Yaadgaar

Privacy policy

Last updated 13 October 2026

Yaadgaar is a private shared photo album. You and the people you invite add photographs to a circle, and Yaadgaar lays them out into yaadein you can read, share and print. This policy explains what we collect, why, who can see it, and how to delete it. Yaadgaar is run from India by Nikhil Garg. Questions go to support@getyaadgaar.com.

What we collect

Your account. Your email address, which is how you sign in. If you continue with Google, Google tells us your email address and name, and nothing else. Your name, which the people in your circles see. Your phone number, if you give it when creating a circle, which is not shown to anyone else. The Indian state you live in, so you get reminders for the festivals celebrated in your state, on the right day.
What you add. Photographs, and what you or the others in your circle add to them: captions, dates, occasions, places and the names of people in them. Yaadein and jhalak made from them.
Where photos were taken. If a photo on your phone holds the location it was taken at, Yaadgaar keeps it with the photo, to show where it was taken and to find photos taken at the same place years apart.
Festivals you search for and use. The festival names you type into the search in look back. Which festivals you search for, look back through or add photos through; whether you open their reminders, or open or close their banners in the app; and whether you asked to be reminded of them each year. Festival dates you report as wrong, and any date you suggest instead. More about festival search.
Your location, once. If you allow it, the app checks your phone’s location once to work out your state. Only the state is sent to us, not the location.
Your phone and how you use the app. A notification token for your phone, the app version, your phone’s operating system, an ID for this installation of the app, which screens and features you use, and errors the app runs into. We do not record your photos, captions, names or messages as part of this, and no advertising ID is collected.

How we use it

To run Yaadgaar: sign you in, show your circles their album, make yaadein, and send the notifications you have turned on.
To find the dates of festivals you search for, and to plan which festival reminders to send you.
To email you sign-in codes and, if you create a circle, a welcome email.
To find out what is working and what is broken, so we can improve the app.
To keep Yaadgaar safe, for example by limiting repeated sign-in attempts.

We do not sell your information, and there are no ads in Yaadgaar.

How photos are looked at

To suggest jhalak — small cards that bring back a photo — Yaadgaar sends a reduced copy of a photo to Anthropic’s Claude model, which writes a one-sentence description of what is in it. It is never told anybody’s name and is not asked to identify anyone. The description is kept with the photo.

To keep Yaadgaar safe, every photo added is also checked by the same model for content that should not be stored, such as nudity or graphic violence. This happens whether or not your circle uses jhalak; for a circle with jhalak turned off, the photo is checked and nothing else, and no description is kept. Only the reduced copy is sent, without its location or other details. If the check flags a photo, a member of the Yaadgaar team may look at it.

Anthropic processes these photos to provide the service to us and does not use them to train its models.

How festival dates are found

In look back you can search for any festival by name. As you type, the name goes to our servers to be matched against the festivals Yaadgaar already knows, and nothing you type is kept at this step. A name the app recognises as a birthday, anniversary or barsi is not sent at all: the app suggests looking back by date instead.

If Yaadgaar does not know a festival yet, you can tap Find the dates. Only then is the name you typed sent to OpenAI, whose model searches the web for the festival’s dates, and to Anthropic’s Claude model, which checks them. Only the name is sent, nothing about you, your circle or your photos. If Yaadgaar already knows the festival, what you type is not sent to either of them. The dates found join Yaadgaar’s shared list of festival dates, which every circle can use and which does not record who searched.

OpenAI and Anthropic process these names to provide the service to us and do not use them to train their models. The names you type are never written into our logs or error reports.

Yaadgaar never asks for your religion and does not record it. Which festivals you search for and use is kept to show your circle its festivals, to plan your festival reminders and, only as totals, to see how festival search is used.

Who can see it

Your circles. Everyone in a circle sees what is added to it, and the names of the people in it. They never see each other’s email addresses or phone numbers. A festival you search for joins your circle’s festival list once the circle has photos from it, and until then only you see it. The list never shows who searched for a festival.
People you share with. If you share a yaadein as a link, anyone with the link can open it, and a password if you set one.
Companies that run parts of Yaadgaar for us. They only handle your information to provide their service to us: Oracle Cloud (our servers, in Mumbai), Neon (our database, in Singapore), Cloudflare (storing photos), Resend (sending email), Expo and Google Firebase (delivering notifications), Anthropic (describing and safety-checking photos, and checking festival dates), OpenAI (finding festival dates), Sentry (reports of errors on our servers), and Vercel (this website). Some of them keep information outside India.
The Yaadgaar team, for a flagged photo. Only a photo the safety check has flagged, only to decide whether it is safe, and nobody else is told.
The Yaadgaar team, for festivals. Festival names people have asked us to find, and dates reported as wrong, without who asked or reported, so we can check the dates. Otherwise only totals, such as how many people searched for a festival or opened its reminder, never which person uses which festival. To put a mistake right, we can open one circle’s festival list, which shows its festivals but not who searched for them.
When the law requires it. We share information if we are legally required to.

If you asked to hear when we launch

Before Yaadgaar was on Google Play, our website had a launching soon page where you could leave your name, your email and, if you chose, a phone number. We use them only to tell you that Yaadgaar is available. They are kept apart from any account and are never shared or sold. We also noted which link brought you there, such as a Facebook post. To be taken off the list, write to support@getyaadgaar.com.

On our iPhone page you can leave an email address to hear when Yaadgaar comes to iPhone. We keep only the email and the page that brought you there, on the same list and the same terms, and use it only to tell you that.

Visits to this website

This website counts its visits, to see which pages are read and where their readers came from. The count sets no cookie and keeps nothing that says who you are: only the page, the site that linked to it, the country, and the kind of device, system and browser. The page of an invite or of a shared yaadein is never counted. The counting is done by Vercel, which hosts this website.

How long we keep it

For as long as you have an account. Detailed records of how the app is used are deleted after 90 days. What remains after that are totals that do not identify anyone.

Festival names typed into the search are kept for 90 days, with nothing that says who typed them. The one exception is a lookup you start or wait on: for up to 24 hours we note that you are waiting for it, so the dates can reach you. After 90 days the name is deleted, and at most a coded form of it is kept, so the same name is not looked up twice. A name that turns out to be another spelling of a festival may be kept as one of that festival’s names, again without who typed it.

Which festivals you have searched for, and your festival reminder choices, are kept while you have an account. The record of what you do with each festival is deleted after three years.

Deleting your account

In the app, go to Settings → Delete account, or use the deletion page without the app. Your account, name, email, phone, devices, usage records and festival records (which festivals you searched for and used, and your reminder choices) are deleted straight away. Photos, yaadein and jhalak you added to a circle stay with that circle for the others in it, and so does the circle’s festival list, which never shows who searched. A festival date you reported as wrong stays reported, without your name. A circle you look after passes to whoever has been in it longest, or is deleted with everything in it if nobody else is in it.

Keeping it safe

Everything travels over encrypted connections. Photos are stored privately and reached only through links that expire. Sign-in codes are single-use and expire after 10 minutes.

Children

Yaadgaar is meant for adults. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly let a child create an account. Families may add photos of their children to their own private circles.

Your choices and rights

You can see and change your name, phone number and state in Settings, and turn notifications off in your phone’s settings. To ask for a copy of your information, to correct it, or with any complaint about how we handle it, write to support@getyaadgaar.com. We reply within 30 days.

Agreeing to this policy, and changes to it

By continuing in the app, whether you create a circle, join one with a code or sign in, you agree to this policy.

We may update this policy at any time. The new version is posted on this page with its date, and applies from that date. Using Yaadgaar after an update means you accept the updated policy.