Facetune

Is Facetune safe?

Facetune is reasonably safe for adults who use it as a photo editor, and its handling of faces is better than most beauty apps. Lightricks says the face mapping behind its retouching tools runs on your phone and never reaches its servers, and it asks for consent before using your photos to train AI. The catches are commercial. Apple's privacy label links your purchases, location, email and app activity to your identity for Lightricks' own ads. The policy says it guesses your age, gender and skin tone from your photos to tailor offers. And the terms take a perpetual licence to everything you make. We score it 58/100, above Picsart (55) and just below Remini (59).

What happens to your face and photos

Lightricks' privacy policy, last modified on 22 October 2025, draws a clear line. "Face Data", the points it maps on your eyes, nose and mouth to drive the retouching tools, is processed on the device. The policy says Lightricks does not collect or store it on its servers or share it, and does not use it to identify anyone.

Anything that needs the cloud is different. When you apply certain effects or AI tools, the selected photos go to the "Lightricks Cloud" and are kept for up to 30 days. AI avatars take 10 to 25 of your photos as input and, at the time of the policy, ran on Stable Diffusion. Finished outputs stay in the cloud until you ask Lightricks to delete them. The policy, which covers all Lightricks apps, also lets AI tools build face and voice recognition models from your uploads if you consent; those models, and the photos behind them, are kept until two years after you last use the service.

Two details matter more than the headline. First, Lightricks infers demographic data such as age group, gender and skin tone from your images, and uses it to market personalised offers, though the policy says Face Data itself is never used for marketing. Second, AI training is opt-in. If you agree, your uploads and outputs can train its models and are deleted within two years of being used. You can withdraw that consent in the app's privacy settings.

Tracking and ads

Facetune is free to download and runs on subscriptions and ads. Apple's label lists a device ID as used to track you across other companies' apps. It also lists purchase history, coarse location, email address, user and device IDs, product interaction and advertising data as linked to you, for Lightricks' own advertising, analytics and personalisation. Google Play's data safety form says nothing is shared with other companies, but it does list the list of installed apps as collected, partly for advertising or marketing.

The policy fills in the rest. It names software kits from AppsFlyer, AppLovin, Meta, Firebase, TikTok, Braze and Snapchat, among others, and says identifiers and usage data go to analytics partners for marketing and tracking. US users can opt out of "sale" or "sharing" through a link on Lightricks' website, and it honours the Global Privacy Control browser signal. That puts Facetune between FaceApp, whose Apple label lists no tracking, and Meitu, whose policy allows data transfers to mainland China.

The licence to your content

This is where the terms, last updated on 7 December 2025, are harshest. "Account Content" covers anything you input, import, upload or generate in the app, and you grant Lightricks and its affiliates a worldwide, sublicensable, irrevocable and perpetual licence to it. That includes the right to publish, adapt and create derivative works, and it extends to your name, voice, image and likeness. In practice most people only edit private selfies. Still, the licence goes well beyond what is needed to run an editor. FaceApp's licence, by comparison, ends with the agreement.

Disputes in the US go to mandatory arbitration under a schedule in the terms. Refunds for in-app purchases are handled by Apple or Google. Lightricks itself only refunds plans bought on its website.

Body image and teenagers

Facetune has no chat or public feed, so the stranger risks of social apps do not apply. The risk is what the app is for. Its tools smooth skin, whiten teeth, reshape jaws and slim waists in seconds, and edits like these shape how teenagers see themselves and others online. The App Store rates the app 13+, and the terms say users must be over 13, with a parent's consent under 18. The newer AI tools add face swaps and avatars, which can make convincing images of people who never agreed.

The Illinois biometric case

In 2024 Lightricks agreed to pay $4.485 million to settle King v. Lightricks, a class action in Sangamon County, Illinois. The suit claimed its apps analysed users' faces or voices without the consent that Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act requires. The settlement notice names four Lightricks apps (Facetune, Photoleap, Videoleap and LTX Studio) and covers everyone in Illinois whose image or voice one of them analysed between 30 September 2017 and 22 November 2024, with payments of up to $60 each. A settlement is not a finding of wrongdoing, and we found no regulator action against Facetune.

How to use Facetune more safely

1. Give the app access to selected photos only, not your whole library.
2. Decline the AI-training request, or withdraw consent later in the app's privacy settings.
3. Deny the tracking prompt on an iPhone, and reset or delete the advertising ID on Android.
4. Avoid uploading other people's faces to the AI swap and avatar tools.
5. Cancel subscriptions through the App Store or Google Play at least a day before renewal.

How we scored it

Regulatory record (83) is Facetune's strongest factor: no fines, with the Illinois settlement counted only as context. Privacy (48) is the weakest, held back by ad tracking linked to your account and demographic inferences from photos, despite on-device face mapping and opt-in AI training. Transparency and control (50) loses points for the perpetual licence over all content. Security (58) reflects a clean breach record but no bug bounty or app-specific audit.