Photoleap

Is Photoleap safe?

Photoleap is reasonably safe for adults who edit their own photos, but it is a more data-hungry app than its simple editing tools suggest. Your projects stay on your iPhone and Lightricks asks before it trains AI on your images. The weak points are tracking and the AI tools. Apple's privacy label lists your email address and user ID as data used to track you across other companies' apps, and every AI effect sends your photos to Lightricks' servers. We score it 55/100, a little below its sister app Facetune (58) and level with Picsart (55).

Photoleap is one of the larger paid photo editors on the iPhone. On 28 October 2026 it sat in Apple's top 100 grossing Photo & Video apps in the US, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and the UAE, and it has about 138,000 US ratings.

Tracking tied to your email

Most photo editors that track you for ads do it with a device identifier. Photoleap's App Store label goes further. Under "Data Used to Track You" it lists email address, other contact info and a user ID. Facetune's label, from the same company, lists only a device ID there.

The label also links your photos and videos to your identity, for analytics and product personalisation as well as for the app to work. Purchases, coarse location, name and email are linked to you for Lightricks' own marketing.

The privacy policy, shared by all Lightricks apps and last modified on 22 October 2025, explains where that data goes. It names software kits from AppsFlyer, AppLovin, Meta, Firebase, TikTok, Braze and Snapchat, among others. It says sharing data with ad networks counts as a "sale" under US state laws. It also says Lightricks infers age group, gender and skin tone from your images to market offers. If you sign in to several Lightricks apps, the company can recognise you across them and combine what each one collects.

What happens to photos you give the AI

Photoleap's newer tools are generative: text to image, AI avatars, AI Transform, AI Scenes and AI Facemix. They run in the cloud. The policy says photos used for effects or artwork go to the "Lightricks Cloud" and are kept for up to 30 days. Avatars use 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 for deletion.

AI training is opt-in. If you agree, Lightricks may keep your uploads and outputs to train its models and deletes them within two years of that use. You can withdraw consent in the app's privacy settings. The policy also says the face points that Lightricks apps map for retouching are processed on your device and not stored on its servers.

The terms add a third party. They say OpenAI's ChatGPT is integrated into Lightricks' apps, and that use must follow OpenAI's business terms.

Your content and the perpetual licence

Lightricks' terms, last updated on 7 December 2025, are the harshest part of the deal. Anything you upload, import or generate counts as "Account Content". You give Lightricks and its affiliates a worldwide, sublicensable, irrevocable and perpetual licence to it, including your name, image and likeness. Most people only edit private photos, but the licence reaches far beyond what an editor needs. Lightricks' help page on commercial use says you can sell your projects if you own the images, but that it gives no legal advice where AI tools were used.

Deletion requests go to Lightricks' data protection officer through a form. US disputes go to mandatory arbitration. Subscriptions bought in the app are refunded by Apple, not Lightricks.

Faces, fakes and the age rating

Photoleap has no chat, comments or public feed, so the stranger risks of social apps do not apply. The risk is what the AI can make. AI Facemix invites you to blend your portrait with "a well-known icon" or, through a custom prompt, with "anyone you can dream of". Text to image turns any prompt into a picture. The policy says Lightricks does its best to moderate AI output, and the terms ban harmful or unlawful use and grant no rights to anyone's likeness. That is a promise about effort, not a described filter.

The App Store rates Photoleap 4+, with no content warnings. Lightricks' terms say the service is not intended for children under 13 and that anyone who is under 13 must stop using it. Parents who rely on the store rating will not see that limit.

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, over claims that its apps analysed faces without the consent Illinois' biometric privacy law 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. A settlement is not a finding, and we found no regulator action against Photoleap or Lightricks.

How to use Photoleap more safely

1. Choose "Ask App Not to Track" when the iPhone asks, and use Hide My Email if you sign in with Apple.
2. Give Photoleap access to selected photos only, not your whole library.
3. Decline the AI-training request, or withdraw consent in the app's privacy settings.
4. Do not upload other people's faces, and especially not children's, to Facemix or the avatar tools.
5. Cancel subscriptions in your Apple ID settings at least a day before renewal.

How we scored it

Regulatory record (83) is Photoleap's strongest factor: no fine or order, with the Illinois settlement counted only as context. Privacy (44) is the weakest, because the label tracks your email and user ID and the shared policy feeds ad networks and photo-based demographic guesses. Security (56) reflects a clean breach record, offset by cloud uploads for every AI tool and no bug bounty, two-factorTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary login or Photoleap-specific audit.