Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026

HawkView is published by GDNForge. This policy explains what data is - and is not - handled by the HawkView application and the hawkview.co website.

The app is offline by design

HawkView is a local image viewer. Your images, edits and settings stay on your computer. No image is ever uploaded to a server. There are no accounts, no sign-up, no ads, and no tracking.

Update check

On startup, and only if "Check for updates on startup" is enabled (you can turn it off in Settings), HawkView downloads a small latest.json file from hawkview.co to compare version numbers. This request sends no personal data - it is a plain web request (your IP address is visible to the web server, as with any Internet connection, and is not kept for tracking).

Crash reports

If the app closes unexpectedly, on the next launch HawkView may send an anonymous crash report to hawkview.co so the problem can be fixed. The report contains only technical information: the type and size of the file being viewed (never its name or path), where in the program the crash happened, the HawkView version and your operating system version. It contains no personal data, no images, and no IP address is stored. You can turn this off in Settings (the anonymous crash reports option).

Contact form

If you write to us through the contact form, we process your name, email and message for the sole purpose of replying to you. Messages are kept only as long as needed to handle your request, then deleted. They are never sold or shared.

Site analytics

The website uses Google Analytics to measure traffic (pages viewed, country, browser type). This tool sets cookies and the data is processed by Google; see Google's privacy policy. You can opt out by installing the Google Analytics opt-out add-on or by blocking the googletagmanager.com domain. The site also keeps its own anonymous counters (guide views, download counts): two technical cookies (hv_v, hv_dl) merely avoid counting the same browser twice within a short window; they contain no identifier and no IP address is stored. These statistics only concern the website: the HawkView application itself contains no tracker.

Your rights

Under the GDPR, you can request access to, correction of, or deletion of your data by writing to [email protected].