This Privacy Policy explains what information Shorties uses, where it goes, and what you can do about it. It covers the Shorties app for iPhone and iPad, Shorties for Mac, Shorties Desk, the Shorties connector for Claude, and this website (together, the “Service”).

By using the Service, you agree to this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

The short version

Your videos, photos and projects live on your phone. Nothing is uploaded unless you use a feature that needs the internet, and section 7 lists every one of those features and exactly what it sends.

We never sell your information. Shorties has no ads and does not track you across other apps or websites.

Face detection stays on your phone. Apple's own software finds where your face is so titles and zooms can avoid or follow you. Nothing about your face is saved, and nothing leaves your phone (section 3).

Usage insights are tied to a random account id, not your name or email, and you can turn them off in Settings › Legal › Privacy.

Deleting your account removes everything we hold about you on our servers.

1. What Shorties is

Shorties is a video and carousel editor for creators. You record or import clips, and the app helps you cut them, add captions and titles, write scripts, make carousels, and export. Some of that help comes from AI, and some AI features need the internet. Everything else runs on your device.

Most of your content stays on your device unless you choose a feature that uses the internet, back up to iCloud, or connect another service you have an account with. Each of those is described below.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us

Account: Your Apple user identifier, and your name and email when Apple shares them with us. Sign in with Apple

Content you create: Videos, photos, audio, voiceovers, scripts, captions, titles, carousels, project settings. Stored on your device, and in your iCloud account if you turn on backup

Your creator profile: What you make, who it is for, how you talk, and the answers you give the onboarding questions and the in-app interview. Stored on your device. Sent along with AI requests so the writing sounds like you (section 7)

Photos of you (AI effects only): A face photo and a full-body photo you add for “Put me in a video”. Stored on your device. Sent only to Higgsfield, with your own key, when you run that effect

Support messages: Emails, problem reports, and any screenshots or recordings you attach. When you contact us or tap Report a Problem

Information collected automatically

Usage insights: Which features you use, onboarding answers, subscription status, how many projects you have, app version, device model. Tied to a random account id, not your name or email. PostHog (section 5 and section 10 for the opt-out)

Security signals: That a screenshot or screen recording happened while Shorties was open, which screen was showing, and running counts. PostHog (section 6)

Crash reports: What the app was doing when it crashed, device and OS version, a hashed account id. No email, no IP address, no screenshots. Sentry

AI usage and credits: Which AI feature you ran, when, what it cost, and your credit balance. Our own server (section 7). We need this to run the credit meter

Purchase status: Whether you have an active subscription, trial or credit pack. Apple’s App Store. We never see your payment card

Things that happen only on your device

These never leave your phone and we never receive them:

Face detection and person cutouts (section 3).

Photo library search. When Shorties looks for photos and videos that fit what you said in a video, it searches on your phone. Nothing from your library is uploaded for that search.

Place names. Shorties can name where a clip was filmed from the clip’s own location tag, using a town list bundled inside the app. No location is sent anywhere.

Apple speech recognition for dictating script notes, and as a fallback for captions when our cloud transcription is unavailable. Apple’s own privacy rules apply to Apple’s recognizer.

Apple Intelligence for clip titles and labels on devices that support it.

What we do not do

We do not sell your personal information. We do not show ads. We do not track you across other companies’ apps or websites, and we do not use the advertising identifier.

3. Face detection and cutouts (on your device only)

Shorties looks for faces so your edit looks right: a title should not land across your face, a zoom should centre on you, the Face button in Reposition puts you in the middle of the frame, and a cutout can lift you off the background.

What is detected. Shorties uses Apple’s Vision framework and Core Image, running on your device, to find the position and size of the largest face in a frame (a rectangle), and to make a silhouette mask of the person in a frame for cutouts. That is all. Shorties does not identify who a face belongs to, does not build a faceprint or any biometric template, does not measure facial features or expressions, and does not compare faces with each other or with any database.

Where it happens. On your iPhone, iPad or Mac. Face detection is never performed on our servers or by any third party, and no face data is sent off your device, to us or to anyone else.

Storage and retention. Face rectangles are kept in the app’s memory only while the app is running and are discarded when it closes. Cutout masks are kept as temporary files on your device so playback stays smooth, and are removed with the project or when the app clears its caches. Nothing about faces is written to our servers, and we have no way to retrieve it.

Sharing. None. Face data is never shared with third parties.

Pictures that may contain your face. Some AI features send small pictures off your device, and you may be in them: clip thumbnails and rendered frames sent to the writing models, and the photos and clips you choose to send to Higgsfield with your own key (section 7). Those are ordinary images used to describe or restyle the shot. No provider is asked to recognise anyone in them, and we do not run face recognition on them.

4. Device permissions

Shorties asks for these permissions, each only when you first use the feature that needs it:

Camera: Record clips

Microphone: Record sound with your clips and voiceovers

Photo Library (read): Import videos and photos, and find pictures that fit what you say in a video. The search runs on your phone

Photo Library (add): Save exports and clips to Photos when you choose to

Speech Recognition: Turn spoken script notes into text with Apple’s recognizer

Notifications: Recording reminders, and a nudge when Claude is waiting for Shorties to open

Local Network: Connect to Shorties Desk on your Mac, and link a second iPhone, iPad or Mac as a live monitor and remote in Director Mode. Video travels between your own devices only

Alarms: Remind you to record each clip at the time you planned

You can change any of these in your device’s Settings at any time. A feature that needs a permission you turned off will not work until you turn it back on.

5. How we use information

To run the app: sign you in, keep your credits and subscription straight, and deliver the features you use

To power AI features, by sending each request only what that feature needs (section 7)

To make the app better, from usage insights and crash reports

To answer your support messages

To send you a welcome email when you sign up, a confirmation when you report a problem, and occasional news about Shorties that you can unsubscribe from

To detect and respond to abuse, fraud, and misuse, including copying of Shorties (section 6)

To meet our legal obligations

6. Security and abuse monitoring

To protect Shorties and the people who use it, the app records a few security signals through PostHog while it is open:

Screenshots: that iOS reported a screenshot while Shorties was in front, and which screen or tab was showing

Screen recordings: that screen capture started or stopped while Shorties was in use, with the same screen context

Counts: running totals of those events for your account

Developer account flags: whether your account matches a short internal list of Apple user identifiers or email domains we associate with suspected copying of Shorties

What this does not collect: the screenshot image, the recording itself, or anything from other apps. We only learn that the event happened and which Shorties screen was open.

Why: to detect and respond to unauthorised copying or cloning of Shorties’ interface, workflows and designs. These signals can inform account review and enforcement under our Terms of Service. Turning off usage insights (section 10) turns these off too.

7. Features that use the internet, and who receives what

Each feature below sends only what it needs, only when you use it. Our own AI requests go through a server we run on Google Cloud (the “proxy”). It checks that the request comes from your signed-in Shorties account, counts the credits, and passes the request on. The keys for the AI providers live on that server, never in the app. The proxy does not keep your audio, pictures or text after the request finishes.

Captions, Auto Edit, Script view (turning speech into words): The audio of the take or voiceover, as small compressed chunks. Lemonfox (Whisper), through our proxy. If the cloud is unavailable, Apple’s on-device recognizer is used instead and nothing is sent

Writing and planning with AI: scripts, titles, hooks, captions, Auto Edit plans, Edit with AI, carousel copy, Carey, Brandy, Trending breakdowns and Recreate, the Scene sheet: Your transcript, script, chat messages, creator profile, and the small pictures the feature needs: resized clip thumbnails, rendered frames, slide screenshots you add, and pictures you attach in a chat. OpenRouter, which routes to Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini) and OpenAI models, through our proxy

Pictures made by AI: hero word stickers, Auto Edit pictures, carousel pictures: The words describing the picture you want, and for a word sticker the word itself. Google Gemini image models, through OpenRouter and our proxy

AI voices (built-in voices): The text to be read. Lemonfox, through our proxy

My Voice (your own cloned voice): The voice sample you record, which we trim to a ten-second clip returned to your device; then that clip plus the text, each time you make a voiceover. Shorties voice service, run by us on Google Cloud. Nothing is kept on the server after the request except a short-lived in-memory cache of recently used voices. Every generated voiceover carries an inaudible watermark marking it as AI-made. Clones created before September 19, 2026 were made with ElevenLabs

Voice clean-up (noise removal, studio sound): The audio you chose to clean. Cleanvoice, through our proxy

GIFs: Your search words, and the GIF you pick is downloaded. Giphy

Trending: Nothing of yours. We (Subbie) check the public Instagram posts of a short list of creators we chose, using Apify, and have Claude describe why a post worked. When you tap Recreate, that post’s pictures and breakdown go to the writing models like any other AI request. Apify receives only the creators’ public usernames. Your data is not involved

AI effects (bring your own Higgsfield key): The clip you picked, any pictures you add, your typed idea, and for “Put me in a video” your two Photos of you and the video you chose. Higgsfield, straight from your phone, using the API key you pasted. The key stays in your phone’s Keychain. We never see the key, the clip, the pictures or the bill. Higgsfield keeps results for at least seven days under its own policy

Shorties connector for Claude (optional): What your Claude account asks for: your projects’ clips and timings, transcripts, titles and captions, rendered frames, carousels, your creator profile, and the edits Claude sends back. Anthropic (your own Claude account, under Anthropic’s terms), relayed by our proxy. Each job is deleted from our server within fifteen minutes

Account and credits: Your Apple user identifier, name and email (when Apple shares them), your credit balance and charges, Pro status, connector tokens, and the Apple token needed to delete your account later. Google Cloud (Firestore), in our own project

Email: Your email and first name. Resend, which keeps our mailing list and sends the welcome and problem-report emails

Usage insights: Events and settings described in section 2, under a random account id. PostHog

Crash reports: Crash details and a hashed account id. Sentry

From Shorties (weekly challenges and news inside the app): A download request, like opening a web page. Cloudflare

Shorties Cloud backup (optional): Your project packages, custom filters and favourite looks. Apple iCloud, in your own iCloud account

Subscriptions and credit packs: Handled entirely by Apple. Apple App Store

Training. We do not use your videos, audio, pictures, scripts or chats to train AI models, and we do not give them to anyone for that purpose. The providers above process your request to answer it and keep it under their own policies:

Apple

Anthropic (Claude models via OpenRouter, and your own Claude account if you connect it)

Google (Gemini models via OpenRouter; Google Cloud hosts our proxy, database and voice service)

OpenAI (models via OpenRouter)

OpenRouter

Lemonfox

Cleanvoice

ElevenLabs

Higgsfield

Giphy

Apify

Resend

PostHog

Sentry

Cloudflare

8. Where information is kept, and for how long

On your device: projects, clips, voice samples, photos of you, your creator profile and your settings stay until you delete them or delete your account.

iCloud: if you turn on Shorties Cloud backup, copies of your projects live in your own iCloud account under Apple’s terms. We cannot see them and cannot delete them for you.

Our servers: your account row, credit balance and charges, Pro status and connector tokens stay until you delete your account. AI requests and connector jobs are not kept after they finish (connector jobs are removed within fifteen minutes). Trending runs are about creators we picked, not about you.

Providers: each AI provider keeps your request under its own policy, usually for a short time for abuse checks. Usage insights stay in PostHog under your random id until you ask us to erase them. Crash reports are kept by Sentry for a limited period (ninety days by default).

9. Deleting your account

Settings › Delete Account does all of this, in one step, and the app only wipes itself once the server part has worked:

Tells Apple to stop sharing your Apple ID with Shorties, so Shorties disappears from Settings › Apple Account › Sign in with Apple

Removes your email from our mailing list

Deletes every row we hold for you on our servers: account, credits and charges, Pro status, connector connections and tokens, the stored Apple token

Removes your projects, clips, voice samples, photos of you, profile and settings from this device, and resets the app’s usage-insights id

What it does not do: it does not delete copies in your iCloud (manage those in your iCloud settings), does not cancel an App Store subscription (cancel that in Settings › Apple Account › Subscriptions), does not remove videos you already saved to Photos or exported, and does not reach into your Higgsfield or Claude accounts. Usage insights and crash reports already recorded stay under their random ids; email us if you want those erased too.

10. Your choices and rights

Usage insights: Settings › Legal › Privacy › “Share anonymous insights”. Off means no usage events or security signals are sent. Crash reports still go to Sentry, without your name or email.

AI features: every feature in section 7 runs only when you use it. If you never run it, nothing is sent.

Higgsfield: Settings › Integrations › Remove key forgets your key. Your Higgsfield account is not changed.

Claude: disconnect Shorties in Claude’s settings, or in Settings › Connector in the app.

Permissions: change any device permission in your phone’s Settings.

Sign in with Apple: you can stop Shorties from using your Apple ID in Settings › Apple Account › Sign in with Apple › Shorties.

Emails: every marketing email has an unsubscribe link.

Access, correction, erasure: email hello@subbie.world to ask what we hold about you, to have it corrected, or to have it erased. We may need to check it is really you first.

California residents: you have the right to know, access, delete, and opt out of certain processing under the California Consumer Privacy Act. We do not sell or share personal information for advertising. Use the email above to exercise these rights.

UK and EU residents: we process your information to provide the Service you asked for (contract), to improve and protect it (our legitimate interests), and where you choose a feature (consent). You have the rights described above, plus the right to complain to your data protection authority.

11. Children’s privacy

Shorties is not for children under 13 (or the minimum age required in your country). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.

12. Security

Every connection the app makes is encrypted. AI provider keys live on our server, not in the app. Your proxy session uses short-lived tokens tied to your Apple sign-in. No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure, so we cannot promise absolute security, but we take reasonable technical and organisational steps to protect your information.

13. International users

Subbie is based in the United States. If you use the Service from somewhere else, your information is processed in the United States and in the countries where our providers operate, which may have different data protection laws than yours.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as Shorties changes. The latest version is always at https://createshorties.com/privacy-policy with its effective date. If a change matters to you, we will say so in the app or by email. Using the Service after a change means you accept the updated policy.

15. Contact us

Questions about this policy or your data:

Email: hello@subbie.world Website: https://createshorties.com