Your photos stay on your device

Litria works on the photos in your own folders. It reads them where they are and does its work on your device. This post says what Litria keeps on your device, and lists what it sends.

Editing needs no account

You can open Litria, add a folder and edit without signing in. Signing in is needed to publish, which includes sharing an album and having a portfolio page, and to sync your albums.

Litria develops each RAW file on your device. The adjustments, masks and looks run there too, and so does export. No photo is uploaded for any of it.

Litria never moves, renames or overwrites a photo, and it deletes one only when you ask it to. An export is a new file in the folder you choose.

What is kept on your device

Your edits and their history are kept in your browser's storage on the device, or in the desktop app's own storage. So are your presets, ratings, flags and albums. While you are signed in, your albums are also stored in your account. Litria writes no edit into a photo file and puts no edit file next to it.

That has a practical side. Edits made in one browser are in that browser. Open the same folder in another browser or on another computer and the photos are there, without those edits. Your ratings and flags are not there either, until you restore a backup. Your albums are, once you sign in. Clearing your browser's data for Litria removes the edits too. Your photo files are not touched by any of this.

The one thing Litria writes into a folder you add is a .litria folder, unless you choose a backup folder elsewhere. It holds backups of your catalog: the record of your folders and photos, with capture details such as the date and the camera, ratings, flags and albums. Litria writes a new one about once a day and keeps a rolling set. You can restore one in Settings. A backup does not hold your edits or your presets.

To stay fast, Litria also keeps thumbnails and working copies of the photos it has developed in storage private to your browser. You can clear them in Settings. It never stores a copy of an original file there.

What publishing sends

Publishing is how a photo of yours leaves your device, and it happens only when you choose it. The one other way is an image you attach to feedback, described below. You sign in, and pick each album's visibility: Draft, Private, Unlisted or Public. A Draft is seen only by you, and nothing is uploaded for it until you publish. Private is you and the people you share the album with, each signed in. Unlisted is anyone with the album's link. Public is anyone with the link, and search engines may list it.

Litria then makes a copy of each photo on your device, with your edits applied, at the size you picked. It sends that copy straight to Litria's storage, which Cloudflare hosts. The original file is never uploaded, and it stays where it is.

The copy carries camera details such as the camera, lens and capture date, but never the photo's location. Its file name is sent too, so the album can still name the photo after its file is gone. Folder names and paths are never sent. The album's title is sent, and its description if you wrote one, because the album page shows them. So are the email addresses of the people you share the album with.

Publishing again sends only the photos that changed. Unpublishing deletes the copies from Litria's storage. If you made an unlisted or public photo private, or unpublished it, anyone who has its address can keep seeing it for up to 5 minutes.

Exports are different. An export stays on your device, in the folder you choose. Location is left out of every export unless you ask for it.

What else Litria sends

A few things do reach Litria's server.

• A daily count. The first time Litria opens on a day, it sends one note saying so. The note holds the app's version, whether it is the website or the desktop app, whether you are signed in, as a plain yes or no, and whether it is your first launch of the week or the month. It carries no ID and no cookie. Litria also tallies how often you use its main features: opening a photo in the editor, editing a photo, cropping, applying a preset, exporting a photo, publishing an album and sharing an album with someone. That is seven numbers for each day. They are sent with their date, and nothing else, the next time the app opens, and they do not say which photo or album a use was. While you are signed out, you can turn off the note and the tally with Count me in Litria's daily usage, in Settings › Privacy & diagnostics. While you are signed in, that switch is hidden, and the server also records the days your account was active.
• Signing in. Litria signs you in with Google and keeps an identifier for your Google account, your email address and your name. It also keeps the address of your Google profile photo and a copy of that photo as your portfolio photo, until you upload your own or remove it. Your public portfolio and album pages show it. It sets one cookie that keeps you signed in. Signing in on its own copies nothing from your device: no photo, file name, folder, edit or rating.
• Albums. Albums need a sign-in. While you are signed in, your albums are stored in your account and follow you to the web app, the desktop app and any other device you sign in on. The server keeps each album's name, its place among your pinned albums, its cover and which photos are in it. It names each photo by a fingerprint computed from the photo's file name, size, date and some of its bytes. It never receives the photos, their files or folder names, or your edits.
• Feedback. When you choose Send feedback from the Help menu, Litria receives your message, its category, any images you attach, the app version, whether you used the website or the desktop app, your browser and operating system, and the screen you sent it from. It also gets your account if you are signed in, or the email address you give if you are not. Litria's staff read it, and so may an AI assistant working for them, which is not given your email address or account. Images are redrawn before they are sent, which removes details such as location.
• The sample photos. If you choose Try with sample photos on the first run, Litria downloads eight photos from its own download site. The request sends nothing from your device.
• The desktop app's update check. Once per launch, the app asks Litria's download site whether a newer version is out.

Like any website, Litria's server sees your IP address with each request. Litria uses no advertising and no tracking cookies. Its code sends no error reports: when something goes wrong, the error log stays on your device. The website's own pages, such as the homepage, pricing and the blog, also load Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits and how quickly the pages load. Its script sets no cookie and keeps nothing in your browser. It sends Cloudflare the page's address, the page that linked to it and how long the page took to load, along with your IP address and your browser's user agent, and Cloudflare gives Litria only totals. It never runs in the web app, on a published album or on a portfolio.

The privacy policy has the full list.

Open Litria

Open Litria in Chrome or Edge, or download the desktop app. Add a folder and edit a photo, signed out.