Clann is automatically rolling out end-to-end encryption to older family groups

Where things stand

As of Oct 25, 68% of family groups active during the previous 30 days had completed encryption migration. Each time a family's last member updates the app, that family becomes eligible, and a couple of weeks later it is encrypted without anyone pressing a button.

Running smoothly since August 2026

The rollout of end-to-end encryption has gone exceptionally well. It has been live in Clann since August 2026, and as of Oct 25 it protects more than 32,000 photos and videos across more than 740 family groups.

It is built on proven foundations. Photos and videos are sealed with AES-256-GCM, keys are exchanged with X25519, and every device carries an Ed25519 identity that other devices check before they will share a key with it. These are standard, extensively studied primitives used across modern secure software, and we did not invent any cryptography of our own.

It is also open to inspection. The encryption core is published on GitHub together with a written protocol specification covering how keys are created, shared, rotated and recovered, so anyone can read exactly how it works rather than take our word for it.

Why we could not just flip a switch

End-to-end encryption means the keys to your family's album live on your family's phones and nowhere else. That is the whole point - but it also means we cannot encrypt anything ourselves. Our servers hold no key, so the only thing that can lock up a family's photos is a phone that belongs to that family.

It also means we have to be careful about timing. If we encrypted a family while one grandparent was still on a version of Clann from last spring, that grandparent would open the app to find a padlock where the photos used to be, and we would have no way to give them back. So the rule we built is simple: a family is only switched over once every member has been using a version that supports encryption for at least two weeks.

How it happens

1. Everyone updates - when each member of the family opens an up-to-date version of Clann, their phone quietly sets up its own keys.
2. An admin's phone turns it on - once the whole family has been ready for two weeks, the next time a family admin opens the app their phone creates the family's encryption keys and shares them with everyone else's devices.
3. The album is encrypted in the background - phones in the family then work through the photos and videos already in the album, encrypting each one and replacing the original. Captions and comments are sealed in the same pass.
4. That's it - from then on, everything new is encrypted on the phone that sends it, before it ever reaches us.

Each item is checked before it is replaced: a phone encrypts it, opens it back up to make sure it reads exactly as it did, and only then sends it. An item that does not pass that check is left alone and tried again later, so nothing is lost along the way. Once an item is encrypted, the unencrypted photo and video files it replaced are deleted on a fixed schedule and are gone from our storage within about 75 days.

The words are encrypted too

A caption often says more than the picture does - a name, a birthday, the first day at a new school. Since August, captions and comments written in an encrypted family have been encrypted on the phone before they are sent. Now the older ones are too. When a family is switched over, the captions and comments written before encryption existed are sealed alongside the photos, so the whole history of the album is protected, not just what comes next.

There is nothing for you to do

There is no prompt to accept and no setting to find. You can check your family's encryption status in its settings. Older groups switch over after the readiness requirements are met, an admin opens the app, and the background migration completes. The one thing that helps is making sure everyone in your family keeps the app up to date - the sooner the last person updates, the sooner your family is switched over.

A private place for your family's photos

Clann is end-to-end encrypted, invite-only and ad-free - photos and videos are encrypted on your phone before they upload, and only your family's own devices can open them. Free for 7 days.