Privacy.
Short, because there is not much to say.
What is sent
A report, to a sharing service, only when you press Share and confirm — and you see what goes with it first. Nothing else, ever.
What is never sent
Your media files. Your folders and paths, unless you choose to keep them in a report you share. Anything about you, your Mac, or how you use the app. There is no account, no telemetry and no analytics of any kind.
That is the whole of it. The rest of this page explains the details for anyone who wants them, and every claim on it can be checked against the source.
The one thing that leaves.
SwiftMediaInfo can upload a report and give you a link to it, so you can send someone the details of a file without sending the file. It is the only feature that touches the network.
You press Share
Nothing happens automatically. There is no background sync and no upload you did not start.
You are shown what will go
Before anything is sent, the app shows what the report contains and what will be removed. If it carries file paths — and a path often holds your username, sometimes a good deal more — they can be stripped, and the SHA-256 checksum, which can identify the file, is left out unless you choose otherwise.
It is uploaded, and you get a link
Where it goes depends on the format. HTML and PDF reports go to
ship.page as a web page; Markdown to
markdown.page, rendered; Text, CSV, JSON and XML to
pb.plz.ac; a ZIP of every format to
up.sb. All four are third-party services: once a
report is there, its retention and its terms are theirs, not
mine.
What stays on your Mac.
Your files
- Read to extract metadata, never modified
- Never copied, moved or uploaded
- Renaming and moving to the Trash happen only when you ask
What the app stores
- A cache of analysis results, so reopening a file is instant
- Computed checksums, so a file is never hashed twice
- Your recent files, favorites, settings and colours
- The time you have spent in the app, counted only while it is in front and in use
- Preview clips, only while a preview is open, deleted the moment it closes
- All of it in the app's own preferences and its folder in Application Support, all of it local
What does not exist
- No account and no sign-in
- No usage tracking, crash reporting or analytics
- No update check that phones home
- No cloud AI — Siri AI runs entirely on your Mac
- No advertising, and nothing sold to anyone
Deleting the app with --zap, or dragging it to the Trash
and removing its preferences, leaves nothing behind. The
download page has both
commands.
Everyone else involved.
Four other parties can be involved in using this app. Here is each of them, and exactly when.
| Who | When |
|---|---|
| MediaInfo (MediaArea) | Runs on your Mac to read each file. It is a local program, not a service, and sends nothing anywhere. |
| Homebrew | Only if you install through it, or let the app install MediaInfo or ffmpeg for you. Their servers see a download request, as any package manager would. |
| ship.page, markdown.page, pb.plz.ac and up.sb | Only when you share a report, and only the one that report goes to. They receive the report you reviewed and nothing else. |
| GitHub | If you download a release, open an issue, or read the source. Their privacy terms apply on their site, not in the app. |
This website is served as static files and sets no cookies. Your theme choice is remembered in your browser and never leaves it.
Reading a file in the browser.
The Online page reads media files without the app installed. It does not upload them.
MediaInfo is compiled to WebAssembly and runs inside the page, on your own machine. Your browser reads the file and hands it to the analyser directly. There is no server involved because there is no server to involve — this site is static files, with nothing running on it that could receive an upload even if the page tried.
One thing is fetched: the analyser itself, about 2.5 MB, the first time you pick a file. It is served from this domain rather than a content network, so no third party learns that you visited, and nothing about your file is included in the request — it is the same file for everybody.
Large files are read in pieces rather than loaded whole, so nothing is copied anywhere, not even into memory. The filename shown in the report is put there by the page from what your browser reports; your file's location on disk is never available to the page and is never in the report.
Copying and downloading a report happen entirely in your browser. Nothing on that page has a Share button, and nothing on it can reach the paste services the app uses.
The Open in SwiftMediaInfo button hands the Mac app the file's name, size and date — not the file, and not its location, which the page never knows. The app finds the file on your Mac itself, with Spotlight, in the folders you have opened files from before, and in Downloads, Desktop, Movies and Documents — and asks you to pick it if it cannot be sure. That hand-off goes from your browser to the app and nowhere else.
Do not take my word for it.
Every claim above is a statement about code you can read. If you want to check rather than trust, the two useful ways are opening the source and watching what the app actually does.
Little Snitch, LuLu or macOS's own firewall will show you every connection the app makes. Open a hundred files, export a dozen reports, and you should see nothing at all until the moment you press Share.