Emulsen — Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 18, 2026 (added California and EU/UK notes)

Emulsen is a film photography companion app. This policy explains what happens to your information when you use it.

The short version: your photography data never leaves your device. The app has no accounts, no backend server, and no analytics. If you voluntarily join the early-access list on our website, we receive the email address you submit so we can send one launch notification. Buying Emulsen Pro is separately handled by Google and our payment provider. Those two limited exceptions are described below.

1. Information the app collects

None of your photography data. Ever.

Emulsen has no user accounts, no sign-in, and no backend server of our own. We — the developer of Emulsen — never receive your cameras, rolls, frames, film inventory, notes, photographs, or any other information you enter.

Through the app, we do not collect:

• personal identifiers (name, email, phone number, address);
• account credentials;
• advertising identifiers, or identifiers used to track you across apps;
• location data;
• usage analytics or event logs;
• contacts, calendars, or files outside the app.

Emulsen contains no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no crash-reporting service, and no cross-app tracking.

The app's single exception is purchasing. If you buy Emulsen Pro, that transaction is processed by Google Play and recorded by our payment provider so your purchase can be recognised on your devices. That is limited to purchase information — never your photography data. Section 8 spells out exactly what is involved. If you never buy Pro, the app sends us nothing. The separate, optional website early-access signup is described next.

2. Website early-access signup

If you voluntarily join the early-access list at emulsen.com, we collect:

• the email address you submit; and
• the date and time you submitted the form.

We use this information only to send one notification when Emulsen becomes available on Google Play. We do not use this list for newsletters or promotions, sell it, or combine it with your app data. Joining is optional and is not connected to an Emulsen account or to any photography data on your device.

The form is provided by Google Forms and responses are stored in a private Google Sheet controlled by the developer. Google processes the submission as our service provider under Google's Privacy Policy. Access to the response sheet is restricted to the developer's Google Workspace account.

We keep a signup until the launch notification is sent or you ask us to remove it. After sending the launch notification, we will delete the list within 90 days unless we are legally required to retain a particular record. To access, correct, or delete your signup, email info@emulsen.com.

3. Information stored on your device

Everything you create in Emulsen is written to a private database (emulsen.db) inside the app's own storage on your device. That includes:

• cameras, lenses, and the notes you keep about them;
• film rolls, frame logs, film inventory, and expiry dates;
• development recipes, tanks, and darkroom session history;
• app settings and preferences.

This data is readable only by Emulsen. It is not transmitted anywhere. If you uninstall the app, your operating system deletes it, and we cannot recover it — we never had a copy.

4. Camera

Emulsen requests camera access for three features:

• Scanning a camera tag — a QR code is decoded on your device to identify

which of your cameras it refers to.

• The light meter — the camera preview is analyzed on your device to

estimate exposure. No frames are saved.

• The negative viewer — you photograph a developed negative and the app

inverts it to a positive on your device.

Camera access is used only while the relevant screen is open. Emulsen never records audio; the audio-recording permission is explicitly blocked.

Photographs you capture in the negative viewer are written to your device's temporary cache so the image can be displayed and, if you choose, shared. They are not uploaded anywhere.

5. NFC

If your device supports NFC, Emulsen can read and write NFC tags you place on your cameras. A tag holds only a link of the form emulsen://camera/<number>, where the number identifies a camera within your own device's database. Tags contain no personal information and are meaningless to anyone else.

6. Notifications

Emulsen can schedule local notifications — for example, a reminder that a roll is probably ready at the lab. These are created and delivered entirely by your device. Emulsen uses no push-notification service and generates no push token, so no notification passes through us or any third party.

7. Sharing and export — actions you initiate

Some features hand a file to your operating system's share sheet. This only ever happens because you tapped a button:

• Backup export writes a JSON file of your data and passes it to the share

sheet, so you can save it to Files, Drive, email, or wherever you choose.

• Sharing a positive from the negative viewer passes a PNG image to the

share sheet.

Once you hand a file to another app or service, that destination's own privacy policy governs it. Emulsen has no visibility into or control over what happens next.

Similarly, some screens can open an external link in your browser — for example a link to buy blank NFC stickers, a gallery URL you saved yourself, or a "send feedback" email. Following such a link takes you to a third party (Amazon, your email provider, or whatever site you saved) that has its own privacy practices.

8. Purchases

Emulsen offers an optional paid tier, Emulsen Pro. This section applies only if you choose to buy it.

Payment is handled entirely by Google Play. Emulsen never sees or stores your card number, billing address, or payment details. Google's privacy policy governs that transaction.

Purchase records are managed for us by RevenueCat, Inc., which is how Emulsen knows whether you own Pro — including after you reinstall or change phones. To do that, RevenueCat receives:

• the fact of the purchase, which product, and whether it is still active;
• an app-generated anonymous identifier for your installation;
• basic device and platform information, and the country the store reports.

It does not receive your name, email, payment details, or any of your photography data — no cameras, rolls, frames, notes, or images. There is no way for RevenueCat to see them, because Emulsen never sends them anywhere.

RevenueCat processes this on our behalf as a service provider. Their privacy policy is at <https://www.revenuecat.com/privacy>.

If you never purchase Pro, none of this applies to you and no purchase information is created or transmitted.

Refunds are handled by Google under their policies, not by us.

9. The app stores themselves

Distributing through the App Store and Google Play means those platforms may collect information about your download and, if you have enabled it, crash diagnostics — independently of Emulsen and under their own policies. We may see aggregate, anonymous statistics in the store dashboards (for example, total installs or a count of crashes). This never identifies you.

10. Children

Emulsen and its early-access list are not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect an email address from a child under 13. If you believe a child has submitted an address, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Your rights and choices

We hold no photography data about you, so there is nothing from the app for us to disclose, correct, or export. If you joined the early-access list, you may ask us to access, correct, or delete that signup by emailing us. If you have purchased Pro and want the associated purchase record deleted, email us and we will request its deletion from our payment provider — note that Google retains its own transaction records independently, for tax and legal reasons we do not control.

You remain in full control of everything else:

• Export your data at any time from Settings → Backup.
• Delete your data by erasing it in the app or uninstalling Emulsen.
• Revoke camera or NFC access in your device's system settings at any time.

We do not sell or share your personal information as those terms are used under California law, and we have not in the preceding twelve months. There is no advertising in Emulsen and no cross-context behavioral tracking.

If you are in the EU, UK, or a similar region: the only personal information we receive is the email address you choose to submit to the early-access list, and our legal basis for processing it is your consent, which you may withdraw at any time by asking us to delete it. That data is stored and processed in the United States by Google as our service provider. You may have rights to access, correct, delete, or object to this processing; email info@emulsen.com to exercise them, or to raise a concern before contacting a supervisory authority.

12. Security

Your photography data is protected by your device's own security — its lock screen, user account, and app-sandbox isolation. The early-access list is stored in Google Workspace with access restricted to the developer. We use reasonable safeguards, but no internet transmission or storage system can be guaranteed completely secure. Keep exported backup files somewhere you trust; a backup is a plain JSON file and is readable by anything that can open it.

13. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date above changes with it. If a future version of the app or website collects anything else, that will be disclosed here and, where required, asked for before it happens.

14. Contact

Questions about this policy or about privacy in Emulsen:

info@emulsen.com