Flindex Privacy Policy
Flindex is made by Byteshire LLC (“we,” “us”). This policy explains what happens to your information when you use the Flindex app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
The short version
Flindex does not collect your personal data. We have no servers, no user accounts, no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking. Flindex reads the files in folders you choose so it can build a fast, private search index of what’s inside them — and that index stays on your device and, through Apple’s iCloud, in your own private iCloud account, which only you can access. Flindex also lets you organize and edit those files, but every such change is one you ask for, made to the file where it already lives. We never see your files or your index.
What Flindex reads, and why
You point Flindex at one or more folders you already keep — in iCloud Drive, on your Mac, or in another cloud. With your permission, Flindex reads the files in those folders to extract their text and build a search index, so you can later find a file by a word or phrase from inside it. Flindex only accesses the folders you explicitly grant it.
Some files hold text that isn’t stored as text: a scanned PDF, or a photograph of a page. For those, Flindex uses Apple’s built-in text recognition, which runs entirely on your device, to read the words in the image so they can be searched too. The picture itself is never uploaded anywhere for this.
Flindex does not copy your files off your device, send them to us, or take ownership of them. They stay exactly where they are — in the cloud or on the disk you already use — which continues to own their storage, syncing, and sharing.
Changing your files
Flindex is a file manager as well as a search tool, so it can change files when you tell it to. At your direction it can rename, move, copy, and duplicate files and folders; create new folders and documents; edit text and Markdown files; append shared text to a document; and move files to the Trash or delete them.
Every one of these is an action you initiate, performed on the file in the folder where it already lives — never a copy taken into storage of ours. Deletion follows the platform: on a Mac, “Move to Trash” puts the file in your Trash where you can recover it, and files kept in a cloud folder that has no Trash of its own are copied to your Mac’s Trash before being removed from the cloud, so they stay recoverable. On iPhone and iPad, deleting a file in iCloud Drive sends it to iCloud’s Recently Deleted, where it remains recoverable for about 30 days. Flindex asks you to confirm before anything is deleted.
What Flindex stores, and where
Flindex builds a search index and keeps it on your device, mirroring it to your private iCloud database through Apple’s CloudKit so your search works across your signed-in devices. This data lives in your personal Apple account; Byteshire cannot read it. The index contains:
- Extracted text — the searchable text pulled from your files. This can include the contents of your documents, which is what makes searching inside them possible.
- File metadata — each file’s name, folder path, size, creation, modification and added dates, a content fingerprint, and file type.
- Which folders you added — the name and location of each folder you granted, so your other devices know it exists and can search it.
- Your bookmarks — the name and location of any file or folder you pin, so the bookmarks bar follows you between devices.
If you turn off iCloud for Flindex, the index stays only on your device. The index is derived entirely from your own files and can always be rebuilt, so removing it never affects the files themselves.
Opening your files
When you open a search result, Flindex hands the file to the system to preview it, open it in its default app, or reveal it in the Finder on a Mac — nothing is sent to us. If you edit a text or Markdown file inside Flindex, your changes are written back to that file in place, in the folder where it already lives. Your edits never pass through Byteshire.
Sharing into Flindex
If you send something to Flindex from another app’s share sheet, the shared file or text is placed in a private storage area shared between Flindex and its share extension, purely so the app can pick it up. Flindex then files it where you chose — copying the file into the folder you picked, or adding the text to the document you picked — and clears it from that holding area. Nothing shared this way reaches us.
No analytics or tracking
Flindex contains no third-party analytics, advertising, or tracking software. It makes no network requests to Byteshire — there is no Byteshire server to make them to — and searching runs entirely on your device, offline. Flindex’s only network activity is with Apple’s iCloud, within your own account: syncing your private index between your devices, and downloading a file from iCloud Drive when you open one that isn’t on this device yet or when you have asked Flindex to keep a folder available.
Children
Flindex is not directed at children and collects no personal information from anyone, including children.
Your control and data deletion
Because your index lives on your device and in your own iCloud, you control it. To remove it, delete the app and, if you wish, remove Flindex’s data from iCloud in your device’s iCloud settings. Your source files are untouched by this — they remain wherever you keep them.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update the “Last updated” date above and post the new version at this address.
Contact
Questions about this policy? Email us at info@byteshire.com.