Is the Pet Generator Private? What Happens to Your Photo

What actually leaves your machine

Every photo you hand to a pet generator gets uploaded, because the pixel conversion runs on a server. People ask about that constantly and it is a fair question. The part that matters is what happens next.

The file goes over TLS, sits in a job queue while the spritesheet is built, and is deleted on a 24 hour timer. No account is attached to the upload, so there is nothing on our side that ties the photo back to a person.

• Transport is TLS, the same as any form post
• The file waits in a job queue, not a storage bucket
• Deletion is a 24 hour timer, not a manual review
• No account means no profile to attach the photo to

The parts I would still be careful about

I would not upload a photo with a child in it, and not because of us. Any upload to any service is a copy you no longer control, and a 24 hour timer still leaves 24 hours.

The other one is metadata. Most phone photos carry a GPS coordinate in the EXIF block. We strip it before generation, and I strip it myself on the phone anyway, because I would rather it never leave.

• Skip photos with children or documents in frame
• Strip location data before the upload, not after
• Use a crop, since the generator only needs the subject
• If a photo has to stay private, do not upload it

How to check it yourself

You do not have to take my word for any of this. Open the network tab in your browser, start an upload, and watch the requests go out. You will see one POST carrying the image and nothing that looks like a profile call.

Doing this once with a throwaway image is worth the two minutes. It also tells you what every other upload tool on your machine is doing, which is the part nobody checks.

• Open the network tab, then upload a throwaway image
• Confirm a single image POST and no analytics call on it
• Delete the pet afterwards if you were only testing
• Run the same check on the next upload tool you install

Keeping the result private on your own machine

Once the pet is built, the privacy question moves to your machine, and that part is entirely yours. A Codex pet lives in ~/.codex/pets on macOS and %USERPROFILE%\.codex\pets on Windows, and nothing in that folder talks to the network.

The generated spritesheet is a local file. The nine animation states are frames inside a WebP, and the folder makes no outbound calls at all.

• The pet folder is local and makes no network calls
• Sharing a pet means sharing the folder, which stays your choice
• Backups you make are yours, and we hold no copy
• Deleting the folder removes every trace on that machine

What to do with this

Make one at codexpetgenerator.com from a photo you are comfortable uploading, then keep the folder local. The folder layout is explained at /blog/codex-pets-folder-structure, and the backup steps are at /blog/backup-codex-pets-guide.

If you want the pet to disappear during screen shares, that switch is at /blog/hide-codex-pet-screen-share, and picking a photo that converts well is at /blog/best-photos-for-pixel-pet-generator. The rest is at /blog.