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Get it on your phone, or your desk.

One C core, two front ends. A native Android app that scrubs JPEG, PNG, WebP and HEIC without a photo ever leaving the device, and the original command-line tool for macOS and Linux. iOS is in the works.

ScrubPony for Android

The full tool on your phone: share photos in from anywhere, or pick a batch, and get clean copies back. Everything runs on the device — no network, and the app asks for no permissions at all. Your originals are never changed.

Download the APK — v1.0.0 · ≈41 MB Release notes & assets on GitHub ↗

Android 10 or newer · arm64, arm, x86-64 · Apache-2.0 · direct from the GitHub release, no store account needed.

F-Droid: submission in progress iOS: in the works No permissions, no network 6 languages, in-app

What the app does

Two ways in	Share one or more photos from any app and pick Scrub metadata, or open the app and use the system Photo Picker or Pick from Files — the Files path is the one that reaches HEICs sitting outside the gallery.
Three ways out	Save to Pictures drops clean copies in `Pictures/ScrubPony`, Save to Files lets you choose any folder, and Share clean copies hands them to another app.
Formats	JPEG, PNG, WebP and HEIC, detected automatically. A HEIC with an exotic internal layout is reported as unsupported and left untouched rather than risked.
On device	The same C core as the desktop tool, compiled in through the NDK. Nothing is uploaded, no network is used, and no permission is requested.
Languages	English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese, switchable in the app.

Verify the download

Every release ships the APK with a SHA-256 checksum and a detached PGP signature. Check both before installing:

sha256sum -c ScrubPony-1.0.0.apk.sha256
gpg --verify ScrubPony-1.0.0.apk.asc ScrubPony-1.0.0.apk

Checksum: .apk.sha256 · signature: .apk.asc · signed with the ScrubPony PGP key.

Command line — macOS and Linux

The original scrubpony: a single C99 program with no configure step and nothing to link but libc. Clone, make, and you have a binary — about thirty seconds on a developer machine. It reads JPEG, PNG, WebP and HEIC and is built around the folder you are about to upload.

build and install

$ git clone https://github.com/norsehorse-dev/ScrubPony.git
$ cd ScrubPony
$ make && sudo make install

Full instructions on the install page Source and releases on GitHub

Common questions.

Why a direct download and not the Play Store?

The APK on GitHub is the same build, signed with the same key, and it needs no account and no store app to install. An F-Droid listing is in progress for people who prefer to get updates through F-Droid; when it is live it will be linked here. A Play Store listing may follow, but the direct download is always the canonical one.

Is the app really zero-permission?

Yes. It declares no Android permissions at all. Reading a photo you share or pick needs none — the sender grants a scoped read on that one file — and saving into its own Pictures/ScrubPony collection needs none either on Android 10 and up. Nothing touches the network; there is no code in the app that opens a socket.

What does it run on?

Android 10 (API 29) and newer, on arm64, arm and x86-64. The scrubbing itself is the same C core as the desktop tool, compiled into the app through the NDK, so a photo scrubbed on the phone and the same photo scrubbed on the command line come out byte-for-byte identical.

When is iOS coming?

It is in development. There is no date, and this page will not invent one or print an App Store link before there is an app behind it — the same rule the rest of the site follows.

How do I verify the APK?

Every release ships the APK alongside a SHA-256 checksum and a detached PGP signature. Check the hash with sha256sum, and the signature against the ScrubPony PGP key, before you install. The commands are on this page.