Terms of Use

1. Who we are

Poptone is made by Federico Cossia, based in Argentina, working alone. For anything in this document, including a complaint: support@poptone.app.

2. Acceptance

By downloading or using Poptone, you agree to these Terms of Use and to the Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the app.

These Terms are the licence agreement for Poptone and take the place of Apple’s standard end-user licence agreement for this app. Where they are silent, the App Store Terms of Service apply.

3. What Poptone is

Poptone is a camera app for iPhone, running on iOS 17 or later. You choose a “machine” — a recreation of a particular way of capturing an image, such as a film stock, a home camcorder, a security camera or a handheld console sensor — and the app applies that machine’s colour and texture to a photo you take with the camera or bring in from your library.

You choose the machine before the shot, and the look is baked in when the photo develops. Poptone is not a photo editor: there are no sliders, no curve panels and no masks, and there is no editing after the fact.

4. Your photos are yours

The photos you take or import in Poptone belong to you, and so does everything the app makes from them.

• We claim no ownership and no licence over your pictures. Not a limited one, not a promotional one, not a “necessary to operate the service” one. None.
• We never see them. There is no upload, no server and no sync. The app has no way to send us a photo and we have no way to ask for one.
• We do not train anything on them, because we do not have them.
• You can use what you make commercially. Sell it, print it, licence it, hang it in a gallery, put it in an advertisement. No credit to Poptone is required, no permission is needed and nothing is owed.

You are responsible for having the rights you need over any photo you choose to process, and for what you do with the result.

5. What belongs to us

The app itself — its code, its interface, the colour science behind each machine, the lookup tables that produce those looks, the artwork, the machine names and the name Poptone — is ours and is protected by copyright. Copyright © 2026 Federico Cossia. All rights reserved.

You may not copy, extract, decompile, reverse-engineer or redistribute any of it, or lift the lookup tables and profiles out of the app to use elsewhere. Buying access to a machine buys you the right to take pictures with it, not the right to take the machine.

Every machine is an original recreation, built by us from scratch. Poptone is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any manufacturer of film, cameras, consoles or software, and no machine is presented as any company’s product. Where a machine evokes a familiar kind of image, it does so as an original interpretation of a technique.

Poptone contains no third-party software, so there are no third-party licences to reproduce here.

6. Your licence to use the app

You get a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use Poptone on Apple-branded devices you own or control, for as long as these Terms are in force. That is a licence, not a sale of the software itself, and it does not include the right to sublicense it, rent it out or make it available to anyone else.

7. What is free

Four machines — Áurea, Ártico, Ceniza and Instantánea — are free forever. No photo limit, no daily quota, no expiry and nothing stamped on the picture. Nothing that is free today will be moved behind a payment later.

On top of that, one Pro machine is unlocked each day, on a rotation that is identical for everyone and turns over at your local midnight. The rotation draws from part of the Pro catalogue, not all of it: most Pro machines are only ever available with a paid plan and never appear in the daily rotation, however long you wait. We would rather say that plainly than let you wait for something that is not coming.

Taking, importing, developing, browsing and exporting photos are never limited by what you have paid. The only thing a paid plan changes is which machines you can choose.

8. In-app purchases

8.1 How buying works

Every purchase is made through the App Store and processed by Apple, which is the seller. Prices are shown in the app, in your local currency, before you confirm, and are what Apple charges to your Apple Account. Poptone never sees your payment details.

Purchases are tied to the Apple Account that made them. None of them are set up for Family Sharing.

8.2 Subscription

• Periods. Weekly, monthly and annual. All three grant exactly the same access to the full catalogue; only the commitment and the price differ.
• Auto-renewal. The subscription renews automatically at the end of each period unless you cancel at least 24 hours before that period ends.
• Billing. Charged to your Apple Account when you confirm. Renewals are charged within 24 hours before the end of the current period.
• Cancellation. Manage or cancel at any time in iOS Settings, under your name, then Subscriptions. Cancelling does not refund the period already paid for, and you keep access until it ends.
• No free trial. Poptone does not currently offer a free trial or an introductory price. If one is ever offered, its length, its price and what happens when it ends will be shown before you confirm.

8.3 Founders Lifetime

A one-time, non-consumable purchase that permanently unlocks the whole catalogue for the Apple Account that bought it. There is nothing to renew and nothing to cancel.

What “lifetime” means is in 8.4, which is the most important section on this page.

8.4 What Founders Lifetime covers

Founders Lifetime includes every machine and every feature Poptone ever ships, for as long as the app exists, at no further cost. Not only what exists on the day you buy it. New machines are included. New features are included. Redesigns, rewrites and a version two are included. If it runs on your iPhone, it is yours, and there is nothing more to pay, ever.

The test is deliberately simple, and it is one you can apply yourself without asking us: does it run on your device? If yes, it is included. There is no second condition, no carve-out for “core” features, no tier above Founders, and no mechanism by which we can reclassify something as premium later.

There is exactly one thing outside that promise. It is written here before anything like it exists, so that it can never be invented later as an excuse.

The exception: features that cost money every single time they are used. If Poptone ever offers something that has to run on a server and costs real money per use — generating an image with artificial intelligence is the obvious example — that cannot be free forever in exchange for a one-time payment, because the bill arrives again every time someone presses the button. Something like that would be sold separately, as optional credits, priced at what it costs to run. Founders would not include it.

Here is what keeps that exception from growing:

• It covers per-use cost, and nothing else. Not features that are merely new, expensive to build or difficult. Building something is a cost we pay once; running it for you is a cost that repeats. Only the second kind can ever sit outside Founders.
• Nothing already on your device can be moved into it. If a machine or a feature is included today, it stays included. It cannot be relocated to a server and then billed back to you.
• It only ever moves one way. If something that needs a server today becomes possible on the iPhone tomorrow — and that keeps happening — it becomes part of Founders automatically, at no cost, without you having to ask.
• Nothing gets held back to make room for it. We will not ship a thinner on-device feature so that a paid server version looks better by comparison.

And to be equally plain about the rest:

• Founders is a one-time payment. It will never convert into a subscription, and you will never be asked to pay again to keep what you already have.
• If the subscription plans change, rise in price or get renamed, Founders is unaffected.
• If Poptone is ever sold or handed to someone else, this promise goes with it as a condition of the handover.

The one thing we cannot promise is to outlive the App Store. Founders lasts as long as Poptone is distributed and runs on supported versions of iOS. If Apple removes the app, or an iOS release breaks it beyond repair, no wording on this page fixes that. Everything that is within our control is above.

8.5 Restoring purchases

If you change device or reinstall, use “Restore Purchases” on the Poptone Pro screen to recover what you already bought, at no additional cost. You need to be signed in with the same Apple Account you purchased with.

8.6 Price changes

Prices can change. For an existing subscription, Apple handles it: you are notified in advance and, where the increase requires your agreement, the subscription will not renew at the new price unless you give it. A price change never applies to a period you have already paid for. Founders Lifetime is a one-time payment and is not affected by any of this.

8.7 When a subscription ends

The app returns to the free tier: the four free machines and the daily rotation. Nothing is deleted. Every photo you already developed stays exactly where it is, in Poptone’s gallery and in your camera roll, at full quality and with nothing stamped on it. Photos made with a Pro machine do not expire, degrade or stop working. You lose access to machines, not to your pictures.

8.8 Refunds

Refunds for App Store purchases are issued exclusively by Apple, under Apple’s own policies. We have no technical way to issue one and no visibility into the request. The support page explains how to ask Apple.

9. Changing your mind

If you are in the European Union, the EEA or the United Kingdom, you have a statutory right to withdraw from a distance contract within 14 days. For digital content delivered immediately, that right can be lost once delivery begins with your express consent — which is what the App Store asks for at the moment of purchase. Where the right still applies, you exercise it against Apple as the seller, at reportaproblem.apple.com.

If you are in Argentina, Ley 24.240 gives you 10 running days from the purchase to revoke it, without giving a reason and at no cost to you. Because the purchase is made through the App Store, Apple processes it, through the same link. If Apple declines and you believe the ten-day right applies, write to support@poptone.app: we will take it up with Apple on your behalf and tell you what comes of it. You can also go to the Ventanilla Única Federal de Defensa del Consumidor.

Everywhere else, the same link is the right place to start, and the same offer stands: if Apple’s answer seems wrong to you, write to us.

10. Acceptable use

Do not use Poptone to create or distribute content that is illegal, defamatory, or that violates someone else’s rights.

We have no way to enforce this. The app has no server, no account and no upload, so we cannot see what anyone makes and cannot moderate it. What you photograph, and what you do with the result, is yours to answer for.

11. Changes to the app

Poptone will change: machines get added, looks get refined, bugs get fixed, parts of the interface get rebuilt. Refinement can mean a machine’s output shifts slightly between versions. Photos you have already developed are files on your device and are never altered retroactively.

We will not remove a machine you have access to in order to sell it back to you. If a machine ever has to be withdrawn for a reason outside our control — a legal claim over a name, for instance — we will say what happened and why.

12. No warranties

Poptone is provided “as is”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, to the extent the law allows. We do not guarantee that the app is free of errors, or that the output of any particular machine will match your aesthetic expectations.

This does not affect the statutory guarantees described in section 15.

13. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising from your use of the app, including loss of photos. Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not permit us to exclude.

Worth saying plainly: photos you take in Poptone stay inside the app until you export them, and deleting the app deletes them. Export the ones you care about to your camera roll, and back up your device as you would anyway.

14. Apple’s role

Apple distributes Poptone and processes every purchase, but Apple does not make the app. These Terms are between you and us alone, and Apple is not a party to them. Specifically:

• Support is ours. If something is wrong with Poptone, write to us. Apple has no obligation to furnish any maintenance or support for the app.
• Warranty is ours. If the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price to you. To the maximum extent permitted by law, that refund is Apple’s entire warranty obligation; anything beyond it — claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs or expenses attributable to a failure to conform — is our responsibility.
• Claims are ours. Any claim that the app fails to comply with a legal or regulatory requirement, that it caused harm, or that it infringes someone’s intellectual property, is ours to answer and ours to defend, not Apple’s.
• Where you may use it. By using Poptone you confirm that you are not located in a country subject to a United States Government embargo or designated as a terrorist-supporting country, and that you are not listed on any United States Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Apple can enforce these Terms. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and, once you accept them, Apple has the right to enforce them against you as a third-party beneficiary.

15. Rights you cannot sign away

Nothing on this page takes away a right the law gives you and does not let you give up.

If the consumer law of the country you live in gives you a guarantee, a remedy or a protection that these Terms appear to limit, the law wins and that part of these Terms does not apply to you. That covers, in particular:

• statutory guarantees that a digital product works as described;
• the right to a repair, a replacement, a price reduction or a refund when it does not;
• protection against unfair contract terms;
• liability we are not permitted to exclude.

Sections 12 and 13 are meant to go exactly as far as the law of your country allows, and no further.

16. Governing law, and where you can bring a claim

Poptone is made and operated from Argentina, and these Terms are governed by Argentine law.

That does not move you anywhere. If you are a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer rules of the country you live in, and you can bring a claim before the courts of your own place of residence. We are not asking you to travel and we will not argue that you have to.

• In Argentina, consumer claims belong before the courts of the consumer’s domicile. You can also use the Ventanilla Única Federal de Defensa del Consumidor, or the pre-court conciliation service under Ley 26.993, before going to court.
• In the European Union or the United Kingdom, you keep both the consumer protections of your country of residence and the right to sue there.

Before any of that, it is usually faster to write to support@poptone.app. One person reads it, and most things are fixable.

17. Ending this agreement

You can end it at any time by deleting the app. If you have a subscription, cancel it separately in iOS Settings first — deleting the app does not cancel a subscription.

We can end it only if you seriously breach these Terms, and only as far as the law allows. Since there is no account and no server, we have no technical ability to switch anyone off; this clause exists so the position is stated, not because there is a lever to pull.

18. General

If part of this is unenforceable, the rest still stands, and the unenforceable part is read down to whatever the law does allow rather than struck out whole.

If Poptone is transferred to someone else, these Terms go with it, including everything promised in sections 4 and 8.4. A sale will not be used as a way out of a commitment made here.

Languages. These Terms exist in English and Spanish and both versions say the same thing. If a difference ever turns out to matter, the reading more favourable to you applies.

No waiver. If we do not enforce something straight away, that does not mean we have given it up.

19. Changes to these terms

These Terms can change — laws change, the app changes. Meaningful changes are published here with a new date before they take effect, and recorded in the version history below, so you can see what changed and when.

Two things are not open to amendment: what section 4 says about your photos, and what section 8.4 says about Founders Lifetime. Narrowing either of those for someone who has already bought would need that person’s agreement, not a new date on a web page.

20. Version history

• 1.0 — 2026-07-29. First published version, before the app’s release.

21. Contact

Questions about these terms: support@poptone.app.