What it does
privacytracker is a self-hostable tool for keeping an honest, longitudinal record of what iOS apps say they collect about you. It does four things:Scrapes App Store labels
Pulls each app’s privacy labels straight from Apple’s public App Store HTML — no API key, no auth — and parses both the new
shelfMapping payload and the older purposes → categories shape.Detects silent changes
Snapshots every label after each scrape, diffs against the previous snapshot, and notifies you only when categories actually shift.
Summarises policies with AI
Optional. Bring your own model (OpenAI, Anthropic, or any local OpenAI-compatible endpoint). Long policies are chunked automatically for smaller local models.
Back-fills history from the Wayback Machine
Walks every calendar quarter from Q1 2021 forward (when Apple started server-rendering privacy nutrition labels into apps.apple.com HTML) and pulls the closest archive.org capture, synthesising a historical timeline retroactively. Two parser eras are supported: the modern
serialized-server-data blob (Nov 2025+) and the legacy Ember/FastBoot shoebox-media-api-cache-apps shape (Jan 2021 – Nov 2025).
Dashboard overview with sample apps loaded
Privacy Map overview across tracked apps
Per-app timeline with detected label changes
Three distribution surfaces, one bundle
The same Next.js 16 build powers all three install paths:Get started in 5 minutes
Pick an install path and have privacytracker running locally with a few apps imported.
What it isn’t
- Not an iOS app. privacytracker runs on your computer (or a self-hosted server), not your phone.
- Not a privacy score. It surfaces facts and changes; how you weigh them is up to you.
- Not affiliated with Apple. The App Store HTML scraper depends on Apple’s public markup — when Apple ships a new shape, the parser falls back through three nesting layouts before giving up.
Where to next
Quickstart
Run privacytracker locally and import your first apps.
Installation
Detailed setup for desktop, Homebrew, Docker, and source.
Build from source
Run privacytracker from a checkout — for development or unsupported platforms.
API Reference
Full route map for
app/api/**.