Privacy Policy

Hard Work is made by Beacon Light Investments. This policy explains what the app does with your photos and information. The short version: your photos stay on your phone, and we never see them.

Last updated: October 18, 2026.

The one-sentence version

Everything Hard Work does with your photos — reading them, tagging them, sorting them into jobs — happens on your phone. Your photos are never uploaded to us or to anyone else.

What the app does on your phone

• The tagging AI runs entirely on your device. Photos are analyzed locally and never leave your phone for analysis.
• When you scan your camera roll, photos the app judges to be personal (family, selfies, screenshots, receipts) are set aside without ever being shown to the tagging AI, and the app keeps no copies of them.
• If you mark a photo as personal — or the app does it for you — any small preview copy the app had made is deleted.
• The app never copies your original photos. It stores small preview images, a record of the tags, dates, and locations it found, and a compact visual fingerprint of each photo used only to spot near-duplicates.
• The only time the app removes a photo from your library is when you choose it in Near-duplicates, confirm, and your phone asks you again. Deleted photos go to your phone's Recently Deleted or Trash as usual.

What we collect

Very little, and nothing about your photos or your work. Hard Work has no accounts and no sign-in, and we do not sell any information or use it for advertising or tracking you across other apps.

The app does send two kinds of anonymous technical information to Google Firebase, so we can fix problems and see which features are used:

• Anonymous usage events: simple counts such as "onboarding finished", "a scan started or finished" (with how many photos), "the purchase screen was shown", "a purchase completed" (and which product), "the model download finished", and "near-duplicates were cleaned". They are tied to a random identifier that Firebase creates for the app install, not to your name, email, or phone number. The app does not read your advertising ID.
• Crash reports: if the app crashes, a report with the error, the app version, and basic device details (model and operating system version) is sent so we can fix it.

None of this includes your photos, tags, locations, addresses, work hours, rates, or earnings. We cannot see your photos, your tags, your location, your work hours, or anything else you keep in the app.

When the app uses the internet

The app connects to the internet in these situations:

• Downloading the tagging AI, one time, from our file server. The download is integrity-checked. Nothing about you or your photos is sent — it is a plain file download.
• Turning a job location into a street name, using your phone's built-in Apple or Google geocoding service. Only map coordinates are sent — never photos, and only for a handful of locations where your work photos cluster.
• If you use Time on site (below), turning a place you worked at, and the place you are at while clocked in (the "Where you are now" card), into a street address, the same way: only map coordinates are sent to your phone's Apple or Google geocoding service, never your name, hours, or photos.
• Maps in Time on site (the map of where you worked, and the small map under Clock in showing where you are). On iPhone they are drawn by Apple Maps, so Apple receives the area of the map you are viewing. On Android they are drawn from OpenStreetMap, so OpenStreetMap's servers receive the map area you are viewing and your phone's internet address, as with any app that shows a map. Maps load on the Time on site screens and under Clock in while you are clocked in, and need an internet connection.
• Sending the anonymous usage events and crash reports described above to Google Firebase.

That is the complete list. There are no other network connections.

Your photo locations

Photos often carry the location where they were taken, and the app uses this to group photos into jobs. That information stays in a database on your phone. On iPhone, that database and the app's preview images are excluded from iCloud and computer backups, so your job locations do not leave the device even through a backup. On Android, the app disables system backup entirely.

Time on site (optional)

Hard Work has an optional Time on site feature. It does nothing until you tap Clock in, and you can use the rest of the app without ever turning it on.

• When location is read. Only while you are clocked in, the app asks your phone where you are about every 10 minutes, so it can record which job sites you spent time at. It stops when you clock out. It uses only the "While Using" location permission, never "Always". If you decline, Clock in still works as a plain timer with no sites.
• While your phone is locked. On iPhone a blue location indicator shows while this is running. On Android a notification shows. If you close the app, tracking stops and the app offers to resume or end your session when you reopen it.
• What is stored. Your clock in and out times, the places you stayed (a place and the time you were there), street addresses for those places, an optional hourly rate and the earnings estimate calculated from it, and the day reports you save. All of it stays in the app on your phone, excluded from backups like your job records. The individual location readings are deleted as soon as you clock out; only the places you stayed remain.
• Street addresses. To name a place, the app sends its map coordinates (and nothing else) to your phone's Apple or Google geocoding service, as described above.
• Reports. A report leaves the app only when you share it with your phone's share menu. It contains the day's addresses, times, and, if you set a rate, an estimate of earnings.
• Deleting it. Settings has Delete time-on-site history, which removes every day, place, rate for a client, and saved report. Erase everything removes it along with the rest.
• Free trial. Time on site is free for 7 days of use, then part of Hard Work Pro. The days you have used are kept on your phone only.

Map data

Map data on Android is from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence (openstreetmap.org/copyright).

Sharing photos

Photos leave the app only when you share them yourself, using your phone's standard share menu. Before sharing, the app warns you if a photo appears to show a person or readable text such as an address or a license plate, and asks you to confirm. What you share, and with whom, is entirely your choice.

Deleting your data

Delete the app and everything it created — tags, previews, fingerprints, job records, settings — is deleted with it. Your original photos in your camera roll are not affected; the app never had its own copies of them.

Children

Hard Work is a business tool intended for adults and is not directed at children under 13.

Changes to this policy

If a future version of the app changes how it handles your information, this policy will be updated and the change will be described in the app store release notes.

Contact

Questions about privacy: kyled@beaconlightinvestments.com

Beacon Light Investments