Shelfie — screenshot finder for Android
Last updated: 2 August 2026
The short version. Your screenshots and the text inside them stay on your phone. Shelfie has no account, no sign-up, and no server to send anything to. Nobody — including us — can see your screenshots or search your library. Uninstalling the app removes everything it created.
Shelfie is an Android application published by an individual developer. Throughout this policy, "Shelfie", "the app", "we" and "us" refer to that developer and this application. Contact details are at the bottom of this page.
Shelfie asks for permission to read the images on your device. It uses that access for one purpose: to find your screenshots and read the text inside them so you can search for that text later.
You can grant either full access to your images or, on Android 14 and newer, access to only the images you individually select. Shelfie works in both cases; with limited access it can only see the screenshots you have chosen.
Text recognition happens entirely on your device, using a recognition model that is bundled inside the app itself. No image and no recognised text is sent anywhere for processing. The model does not need to be downloaded, and works with your phone in aeroplane mode.
The results — the recognised text, a category, and basic details such as file name, size and date — are written to a private database that belongs to the app. Android prevents other apps from reading it.
Nothing.
There is no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, and no tracking of any kind in this version of the app. There is no server component. We have no ability to see how many screenshots you have, what is in them, or what you search for.
At the time of writing this is verifiable rather than merely promised: the app does not
declare Android's INTERNET permission, so the operating system will not allow it to
open a network connection at all. You can check this yourself on the app's Play Store listing
under App permissions.
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
READ_MEDIA_IMAGESREAD_MEDIA_VISUAL_USER_SELECTEDREAD_EXTERNAL_STORAGE |
To find and read your screenshots. The third is used only on older Android versions, which have no finer-grained option. |
POST_NOTIFICATIONS |
Optional. Used only to tell you when a long first-time scan has finished. Declining it does not affect anything else. |
com.android.vending.BILLING |
To offer the one-time purchase through Google Play. This does not grant network access. |
WAKE_LOCKFOREGROUND_SERVICERECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETEDACCESS_NETWORK_STATE |
Added by Android's standard background-work library, so that reading a large backlog of screenshots can continue reliably. ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE allows checking whether a connection exists; it does not permit sending data, and Shelfie does not use it. |
Shelfie offers a single optional one-time purchase that removes the free tier's limit. The payment is handled entirely by Google Play. Shelfie never sees your card details, billing address, or any other payment information.
All the app receives from Google Play is whether this Google account owns the purchase. That answer is cached on your device so the app keeps working offline. Because the purchase is recorded against your Google account rather than your phone, reinstalling the app or moving to a new device restores it automatically.
Because nothing is ever transmitted, there is no copy of your data anywhere else for us to delete on request.
Shelfie is a general-purpose utility and is not directed at children. It does not knowingly collect information from anyone, of any age, because it does not collect information at all.
If a future version of Shelfie changes what it accesses or transmits, this policy will be updated before that version is released, and the "last updated" date above will change. Any version that introduced network activity — for example optional advertising in a free tier — would be described here explicitly, including exactly what is sent and by whom.
Questions about this policy or about privacy in Shelfie: veerar77@gmail.com