Triage for Photos

Privacy

Last updated September 29, 2026

Triage for Photos reads your photo library, or a folder you choose, on your Mac. Scoring, searching and filing all happen on the device. There is no account required, no ads and no analytics.

What stays on your Mac

• Your photos. The app reads them through Apple's PhotoKit, or from a folder you open, and never uploads them except as described under Optional AI below.
• What it learns from each picture: focus, exposure, composition, faces, near-duplicate groups, labels, and the words read off it. This is kept in the app's Application Support folder as a cache you can clear in Settings.
• Your keep and delete decisions, until you apply them.

Optional AI features

These stay off until you paste an OpenRouter API key into Settings. The key is kept in your Mac's keychain.

• Expand with AI sends the words of your search, as text, to a language model through OpenRouter to get related words.
• Check with AI and Check with Gemini send each picture being checked, as a 512-pixel JPEG, with your search or a fixed question, to a vision model through OpenRouter. The app shows the cost before anything is sent. Pictures with no sign of a person are not sent for the Gemini check.
• Answers are stored on your Mac so nothing is sent or paid for twice. OpenRouter and the model provider handle what is sent under their own privacy policies.

Optional account and sync

Signing in is optional. If you create an account, it is hosted on Berth, and the following is stored so it can follow you to another Mac or iPhone:

• Your name, email and sign-in details, and the devices you are signed in on.
• Your keep or delete decision per photo, keyed by its iCloud Photos identifier.
• AI answers you have already paid for, and your settings (model choice, appearance, recent searches and expansions).
• The search index: the words and labels read off each photo. Because it contains the words on your screenshots and documents, it is kept in a private, owner-only store.
• A security log of sign-ins, new devices, password changes and failed sign-in attempts, shown to you in Settings.

Not sent: your photos and your OpenRouter key. Every stored row is readable only by you. You can delete your account in the app, which removes your Berth user, your synced rows and your index file.

Google Photos library migration

Triage for Photos includes a personal tool that moves a Google Photos library, from a Google Takeout export the owner requests, into their own Google Photos account. It runs on the owner's Mac and is not offered to other people.

• What it asks Google for. Permission to add photos and videos to the signed-in person's Google Photos library and to create albums (photoslibrary.appendonly), and to read back only the items and albums it created itself, to check that they arrived (photoslibrary.readonly.appcreateddata). It cannot see or change anything else in the library.
• Where the data goes. Photos travel from the Mac straight to Google Photos. They are not sent to, or stored on, any server of ours. The sign-in token is kept on the Mac, in a file only that user can read.
• Tagging. To sort photos into albums, a small preview picture of each photo is sent to an AI model for a short description (what it shows, whether it is a screenshot). The previews are used for that answer only and are not kept by us.
• Limited Use. The app's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements. Data from Google is used only to provide this migration to the signed-in person, is not transferred to others, is not used for advertising, and is not read by people.
• Revoking access. The person can remove the tool's access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

Deleting pictures

Nothing is deleted until you apply. Library pictures go to Recently Deleted (30 days) and folder files go to the Trash.

This website

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Contact

If you email us, we only see what you choose to send. Questions: hello@atberth.com.