A puzzle app that keeps your photos to itself

Q: Does Pentire need an account or sign-in?

No. There is no sign-up, no email, no password, and no profile. You download the app and start playing. Because there is no account, there is also no Pentire server holding your puzzles or progress — everything lives on your device, and deleting the app deletes all of it.

No uploads. No ads. No analytics. No account. Pentire cuts your photos into sticker puzzles on your own iPhone — and here's exactly what it sends over the network, plus how to check any app's claims for yourself.

Updated July 2026 · A Pentire guide

Almost every app that turns your photo into something else uploads it first. That's how "make my photo into art" services usually work: your picture goes to a server, the server does the clever part, and the result comes back. It also means a copy of your photo now lives somewhere you can't see, under a retention policy you didn't read.

Pentire does the clever part on your phone. When you import a photo, the segmentation that finds the subject and slices the image into numbered sticker pieces runs on your device's own silicon, using Apple's on-device vision framework plus our own cutting pipeline. The picture never leaves the device, because there's no server for it to go to. Then, since the whole premise is that your pictures are yours, we didn't put a tracker in the rest of the app either.

What "on-device" actually means here

Your photo is read once, locally. You pick a picture with the standard iOS photo picker, and Pentire only ever sees the image you selected. Grant "Selected Photos" access instead of full library access and that's enforced by iOS, not by us.
The cut is computed on the device. Subject detection, region merging, contour tracing, the jigsaw cutter, and every art Look are all local code. Nothing is outsourced to a cloud model.
The result stays local too. The finished puzzle, the imported image, and your progress on it are stored in Pentire's own app storage on that device. They aren't synced to us or to iCloud.
Deleting is really deleting. Remove the puzzle in the app, or delete the app, and it's gone. There's no copy on a server to request the deletion of.

Everything Pentire sends over the network

This is the complete list for the current version — not a summary of it:

One anonymous settings download, at launch. The app fetches a single small, static, encrypted configuration file from this website. It's the same file every install gets: no query parameters, no account, no device identifier, nothing about you in the request. It exists so we can switch a feature off or post a notice without shipping an app update. If it fails — or you're offline — Pentire just uses its built-in defaults and carries on.
Purchase validation, only if you buy something. If you buy the optional Pentire Plus upgrade, Apple handles the payment and RevenueCat validates the receipt so the purchase can be restored on your other devices. It's tied to a random, app-generated identifier — not your name, email, or photos.

That's it. No event logging, no session pings, no crash uploads, no ad requests, no attribution callbacks. There's no Pentire account server at all — the "settings file" above is a static file on a web host, not a service you log in to. The full detail is in the privacy policy, which lists the same two items.

How to verify this yourself — for Pentire or any app

Don't take a marketing page's word for it. These four checks are quick, and they work on any app on the App Store:

Try it in airplane mode. Turn off Wi-Fi and cellular, then use the feature. If importing a photo still works with no connection, no server is doing the work. Pentire's photo import, art generation, and all 60 built-in puzzles work in airplane mode.
Read the App Store privacy label. Every product page has a "App Privacy" section listing the data categories the developer declares, and whether each is linked to you or used to track you. Pentire declares exactly one: purchase history, not used for tracking. Nothing else is collected.
Turn on iOS's App Privacy Report. In Settings › Privacy & Security › App Privacy Report, iOS records every domain each app contacts. It's the receipt for claims like the ones on this page, and it's produced by iOS, not by the developer.
Watch for a tracking prompt. An app that wants to follow you across other apps and websites has to ask, via Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt. Pentire never asks — it doesn't request the advertising identifier at all, and its privacy manifest declares tracking as false with no tracking domains.

If there are no ads and no data, how is it free?

Fair question, and the honest answer is the simple one: the free tier is meant to be genuinely good, and a small share of people upgrade because they want more of it. All 60 built-in puzzles are free at every difficulty, generating brand-new original art is free and unlimited, and your first photo puzzles are free. One optional upgrade — Pentire Plus, a one-time lifetime purchase or a monthly subscription — unlocks unlimited photo puzzles, the Hard and Expert difficulties, the Polygon and jigsaw Puzzle piece shapes, the Cartoon and Pastel looks, all 14 color themes, and unlimited saved puzzles.

No advertising means nothing to gain from measuring you, which is why there's no analytics in the first place. The two business models pull in opposite directions, and we picked the one that doesn't need your data.

What to look for in a private photo app

A checklist worth applying to anything you hand a personal photo to:

Does the feature work offline? The single most telling signal. Cloud processing can't.
Is there an account? An account usually means a server-side copy of whatever you make.
Are there ads? Ad SDKs are the most common route for data to leave a "free" app, and they arrive with their own trackers.
What does the privacy label say — and does the policy match it? If the App Store label says "Data Not Collected" but the policy hedges about analytics, one of them is wrong.
Does it ask to track you? If a tracking prompt appears, the answer to "is this private" is already no.
Is the network activity actually described? A policy that lists specific requests is easier to hold to account than one that says "we may collect certain information".

Turn a photo into a puzzle without it ever leaving your phone. Free to start — no ads, no account, works on a plane.

Get Pentire on the App Store

Frequently asked questions

Is there a photo puzzle app that doesn't upload my photos?

Yes. Pentire turns a photo into a sticker puzzle using processing that runs entirely on your iPhone or iPad, so the picture is never uploaded to a server. You can confirm it by putting the device in airplane mode and importing a photo — it still works, because there's no server involved in cutting the image.

Which puzzle games have no ads at all?

Pentire has no ads of any kind: no banners, no interstitials between puzzles, no rewarded video, and no sponsored puzzles. There's no ad SDK compiled into the app. It's funded by one optional upgrade, Pentire Plus, and the free tier includes all 60 built-in puzzles at every difficulty, unlimited generated art, and your first photo puzzles.

Does Pentire collect analytics or usage data?

No. As shipped today Pentire contains no analytics SDK, no crash-reporting SDK, and no advertising or attribution SDK, so nobody can see which puzzles you play, which features you use, or how long you play. Pentire never requests the advertising identifier, so it never shows an App Tracking Transparency prompt, and its privacy manifest declares tracking as false with no tracking domains. If that ever changes in a future release, the privacy policy and the App Store privacy labels are updated before that version ships.

Can I play a puzzle game with no internet connection?

Yes. Pentire works fully offline, including in airplane mode: the 60-puzzle library ships inside the app, art generation runs on the device, and photo import is processed locally. A connection is only needed to buy or restore the optional upgrade and to open a puzzle someone shared with you by link.

Does Pentire need an account or sign-in?

No. There's no sign-up, no email, no password, and no profile. You download the app and start playing. Because there's no account, there's also no Pentire server holding your puzzles or progress — everything lives on your device, and deleting the app deletes all of it.

How can I verify a photo app isn't uploading my photos?

Four practical checks: (1) turn on airplane mode and use the feature — if it still works, no server is involved; (2) read the App Store privacy label on the product page, which lists every data category the developer declares; (3) turn on Settings › Privacy & Security › App Privacy Report to see every domain an app actually contacts; (4) check whether the app asks for permission to track — an app that requests the advertising identifier shows an App Tracking Transparency prompt. Pentire passes all four: it works in airplane mode, declares only purchase history, contacts only its own settings file and Apple/RevenueCat purchase endpoints, and never shows a tracking prompt.