Pretty Good Pickles — Privacy Policy
Effective 10 September 2026
Pickles is a mail client for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Your mail is held on your device and by your mail provider. We run two relay servers, used only for push notifications; their source is public: pickles-push, AGPL.
What Pickles does with your data
- Mail. Pickles talks to the provider you sign in to, using the credentials you give it. Messages, contacts and settings are stored on your device, in the app’s own container.
- Credentials. API tokens are kept in the system Keychain and used only to talk to your provider.
- PGP keys. Secret keys are kept in the Keychain behind Face ID or Touch ID and never leave the device. Mail is decrypted on the device. Notifications never show decrypted content.
- Contacts. Off unless you turn it on. Then Pickles reads your contacts into memory to complete addresses and to decide whose images may load. They are never written to its database or sent anywhere.
- Remote images. Not fetched unless you tap, or the sender is in your address book and their mail passes authentication. Encrypted mail never loads them.
- Key discovery. A lookup asks that address’s own domain (Web
Key Directory). With the setting on, tapping also asks the keyserver
keys.openpgp.org, which tells its operator you asked about that address. - Push notifications. Off: Pickles fetches in the background and notifies you locally. On: your provider tells one of our relays to wake your device through Apple. The relay holds no credential of yours and cannot read your mail; Fastmail sends it an encrypted notice, Gmail your address and a cursor. Your device fetches the sender and subject itself. Encrypted mail is never previewed.
What Pickles does not do
- No analytics, crash reporting, telemetry or advertising identifiers.
- No account with us.
- No data sold, shared or transferred to anyone.
Data protection
Pickles processes your mail on your device and with your own provider, so we are not a data controller or processor for it under the GDPR, the UK GDPR, or similar laws. Your provider’s privacy policy governs their servers.
Removing your data
Removing an account deletes what Pickles stored for it, and revokes the credential where the provider supports that. Deleting the app removes the rest.
Children
Pickles is not directed at children under 13.
Changes
A new version is published at this address with a new effective date.