Clann is now end-to-end encrypted

When we built Clann, we made you a promise: your family's photos are for your family, and nobody else. Today we're making that promise stronger.

Every new family group created from August 6th is end-to-end encrypted automatically, and existing families can turn it on with one tap. Once it's on, every photo and video you add is encrypted on your phone, before it uploads - and only devices belonging to your family can unlock it.

Before a photo ever leaves your phone, it's scrambled into a form that's meaningless without a key - and the only keys that can unscramble it live on your family's devices.

Think of it like a locked box. You put the photo in the box on your phone, lock it, and send us the box. We keep the box safe on our servers - but we never had a copy of the key, so we can't look inside. Nobody at Clann can open your photos. Not our team, not our servers, and not anyone who might ever demand access to them.

Here's what that means in practice:

• What we store: locked boxes - encrypted files we cannot open.
• What your family's devices store: the keys. Only devices that belong to your family group can unlock your photos.
• What we can see: almost nothing. We can tell that a file exists and how big it is, because we need that to store it. We can't see the photo.

How the rollout works

End-to-end encryption is on automatically for every family group created from August 6th. If you create your family on Clann from today, there's nothing to set up - it just works.

If your family group already existed before today, you'll need to turn it on. Open the app and go to [Profile → Manage Family Group → Manage Encryption] - it takes one tap. Once it's on, your existing photos are migrated gradually in the background as each family member updates and opens the app, and nobody loses access to the pictures they can see today.

We made this a choice for existing families rather than switching it on for you, because every member of your group needs the latest version of the app before encrypted photos can be unlocked.