s guide lists every app that asked.
2. Narrow photo access instead of cutting it. Many apps work with only the pictures you pick. The limited photo access guide shows how.
3. Read the app’s privacy label. Apple suggests the App Store privacy label, the app’s privacy policy or its developer when you want to know why an app wants something.
4. Delete the app if the answer doesn’t satisfy you.

How to read it fairly

Access is not the same as collection. Apple points out that an app can read data that never leaves the phone. A photo editor that opens your library to show thumbnails is reading it, and may send none of it anywhere. Look at the two halves together: an app with photo access and a long list of outside domains is a different case from one with photo access and almost no network activity.

The guide to which apps can see your photos explains the full, limited and none settings behind those switches.

What a vault looks like in the report

A vault app is a fair test of its own privacy claims. Turn the report on, use the app for a week, and check both halves.

For Sealed, expect photo access around the times you import, delete originals, run a check of your camera roll, or use one of its Shortcuts actions. Sealed imports only the photos and videos you choose, and deletes the originals in Photos only when you ask. Find Private Photos runs on your iPhone: nothing is sent anywhere, and the text it reads isn’t kept. The Shortcuts actions need Sealed to have access to your photos.

On the network side, the app has no server and no analytics, so there is no company domain to show. We run no server, so there is nothing of yours for us to see. Sealed contains no analytics or tracking SDKs, and it collects no data. With backup on, the encrypted copy goes to your own iCloud account, so any domain listed for it should be an Apple one. Backup goes to your own iCloud account, not to a server of ours. Apple says the data an app keeps in a user’s CloudKit private database is accessible only to that user by default, isn’t visible in the developer portal, and counts toward the user’s iCloud storage.

Where Sealed helps, and where it doesn’t

It helps that it sends nothing to its maker, so a quiet network list is what you should see. Sealed has no ads and no tracking.

It helps that your files stay on the phone unless you turn on backup or export them. Your files never leave your iPhone unless you turn on iCloud backup or export them yourself.

It doesn’t keep sites out of the report when you use its private browser: it is a mode inside an app, which Apple says the report does show. Its own history is erased when the vault locks. The private browser does not save history, cookies or site data, and what it holds is erased when the vault locks.

It doesn’t read or change the report, and can’t tell you what other apps did with your photos before you moved them in. Until you delete them, the originals stay in Photos, outside the vault.