Privacy Policy
Last updated: 16 August 2026
Short version: BooksLove has no accounts and no server of our own. Your library lives on your iPhone and in your own private iCloud. We never see it. We do not sell data, show ads, or track you across apps. The only data that leaves your device is what is technically required to search for books, sync your own iCloud, process a subscription, and count anonymous usage — all described in full below.
0. What we promise
Four promises, written in the app itself (Settings → Privacy → Privacy & your data) and repeated here so the two can be compared:
- No account, ever. No sign-up, no password and no BooksLove server holding your books.
- Your data, your iCloud. Your library lives on your device and syncs through your own private iCloud. We have no way to read it.
- No ads. Not now, not later. No banners, no sponsored books, no advertising SDK.
- Private by default. Your shelves are private from the first launch, and any single book can be hidden from every shareable card (see section 11).
What we deliberately do not claim is that the app contains no third-party code. It contains exactly two third-party SDKs — RevenueCat and TelemetryDeck — and both are named, with what they receive, in the app and in sections 8 and 9 below.
1. Who we are
BooksLove (“the app”, “we”, “us”) is a personal reading-tracker app for iPhone and iPad developed by Vitalii Volynets (“the developer”). This Privacy Policy explains what happens to information when you use the app. Contact: volynetsvitalii82@gmail.com.
2. Our core principle: privacy by design
BooksLove is built without its own backend. There is no BooksLove account, no login, and no BooksLove-operated server that stores your books. Your reading library, shelves, ratings, reading goals and settings are stored locally on your device and, if you enable iCloud, in your own private iCloud account — which only you can access.
3. Information we do NOT collect
- We do not ask for your name, email address, or phone number.
- We do not collect your location.
- We do not use the advertising identifier (IDFA) and we do not show ads.
- We do not track you across other apps or websites, and the app does not request App Tracking Transparency permission.
- We do not sell or rent any information to anyone.
4. Information stored on your device
Everything you create in BooksLove — the books on your shelves, personal ratings, reading goals, import history and app preferences — is stored on your device using Apple’s on-device database (SwiftData) and standard app settings storage. This data never leaves your device except through the services described in Sections 5–8.
5. iCloud sync (Apple CloudKit)
If you are signed in to iCloud and have iCloud enabled for BooksLove, your library is synced across your own Apple devices through Apple’s CloudKit private database. This data is stored in your iCloud account, controlled by you, and hosted by Apple. The developer cannot see or access it. Its handling is governed by Apple’s Privacy Policy and iCloud terms. If you turn off iCloud, the app works fully offline with on-device data only.
6. Book search (third-party book databases)
To find books and fetch their details (title, author, cover image, description, publisher, community rating), the app queries public book databases. When you search or scan an ISBN, the app sends your search text or the scanned ISBN to these services so they can return matching books:
| Service | What is sent | Their privacy policy |
|---|---|---|
| Google Books API | Your search query or ISBN, and the app’s bundle identifier | policies.google.com/privacy |
| Open Library (Internet Archive) | Your search query or ISBN | archive.org terms & privacy |
We do not attach your identity to these requests, and the app deliberately does not send your library, your Apple ID, or which books you own — only the individual search term needed to get results. Book cover images are loaded directly from these services’ image servers.
7. Camera (barcode scanning)
With your permission, BooksLove uses the camera to scan the barcode (ISBN) on a book. Camera frames are processed on your device to read the number. Images are never uploaded or stored by us; only the decoded ISBN is used, and only to look up the book (Section 6).
8. Anonymous usage analytics (TelemetryDeck)
To understand which features are used and to fix problems, the app sends a small amount of anonymous usage data through TelemetryDeck, a privacy-first analytics service that does not use the advertising identifier and is GDPR-compliant. Events are limited to actions such as “app launched”, “a book was added to a shelf”, “a search was performed”, “a rating was set”, and “a reading goal was set”.
These events never include personal or book-identifying data. For example, the search event records only that a search happened, not what you searched for; the rating event records only the star value (rounded to a half-star), not which book. TelemetryDeck generates an anonymous, non-reversible identifier and cannot be used to identify you.
You can turn this off. Settings → Privacy → Anonymous usage stats switches analytics off completely. When you do, the app stops sending events, deletes the queue of events that had not been sent yet, and erases the local record of which days you opened the app. Your choice is remembered — it also survives Delete All My Data, so turning analytics off never quietly turns itself back on.
9. Subscriptions (RevenueCat & Apple)
Optional premium features are offered through an in-app subscription. Purchases are handled by Apple’s App Store. We use RevenueCat to manage subscription status and restore purchases. RevenueCat receives purchase/receipt information and an anonymous subscriber identifier — not your name, email, or payment card. All billing is handled by Apple under Apple’s Media Services Terms. We never see your payment details.
10. Children
BooksLove is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from children. Because the app collects no personal profile at all, no such data is gathered from anyone.
11. Your rights and control
Because your data lives on your device and in your own iCloud, you are in control at all times, and every control below is inside the app itself:
- Access and portability: export your entire library as CSV or JSON at any time from Settings → Data → Export Library. The export is a plain file you keep; nothing is sent to us.
- Erasure: Settings → Data → Delete All My Data deletes your books, shelves, ratings, notes, quotes, reading history, goals, series subscriptions and cover images. It clears them from this device and from your private iCloud copy, along with widget data, cached covers, cached search results and pending notifications. Your appearance, notification and reminder settings are kept, because they say nothing about you or your reading.
- Individual deletion: remove a single book, quote, note or reading session at any time from the app.
- Rectification: every field is editable in the app; you change your data directly, without asking anyone.
- Per-book privacy: any single book can be marked Hidden from shared cards on its own page. A hidden book never appears on a card the app builds — the daily card, the shelf collage — and its sharing button is switched off. It stays a full member of your library: it counts in your statistics and goals, and it is included in every export.
What deletion cannot reach, and why. Two things survive on purpose. Your purchase record belongs to Apple (and RevenueCat, our purchase processor) and is tied to your Apple ID, not to a BooksLove account — it is what lets you restore a purchase on a new device, so deleting your library never cancels or forfeits a purchase. And anonymous usage counts already sent to TelemetryDeck cannot be traced back to you by anyone, including us, so there is no individual record there to erase; the local part of it — the app’s own record of which days you opened the app — is deleted along with everything else.
Your rights under the GDPR and similar laws. If you are in the EU/UK, California or another region with comparable rules, you have the rights of access, portability, rectification, erasure, restriction and objection, and the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. For almost all of them the app itself is the fastest route, because we hold nothing about you on any server of ours: there is no account, no profile and no record for us to look up, correct or delete. If you would still like to exercise a right in writing, or you have a question about this policy, email volynetsvitalii82@gmail.com and we will respond within one month, as the GDPR requires. The data controller is Vitalii Volynets, the individual developer of BooksLove, reachable at the same address.
12. Data retention
We do not retain your data, because we do not store it. On-device and iCloud data persists until you delete it, which you can do at any moment through Settings → Data → Delete All My Data (see section 11). If your device is offline when you delete, the local copy goes at once and the iCloud copy clears the moment that device next syncs.
Data held by the three services we rely on, and how to reach it:
- TelemetryDeck (anonymous usage counts) — retained under their policy. There is no identifier linking those counts to you, so no individual record exists to retrieve or erase.
- Apple (purchases, iCloud) — your iCloud data is yours and is managed in iOS Settings → your name → iCloud; purchase records are held by Apple under Apple’s privacy policy.
- RevenueCat (purchase processing) — holds a purchase record keyed to an anonymous identifier, not to a name or email. To have it removed, write to us and we will forward the request.
13. Security
Network requests (book search, cover images) use HTTPS. Your library is protected by your device’s and iCloud account’s built-in security (device passcode, Face ID/Touch ID, and Apple’s iCloud encryption).
14. International users
The third-party services above (Apple, Google, Internet Archive, TelemetryDeck, RevenueCat) may process the limited data described here on servers located in other countries, under their own privacy policies linked throughout this document.
15. Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, we will update the date at the top and post the new version at this address. Material changes will also be reflected in a new app release.
16. Contact
Questions about privacy? Email volynetsvitalii82@gmail.com.