Privacy policy

Nothing. That is the whole answer, and the rest of this page is just showing my working.

Gander is an Android file viewer. It opens documents, photos, video and audio on your phone and shows them to you. That is the whole app.

There is no analytics, no advertising, no tracking, no crash reporting and no account. Gander does not hold the INTERNET permission, so it cannot send anything anywhere even if it tried.

You do not have to take my word for it

The app requests no permissions at all. Your phone will confirm this: Settings > Apps > Gander > Permissions.
Without the INTERNET permission there is no mechanism by which a file could leave your device. Not a promise, a missing capability.
The source is public and MIT licensed at github.com/mokshablr/gander, so anyone can check both claims against the code.

01 What Gander keeps on your phone

All of it lives in the app's own private storage on the device:

Recent files For each file you open through the picker: its name, the system reference to it, and when you opened it. Up to 25 entries. Long-press one to remove it.
Folder access When you add a folder, Android remembers that you granted Gander read access to it. Gander can see nothing outside the folders and files you hand it. Long-press a folder to take the access back.
Thumbnails Small previews, about 192 pixels, made from a photo, the first frame of a video, or the first page of a PDF. These sit in the app's cache.

Two smaller things go in the cache as well: text you share into Gander from another app is written to a temporary file so the viewer can read it, and one of the bundled rendering libraries sets a housekeeping flag. Neither holds a copy of your documents.

None of this is transmitted anywhere. I never see it.

Gander also opts out of Android's app backup, so none of the above is copied into your device backup either. It would have been useless if it were: the folder permissions the recents list points at do not survive being restored onto another phone.

02 The files you open

Gander reads a file only when you point it at one, through the system picker, a folder you granted, or "Open with" from another app. PDFs, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files are rendered on the device by open source libraries bundled inside the app. Nothing is uploaded, converted in the cloud, or seen by anyone but you.

The Share button hands the open file to whichever app you choose. That is your action sending your file where you asked it to go. Gander's part ends at opening the share sheet.

03 Deleting it

There is no server, so there is nothing to ask me to delete. It is all yours to remove:

Thumbnails and temporary files: Settings > Apps > Gander > Storage > Clear cache.
Everything, including recents and folder access: Settings > Apps > Gander > Storage > Clear storage.
Uninstalling removes the lot.

04 Children

Gander is a general-purpose utility. It is not directed at children, and since it collects no data from anyone, it collects none from children either.

05 Changes

If any of this changes, I will update this page and the date at the top, and say what changed in the release notes.

06 Contact

Gander is made by Arjun Maniyani. Questions about privacy, or anything else, go here: github.com/mokshablr/gander/issues.