Most inventory apps ask you to create an account, upload your photos to their servers, and trust that their service will stay online, secure, and private. Retinelle takes the opposite approach: everything stays on your device. No account required. No cloud sync. No server that can be breached, sold, or shut down.
Why offline-first matters
An inventory includes photos of every room in your home, details about valuable items, serial numbers, purchase receipts, and sometimes security information like safe combinations or hiding spots. That is exactly the kind of data worth keeping private.
Offline-first means:
- Your data never leaves your device unless you choose to export it.
- No account to create or maintain. Open the app and start working immediately.
- No internet connection required. Use Retinelle in a basement, on a plane, or in a rural area with no signal.
- No subscription required for core features. The app works without an ongoing payment.
How data is stored
All inventory data – items, photos, custom fields, project structure – is stored locally on your device using standard iOS storage. This means:
- The data is as secure as your device. If your phone is locked, your inventory is locked.
- You control when and how data leaves the app, through exports you initiate yourself.
- Analytics and telemetry are limited to anonymous usage data. Nothing from your inventory itself – item names, photos, field values – is ever part of it.
What about backups?
Retinelle includes a local backup and restore feature. You can save a backup of your entire inventory to your device or a location you choose (like a computer or external drive). This backup is a single file you control. See Backup and Restore Your Inventory for details.
Privacy in practice
- Insurance inventory. Your home layout, valuable items, and security details stay on your phone, not on a company’s cloud server.
- Collection catalog. Your collection’s full value and contents are not visible to any third party.
- Work documentation. Client information, job site details, and equipment records remain confidential.
The tradeoff
Offline-first means no automatic sync between devices. If you use Retinelle on both an iPhone and an iPad, you use the backup and restore feature to move data between them. For most people, this is a worthwhile trade for the privacy benefit. Your inventory is sensitive data that does not need to be on someone else’s server.
Related features
- Backup and Restore Your Inventory to save and transfer your data
- Export Your Inventory to PDF to share specific data on your terms
- All features
Feature in practice
