Privacy Policy
This English version is a translation provided for convenience. The French version is the reference text.
In short
Watchin is an app for your Trakt account. It has no account of its own, no server of its own, and contains no analytics, no tracking, no advertising and no crash reporting — not a single third-party SDK of any kind.
Everything the app knows about you comes from your Trakt account and is stored on your device as a disposable cache. Your history, watchlist, collection and ratings live in your Trakt account, which you own and control on Trakt’s website.
The watchin-app.com website sets no cookies and uses no audience measurement. The only personal data the publisher receives is what you choose to send by writing to support.
1. Who is responsible for your data
The publisher of Watchin and of this website is the data controller for the processing described here:
- Controller: Valentin Jouvenne (EI — sole proprietor), Sole proprietorship (French micro-entreprise)
- Address: 19 allée du Romarins, 13821 La Penne-sur-Huveaune, France
- Contact: support@watchin-app.com
The publisher is not required to appoint a Data Protection Officer (Article 37 GDPR); any request about your data goes to the address above.
For anything concerning your Trakt account itself, Trakt is a separate and independent controller (see section 6).
2. Watchin has no account of its own
There is no “Watchin account”: no sign-up, no password to create, no email address collected by
the app. You sign in with your Trakt account, on Trakt’s own web page, using standard OAuth 2.0
with PKCE in a system browser window (ASWebAuthenticationSession).
Your Trakt password is typed into Trakt’s page, in a view the app cannot read. The app never sees it.
3. What the app processes, and where it is stored
Everything below is stored on your device only. The publisher operates no server for the app and receives none of it.
| What | Where, on your device | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Trakt access and refresh tokens | iOS Keychain, device-only (kSecAttrAccessibleWhenUnlockedThisDeviceOnly), never exported, never logged | To stay signed in to Trakt without asking for your password again |
| Technical session metadata (token expiry, Trakt account identifier) | App preferences (UserDefaults) | To know when to refresh the token and which account the local cache belongs to |
| A copy of your Trakt library: history, watchlist, collection, ratings, favourites, progress, hidden shows, lists | Local database (SwiftData) | To open instantly and work offline |
| Actions taken offline and not yet sent to Trakt | Separate local database | So no action is lost; it is sent when the network is back, then deleted |
| Your preferences: language, accent colour, region, spoiler settings, streaming services, notifications | App preferences (UserDefaults) | So the app behaves the way you set it up |
| Your recent searches and recently viewed titles | App preferences (UserDefaults) | To offer them again in search |
| Public catalogue data: posters, synopses, cast, trending lists, third-party ratings | Local database and image cache (Caches directory) | Fast browsing that uses less data |
Notifications (new episode reminders) are scheduled locally by iOS. The app does not register for push notifications and no notification passes through a server. Live Activities and Siri’s answers about your library are computed on the device too.
4. Legal bases (GDPR Article 6)
| Processing | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Signing you in to Trakt, syncing your library, sending your actions to Trakt | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)): this is the service you ask for |
| Caching catalogue data and images, showing third-party ratings, awards and trailer thumbnails, keeping your preferences and searches | Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)): a fast, complete app that is economical with data; this data stays on your device |
| Local notifications | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), given through the iOS permission prompt and revocable at any time in Settings |
| Technical logs of the server hosting this website | Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)): serving pages and protecting the website from abuse |
| Answering your messages to support | Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)): replying to you and maintaining the app |
5. What Watchin does not do
This list is exhaustive:
- No analytics: no Firebase, Google Analytics, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Segment, PostHog or equivalent. Your usage is neither measured nor reported.
- No crash-reporting SDK: no Crashlytics, Sentry or Bugsnag. Only the reports you choose to share with Apple through iOS’s “Share With App Developers” setting may reach the publisher, in the anonymised form Apple provides.
- No advertising, no advertising identifier (IDFA), no App Tracking Transparency prompt: there is nothing to track.
- No third-party SDK: the app is built only on Apple’s frameworks.
- No profiling, no automated decision-making within the meaning of Article 22 GDPR.
- No sale or sharing of personal data, to anyone.
- No generative AI feature is built into the app: your data is not submitted to any AI model.
6. Who the app exchanges data with
All connections are HTTPS only. As with any request on the internet, every service contacted receives your device’s IP address and technical connection information.
Trakt — your account and personal data (separate controller)
Trakt hosts your account and is the reference for your library. Watchin sends Trakt your access token and the actions you take: marking as watched, adding to your watchlist or collection, rating, favouriting, creating and editing lists, hiding shows and — only if you use those features — posting or liking comments and following other users.
Trakt is an independent controller for your account and its content, under its own policy: https://trakt.tv/privacy and terms: https://trakt.tv/terms.
The Movie Database (TMDB) — title pages and images
Watchin queries TMDB for titles, synopses, cast, posters, artwork and availability data. What is sent: the search terms you type, title or person identifiers, your language and region. Your Trakt identity and token are never sent to TMDB. TMDB’s policy: https://www.themoviedb.org/privacy-policy.
This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB. Availability data is provided to TMDB by JustWatch.
OMDb — third-party ratings
To show a title’s IMDb, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes scores, the app sends OMDb only the IMDb
identifier of the title you are viewing (e.g. tt0111161). No identifier of yours is included.
Website: https://www.omdbapi.com/.
Wikidata — awards and links to services
To show a title’s awards and find its page on streaming services, the app queries Wikidata with
the title’s identifier. The request carries a User-Agent naming the app, its version and a
contact address, as Wikimedia’s policy requires: it identifies the app, never you. Wikimedia
Foundation policy: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Privacy_policy.
YouTube — trailer thumbnails
On a title’s page, trailer thumbnails are loaded from YouTube’s (Google’s) image servers, with the video’s identifier. No identifier of yours is included, and no video plays inside the app. If you tap a trailer, it opens in the YouTube app or your browser, under Google’s policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy.
External links
Some buttons open a third-party website or app (IMDb, DoesTheDogDie, a streaming service, JustWatch…). They open only if you tap them; that service’s own privacy policy then applies.
Apple
Distribution, any in-app purchases, local notifications and Siri are handled by Apple under its own policy: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/. Any purchase is processed by Apple: the publisher never receives your payment details.
7. The watchin-app.com website
- Hosting. The website is hosted by Vercel Inc. (440 N Barranca Ave #4133, Covina, CA 91723, United States). To serve pages and protect the site, the host records technical logs: IP address, date and time, page requested, browser. The publisher does not use them for any other purpose. Vercel’s policy: https://vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy.
- No cookies, no local storage. The website sets no cookies and writes nothing to your browser, so no consent banner is needed.
- No audience measurement, no third-party resources. No Google Analytics, no pixel, no font or script loaded from another domain: your browser only contacts watchin-app.com.
8. When you write to us
If you write to support@watchin-app.com, the publisher receives your email address, your name if it appears, and the content of your message (including any technical details or screenshots you attach). This data is used only to answer you and to fix the app. It is never sold or used for marketing.
The mailbox is hosted by OVH SAS (OVHcloud), Roubaix, France — data hosted in the European Union (https://www.ovhcloud.com/fr/personal-data-protection/).
9. Transfers outside the European Union
Trakt, TMDB, OMDb, the Wikimedia Foundation, Google (YouTube) and Vercel operate from the United States. Using the app or the website therefore involves transfers of data outside the European Economic Area.
- Vercel, the publisher’s provider, is certified under the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework, covered by the European Commission’s adequacy decision of 10 July 2023.
- The other services are contacted directly by your device, at your request; each is responsible for the lawfulness of its own transfers under Chapter V GDPR (adequacy decision, standard contractual clauses or equivalent safeguards), as set out in their policies linked above.
10. Retention
On your device:
- Trakt token: until you sign out or delete the app.
- Local copy of your library: while you are signed in; signing out deletes it.
- Catalogue caches, purged automatically: third-party ratings 30 days; trending, featured lists and cast 7 days; colour cache capped at the 5,000 most recent entries; image cache size-capped and clearable at any time from the app’s settings.
- Pending offline actions: deleted as soon as Trakt confirms them.
With the publisher and its providers:
- Website hosting logs: retention set by Vercel, from a few hours up to 30 days depending on the type of log.
- Messages to support: as long as needed to handle your request, then 3 years after the last exchange, to follow up on reported issues, before deletion.
On Trakt’s side, retention is governed by Trakt’s policy.
11. Your rights
The GDPR gives you the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability. Under French law you may also give instructions about what happens to your data after your death (Article 85 of the French Data Protection Act).
| Right | How to exercise it |
|---|---|
| Access / portability | In the app: Settings → Export to Letterboxd creates CSV files of your history, watchlist, ratings and lists, on your device. Trakt also offers its full export. For your exchanges with support, write to us. |
| Rectification | Correct the entry in the app or on Trakt; the change is reflected everywhere. |
| Erasure on this device | Settings → Sign out: the Trakt token is revoked and the local copy deleted. Deleting the app removes the rest. |
| Erasure of your Trakt account | With Trakt: https://trakt.tv/settings. Watchin cannot delete a Trakt account. |
| Erasure of your messages to support | Write to support@watchin-app.com. |
| Objection / restriction | Stop using the feature, revoke notification permission in Settings, sign out or delete the app. |
| Complaint | With the French CNIL — 3 place de Fontenoy, TSA 80715, 75334 Paris Cedex 07, https://www.cnil.fr/fr/plaintes — or with the authority of your country of residence in the EEA. |
Write to support@watchin-app.com for any request. We reply within one month (Article 12(3) GDPR). We may ask for proof of identity if there is reasonable doubt.
12. Security
- Tokens are kept in the iOS Keychain, device-only, readable only while the device is unlocked; never stored in a database, never logged.
- Sign-in uses
ASWebAuthenticationSessionwith PKCE, never a home-made web view. - All traffic is encrypted (HTTPS), for the app and for the website, which also applies strict security headers (HSTS, Content Security Policy).
- The app’s logs use Apple’s unified logging and mark error text as private.
13. Minors
Watchin is not specifically directed at children. A Trakt account is required to use it; the minimum age is set by Trakt’s terms. The app collects nothing directly from its users, whatever their age.
14. Changes
If this policy changes, the new version is published on this page with its date. Any significant change to how your data is handled will be announced in the app or on this website before it takes effect.
15. Contact
Valentin Jouvenne (EI — sole proprietor) — 19 allée du Romarins, 13821 La Penne-sur-Huveaune, France — support@watchin-app.com