Common questions about Ultimate Clarity.

Yes. Face recognition uses Apple's Vision framework — entirely on-device. Encryption uses Apple's CryptoKit — no key escrow. Person Search runs locally on your indexed files. No cloud uploads. No telemetry. No analytics tracking. No third-party data brokers. The app works on a Mac with Wi-Fi disabled. The only network access is when you click the App Store link or our website manually.

Person Search finds every file on your Mac that mentions a person — by face (Apple Vision), name (OCR + filename), email, phone, ID number (21 countries supported), or GPS coordinates. The compliance suite then exports those files plus an audit trail in a single ZIP package, formatted for GDPR Article 15–20 requests. A typical DSAR export takes 4 seconds for ~1,000 files.

You set up a 12-word BIP39 recovery phrase when you create the vault — same standard as cryptocurrency wallets. If you forget the password, the recovery phrase restores access. If you also lose the recovery phrase, the vault is permanently inaccessible — Apple cannot help, we cannot help, no one can. This is a feature, not a bug: if anyone could recover the vault without the password or recovery phrase, it would not be a real vault.

macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later, on Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4) or Intel Mac (slower on Intel — Apple Silicon recommended). 8 GB RAM minimum, 16 GB recommended for libraries over 50,000 photos. The app is ~80 MB. Face recognition speed scales with chip generation — M2 Pro processes ~5,000 faces/minute.

Yes — Ultimate Clarity reads from your local Photos library, including photos synced via iCloud (as long as they're downloaded to your Mac). It does not require uploading anything to a separate cloud. iCloud syncs only metadata (face labels, person tags) when iCloud sync is enabled in Clarity settings — actual photos stay where Apple put them.

Because there are no servers to pay for. Everything runs on your Mac. Subscriptions exist for two reasons: ongoing infrastructure costs (we have none) and revenue smoothing (we choose not to). The model is the same as Sketch and Pixelmator — you pay once for this version, future major versions are separate purchases. The app you buy today still works in 2030.

Yes — the app is free to download and free to scan everything. You see all faces detected, all duplicates found, and all privacy risks identified. Free tier limits: remove up to 15 duplicates, vault up to 5 files, 3 person searches per day. The $39.99 unlock removes all limits and adds the Compliance Suite (GDPR exports, audit trail), Auto-Redact PII, and clean exports without watermark.

Yes — the unlock is tied to your Apple ID, not the device. Install on every Mac you sign into with the same Apple ID at no extra cost. Family Sharing is supported (up to 6 family members can use the app on their own Macs from one purchase).

Apple Photos is a photo viewer with light organization. Ultimate Clarity is a file manager with AI: face recognition across documents and PDFs (not just photos), an encrypted vault for sensitive files, smart duplicate detection, PII redaction in 21 countries, and 12 export templates for life events. We're complementary — most users keep Photos for browsing and Clarity for the heavy work.

Each does one thing Clarity does — Lightroom edits photos, Excire categorizes them, Gemini finds duplicates, Keepsafe hides them. Clarity does all four plus 9 more features in one connected pipeline. We have dedicated comparison pages: vs Lightroom, vs Excire, vs Gemini, vs Keepsafe.

Clarity reads the C2PA cryptographic provenance metadata embedded in images by AI generators (Midjourney, DALL-E, ChatGPT, etc.) and surfaces a warning if the image is AI-generated. This is detection only — Clarity never strips C2PA data, since EU AI Act Article 50 requires it to remain intact.

Email hello@ultimateclarity.app. One inbox, one developer reading. Bug reports with reproduction steps usually get a response within a day or two. Feature requests are read but not always implemented — we err toward fewer, deeper features rather than a long roadmap.

Yes — ClarityMobile (iOS companion) is in development. Sync between Mac and iOS happens via end-to-end encrypted CloudKit. No expected release date yet — we ship when it's ready, not when a calendar says so.