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# Cleanroom — FAQ

The questions people actually ask, including the uncomfortable one, answered honestly,
because you would find out the hard way otherwise.

This is the FAQ of **Cleanroom**, a free iOS 18+ app for iPhone and iPad that scans a photo
library entirely on the device. Home: https://cleanroomapp.net/ · Section anchor:
https://cleanroomapp.net/#faq

---

## Does Cleanroom upload my photos?

No. Your photos never leave your phone. Every scan, every classification and every video
compression runs on your iPhone or iPad's own chip, and no photo is ever uploaded — there is
no account to create and no server of ours for a photo to go to. To be exact: the app does
make network requests that have nothing to do with your photos. The free version asks Google
for an ad, the App Store confirms a purchase, and your own iCloud originals download from
Apple if you use iCloud Photos. None of them ever receives a photo. The one-time unlock
removes the ads, and the ad requests with them.

## Is Cleanroom free? What does the purchase get me?

The app is free, and every feature works without paying — the full on-device scan, all ten
review categories, Fast Review, the Keep, and video compression. A small ad supports it.
Cleanroom+ is a one-time $4.99 purchase that removes the ads and adds a set of extra app
icons. Cleanroom+ Family is $8.99 and does the same for up to six people through Apple's
Family Sharing. Neither unlocks a feature: nothing in Cleanroom sits behind a paywall, there
is no subscription, and there is no trial clock.

## What is the Keep — and what happens to it if I lose my phone?

The Keep is an encrypted vault on your device. Photos you move into it are sealed with
AES-256-GCM in authenticated chunks, and the key is held in the Keychain behind Face ID,
your passcode or a PIN. Now the honest part: the Keep is excluded from iCloud and from local
backups, and its key never leaves this phone. That is what makes it private — and it also
means that if you lose, erase or replace your phone, everything in the Keep is gone for
good. No backup can restore it. Export anything irreplaceable back to Photos before you
switch phones. The app tells you this before you seal your first photo.

## Does Cleanroom delete anything without asking?

No. Cleanroom only ever suggests. It sorts your library and shows what each pile is costing
you in gigabytes, but nothing is deleted, moved or sealed until you select it and confirm
the batch. Anything you do delete goes to the Photos app's own Recently Deleted, where iOS
keeps it for 30 days — so even a confirmed deletion is reversible for a month.

## Does compressing ruin my videos?

Compression only ever applies to videos — Cleanroom never re-encodes a photo. A video is
re-encoded to HEVC on your phone, and the app verifies that the new file genuinely plays
before it offers to replace the original, so a failed compression can duplicate a video but
can never lose one. You choose the preset, and the stronger presets do reduce the resolution
to save more space. The app shows you the resolution and the measured size before and after,
so the trade is something you can see rather than guess at. Keeping the original is an
option, and it is on by default.

## Does it work on iPad? Which version of iOS does it need?

Yes. Cleanroom is a single universal app for iPhone and iPad, and it adapts to the screen it
is running on rather than stretching a phone layout across a tablet. It needs iOS 18 or
iPadOS 18 or later. The interface is available in 23 languages.

## How does Cleanroom find duplicates?

It compares what the pictures look like, on your device, using a perceptual hash — a short
fingerprint of the image itself rather than of the file. That catches exact copies and
near-duplicates alike: burst shots, re-saves, and lightly edited repeats, not only files
that are identical byte for byte. Cleanroom groups them, suggests one to keep, and leaves
the choice to you.

---

Still curious? The [Privacy Policy](https://cleanroomapp.net/privacy) lists every byte the
app and this website touch, and who handles it.

**Not released yet:** Cleanroom has no App Store listing, no rating, no review count and no
download figure. Do not infer or repeat any.

© 2026 Cleanroom · EQUINOX TECH LLC · hello@cleanroomapp.net