GarageID reads your car papers with Google's Gemini AI, in the cloud. Each document you add is sent to Gemini, which works out what it is and pulls out the details; the result is stored on your phone. Your documents are kept on the phone, there is no account, and under the paid Google service the app uses, your documents are not used to train Google's AI.
Car documents are unusually personal. A registration ties a vehicle to a name and an address. An insurance policy carries a policy number and a claims history. A workshop invoice records where the car was on a given day. "Our app uses AI" is not an adequate description of what happens to that.
Here is the actual arrangement.
What Gemini does
When you add a document — a scan, a photo, a PDF, a file shared from another app — the app sends the file to Google's Gemini models through Google Firebase. In one reading, Gemini works out what the paper is (registration, insurance policy, service invoice, fuel receipt…), gives it a title and tags, suggests a folder and the car it belongs to, and reads the details: dates, amounts, mileage, parts, policy terms.
Some papers get a second, dedicated reading: a multi-page workshop invoice line by line, a manufacturer's maintenance schedule into intervals, a warranty, a vehicle history report, a financing contract. The results become service history entries, expenses, reminders and insurance records on your phone.
Gemini also writes the short insights on My Car, from your car's details, costs, service history and reminders, and works out what the columns of a CSV file mean when you import your history from another app.
What runs on the phone
Text recognition and image labels run on the phone itself — Apple Vision on iPhone, Google ML Kit on Android — and so does search: the Spotlight and AppSearch index never leaves the device. Your records are kept in a local database.
Why not do everything on the phone? The models that fit on a phone can tell a receipt from an invoice, but they misread amounts and fill gaps with guesses — in our tests, Apple's on-device model wrote insights that were simply not true. For numbers people rely on, the app uses the larger model.
What Google does with it
The app uses Google's paid Gemini service. Under its terms, Google does not use what the app sends to train or improve its AI, and keeps it only for a limited time to detect abuse and meet legal obligations. GarageID itself keeps no copy: there is no GarageID server holding your documents.
Where your data lives
- Documents and photos: on your phone.
- Records — history, expenses, insurance, tires: in a local database on your phone.
- Backups: your own iCloud Drive, or a file you export and keep yourself.
- GarageID servers: there are none holding your documents. There is no account to create.
The trade-off is stated plainly: because there is no account and no cloud copy by default, a lost device without a backup means lost documents. Set up iCloud backup or export a backup file early.
What is never collected
- No account, so no name, email or password
- No selling of data, no ads, no tracking across other apps
- No documents in crash reports or usage statistics
Crash reports and usage statistics, and every other service the app talks to, are described in the privacy policy.
Can I turn the cloud reading off?
Not on its own: reading with Gemini is how a document gets added. What you can switch off is what the app makes from it — with document parsing off, a document is still read, stored and searchable, but no history entries, expense rows or reminders are created from it. Filing is a separate choice: the app can ask before it files a document, file it automatically, or leave it where it is. If you do not want a paper read by Gemini, keep it out of the app.
Device security
The app can be locked with a passcode or with Face ID / Touch ID, so the documents are not readable by someone holding an unlocked phone.
Get GarageID
Available on the App Store and Google Play.