Privacy, explained
What browser-local image processing means for privacy
What happens to a photo when you select it in FitShift, and what still uses an internet connection.
FitShift asks you to choose a photo. A preview appears on a website. It’s reasonable to wonder whether you just sent the photo somewhere.
You didn’t upload it to us. Your browser reads the selected file, does the resizing, and creates the download on your device. We checked that path in the image-processing code before writing this explanation.
From your file to the download
After you choose a file, FitShift creates a temporary reference that lets the browser display it. Moving the crop or changing the padding redraws the image in a browser canvas. When you download, the browser turns that canvas into a new JPG or PNG.
The technical names are object URLs and canvas export. Neither step needs us to receive the photo on an image-processing server.
Your original file stays where it was. The exported copy goes wherever your browser saves downloads. There’s no FitShift account with a photo library to come back to, so save the result before leaving the page.
Why keep the work in the browser?
For this particular job, sending the image away would add a step we don’t need. A browser can crop and resize it. Keeping that work local also means we don’t have an uploaded copy to store or delete afterward.
There is a cost: your device supplies the memory and processing power. A large photo may take longer on a phone than on a desktop, and its decoded image can use much more memory than the file size suggests.
FitShift has file-size and pixel-count limits to avoid especially large inputs. Those limits won’t make every photo work on every device. If a file struggles, try a smaller copy and keep the original somewhere safe.
The website still connects to the internet
The browser needs to fetch the page and its code. Hosting and security providers can receive connection information such as your IP address and the page you requested. That’s separate from receiving the contents of your photo.
It’s also worth distinguishing the two websites. MakerPorch’s main site includes Google AdSense technology, described in its privacy notice. FitShift has its own privacy notice. A claim about local image processing shouldn’t be read as a promise that every page in the family has no cookies or outside requests.
Your own setup matters too. If your Downloads folder syncs to Google Drive or another service, the exported image may sync there. If you later upload it to a social network, that network receives it. Neither is an upload performed by FitShift.
If you want to check for yourself
Start with a photo that isn’t sensitive. Open your browser’s Network panel before selecting it, then watch the outgoing requests while you crop and export. Look at what those requests contain: fetching a script is different from sending image data. This is a useful check, though not a full security audit.
For sensitive images, remember that local processing doesn’t protect against a compromised device or browser extension. And resizing isn’t anonymizing: a face, address, or document number can still be visible in the result. We don’t certify the download as stripped of every kind of metadata either.
For an ordinary resize, you can use FitShift without handing us your photo. What you do with the downloaded copy is still worth thinking about.