PicPile privacy policy

Last updated: July 20, 2026

PicPile doesn't collect or transmit any personal data. No analytics, no telemetry, no accounts. Everything PicPile does happens on your Mac.

What PicPile does on your machine

Reads the images you give it. When you drag images in, choose them from the Open panel, or paste them, PicPile loads those images to composite them into your grid or framed exports. Your images stay on your Mac — they're never uploaded anywhere.
Reads the clipboard only when you paste. Pressing ⌘V reads image files or image data from the clipboard so PicPile can add them to your pile. It doesn't read the clipboard at any other time, and nothing from it is sent off your device.
Saves and exports where you choose. A .picpile document stores copies of your piled images along with their titles, captions, and canvas style, so the document is self-contained. Exports are written as PNG files to the location you pick. All of this stays on your Mac.
Stores your preferences — small settings such as the license state on the direct-download build — in your local UserDefaults and application container. They never leave your device.

The Mac App Store build makes no network connections of its own. The direct-download build makes two, both only in that build:

Update checks. The Sparkle framework periodically fetches https://bendansby.com/apps/picpile/appcast.xml to see if a newer version is available. The request carries only a User-Agent string and the current PicPile version — no identifiers, no telemetry, no tracking.
License validation. After the free trial, the direct-download build asks you for a license key and sends that key to our payments provider, Lemon Squeezy, to confirm it's valid and activate it on your device. Only the license key and a device activation identifier are exchanged; we don't receive your name, email, or payment details through the app. The Mac App Store build doesn't include licensing — Apple handles purchases.

If anything material changes about what PicPile collects, this page updates and the next version's release notes call it out explicitly.