Ouch

Privacy Policy

Last updated 10 September 2026

Who we are

Ouch is published by Appy Vibes, a trading name of Tech Generation Limited, a company registered in England and Wales.

• Company number: 09248318
• Registered office: Dalton House, 60 Windsor Avenue, London, England, SW19 2RR
• Contact: hello@appyvibes.com
• Website: appyvibes.com

For the purposes of UK data protection law, Tech Generation Limited is the data controller for any personal data described in this policy.

What the app collects

Nothing. No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no advertising, no tracking, no account and nothing to sign in to.

Ouch performs every conversion locally on your Mac. It contains no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no advertising, and no tracking of any kind. There is no account to create and nothing to sign in to.

This is not only a policy commitment: most of it is a property of how the app is built. Ouch is distributed through the Mac App Store as a sandboxed application, and it requests only these four permissions:

com.apple.security.app-sandbox
com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-write
com.apple.security.files.bookmarks.app-scope
com.apple.security.network.client

These cover the files and folders you hand to Ouch yourself, and nothing else. Ouch holds no standing access to any folder on your Mac: not Movies, not Downloads, not Pictures. It can only reach what you drop on it or pick.

The last of those allows outgoing network connections, and it is there for exactly one reason: buying the optional Ouch Pro unlock uses Apple’s in-app purchase system, which has to reach Apple’s servers to complete the purchase and to check afterwards whether you own it. That exchange is between you and Apple. We never see your name, your payment details or your Apple Account. Apple tells the app only whether the unlock has been bought.

Your images are not part of any of that. There is no code in Ouch that uploads an image, and no server for one to be uploaded to: every encoder is built into the app and runs on your own processor. You can check this in a few seconds by turning off your Wi-Fi: every part of the app still works, because the only thing the connection was ever for was the purchase.

In practice this means:

• Your image files are never uploaded, copied off your Mac, or transmitted.
• We cannot see what you convert, how often you use the app, or that you are using it at all.
• The app works completely offline. Only buying or restoring the optional unlock needs a connection.

Files on your Mac

Ouch reads the image files and folders you give it, and writes compressed copies alongside them. It stores your chosen settings in the app's own preferences, and records a small marker on files it has already processed so that it does not repeat work on a later run. All of this stays on your own computer. None of it is personal data we receive.

If you choose to contact us

The app cannot send us anything, so any contact is something you start yourself, typically by emailing us, or by using a form on our website.

What we receive

Whatever you choose to include. That will normally be your email address and the content of your message, and often, if you are reporting a problem, useful technical details such as your macOS version, your Mac model, the version of Ouch you are running, and a description of what went wrong. You might also choose to attach a screenshot, a log, or a sample file.

What we do with it

We use it to reply to you, to reproduce and diagnose the problem, and to fix it. That is the whole purpose. Specifically, we may:

• read and respond to your message;
• reproduce the fault you described, using any file or detail you sent;
• keep a note of the underlying bug so that it gets fixed in a future version.

What we do not do with it

We do not sell it, rent it, or share it for marketing. We do not add you to a mailing list because you contacted support. We do not use it to build a profile of you or to target advertising.

Files you send us

If you attach a image or other file to help us reproduce a problem, we use it only for that purpose and delete it once the issue is resolved or once we no longer need it, whichever is sooner. Please do not send us anything confidential or sensitive that you would not want a person to look at, because we will have to open it to diagnose the fault. If you would rather not send the real file, tell us and we will try to reproduce the problem another way.

Legal basis

Under UK GDPR we rely on our legitimate interests in providing support for our software and in fixing defects in it. Where you volunteer information beyond what is needed, we rely on your consent, which you may withdraw at any time by asking us to delete it.

Buying the app

Ouch is sold through the Mac App Store. Apple handles the purchase, not us. We never see your payment details, your billing address, or your Apple Account.

Apple provides us with anonymised, aggregated sales and download reports, for example how many copies sold in a country in a given week. These reports do not identify individual customers and we cannot connect them to any person.

Apple's own handling of your data is governed by Apple's privacy policy, which is outside our control.

Our website

This website sets no cookies of its own and uses no analytics, no tracking pixels and no advertising. There is nothing here to opt out of.

Two things do involve someone else. The site loads a typeface from Google Fonts, which means your browser requests that font file from Google and Google receives your IP address as part of any such request. And if you use the contact form on our About page, what you type is delivered to us by email through a transactional email provider. Nothing else on the site contacts a third party.

How long we keep things

• Support correspondence: up to 24 months after the conversation ends, so we have context if you contact us again, then deleted.
• Files you sent to help diagnose a problem: deleted as soon as the problem is resolved or we no longer need them.
• Anything else: we do not hold anything else, because the app does not send us anything.

Who else sees your data

No one, other than the people at Tech Generation Limited who are answering you, and the email provider that carries the message. We do not use third-party analytics, advertising networks, or customer-tracking services.

We do not transfer personal data outside the UK or European Economic Area for our own purposes. Standard email delivery may route messages through servers in other countries, which is inherent to how email works.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

• ask what personal data we hold about you, and get a copy of it;
• have inaccurate data corrected;
• have your data erased;
• object to, or ask us to restrict, our processing of it;
• receive your data in a portable format;
• withdraw consent where our processing relies on it.

In practice, for most people we hold nothing at all. If you have emailed us and would like that correspondence deleted, just ask and we will delete it.

Email hello@appyvibes.com to exercise any of these rights. We will respond within one month.

If you believe we have handled your data improperly, you may complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would appreciate the chance to put it right first.

Children

Ouch is a general-purpose utility and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone, of any age.

Changes to this policy

If we change how the app or our support process works, we will update this policy and change the date at the top. If a change is significant, for example if a future version of Ouch were ever to gain a network feature, we will say so clearly on this page and in the app's release notes rather than quietly editing this text.

Any such change would apply only from that point onward. It would not apply retrospectively to a version of the app you already have installed.