Privacy Policy

Last updated 18 October 2026

Stitches is a cross stitch pattern editor for macOS, Windows, iOS, Android and the web. This policy explains what the app does with your information, and in particular what it does with data from your Google Account.

The short version

Stitches has no server. Your patterns are stored on your own device, or in storage you connect and control, such as your Google Drive or an S3 bucket you run. Nothing you make is sent to the developer, and there is no analytics, tracking or crash reporting of any kind.

Stitches is free. If you choose to donate, the payment is handled by the App Store, Google Play or Ko-fi, never by the app itself.

What the app accesses

Your patterns and the files beside them

Patterns, and any PDFs, images or sprite sheets you import, are held wherever you tell the app to keep them:

on the device you are using;
in your Google Drive, if you connect it;
in an S3 compatible bucket, if you configure one.

These are your accounts and your storage. The developer has no access to them.

Google Account data

If you choose to connect Google Drive, Stitches requests three permissions and no others:

`drive.file`	Lets the app create and manage only the files it creates itself. It cannot see, open or list anything else in your Drive. This is a deliberately narrow permission: the rest of your Drive is invisible to Stitches.
`userinfo.email`	Your email address, shown in the app so you can tell which account is connected.
`userinfo.profile`	Basic profile information, used for the same purpose.

On first connection the app creates a folder called Stitches App Data in your Drive and keeps your patterns there. You can move that folder wherever you like from within the app. Because of the narrow permission above, files you add to that folder yourself are not visible to Stitches.

What is stored on your device

The app keeps a small amount of information locally so it can work between launches: your sign in tokens, which storage you have connected, your recently opened files, your preferences, and cached copies of patterns you have opened. On desktop and mobile, credentials are held in the operating system keychain. In the web app they are held in your browser's own storage, which never leaves your browser.

Donations

Donating is optional, and the app works the same whether or not you do.

Inside the app, a donation is an in-app purchase handled entirely by the App Store or Google Play. Your payment details go to them, not to the developer. The developer receives a record of the purchase, such as its date, amount and country, but never your payment details.

Outside the app, donations go through Ko-fi, which handles the payment with PayPal or Stripe. Ko-fi passes on to the developer whatever your donation shows, typically the name you give, your email address and any message you leave. This is used only to thank you and to keep the financial records the law requires. It is never used for marketing, never added to a mailing list, and never shared, except with tax authorities or an accountant where the law requires it.

Donation records are kept for as long as tax law requires, then deleted.

How the data is used

Solely to provide the app. Reading and writing your patterns, showing which account is connected, and remembering where your files live. There is no other purpose.

What is not done with it

It is not sold, rented or traded.
It is not shared with any third party, because it is never received in the first place.
It is not used for advertising or profiling.
It is not used to train machine learning models.
It is not analysed, aggregated or measured. Stitches contains no analytics, telemetry or crash reporting.

Google user data obtained through the permissions above is used only to provide and improve the features you are using it for, and is never transferred to anyone else except as required by law. Stitches complies with the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.

Who the app talks to over the network

Google, to sign you in and to read and write the files Stitches created in your Drive. Only once you have connected Google Drive: until then, the web app does not contact Google at all, not even to load its sign in code.
Your own storage endpoint, if you have configured an S3 compatible bucket. You choose the address; the app does not know it otherwise.
Apple or Google's store, only when you open the donation screen, to show the donation options and take a payment.

There are no other network destinations. In particular there is no server operated by the developer that receives your patterns or your account information.

Keeping it safe

All traffic to Google and to storage endpoints uses HTTPS. Credentials are kept in the operating system keychain on desktop and mobile. The permission Stitches asks of Google is limited to the files it creates, which means a problem with the app cannot expose the rest of your Drive.

In the web app, credentials are held in browser storage rather than a keychain, because a browser has no keychain to offer. If that matters to you, use the desktop or mobile app.

Keeping and deleting it

Using the app gives the developer nothing to retain, because nothing is collected. The only exception is the record of a donation, described above. Your data lives in your storage and under your control, for as long as you keep it.

To remove Stitches from your Google Account entirely:

Revoke access at myaccount.google.com/permissions. The app immediately loses all access to your Drive.
Delete the Stitches App Data folder in your Drive, if you also want the patterns gone. Revoking access alone does not delete them.

To clear what is held locally, sign out in the app's settings, or uninstall it. In the web app, clearing site data for the app's address removes everything it has stored in your browser.

Children

Stitches is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them. The app itself collects no personal information, so using it leaves nothing held about any user of any age.

Your rights

Rights of access, correction, erasure and portability apply to data a service holds about you. Using Stitches gives the developer none. Your patterns are already in your possession, in ordinary files you can copy, move or delete yourself.

If you have donated through Ko-fi and the developer holds your name or email address as a result, you can ask for a copy of it, or for it to be corrected or deleted where the law allows, at [email protected].

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change ever alters what the app does with your data rather than merely how it is described, that will be called out in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions about this policy or about the app can go to [email protected].