Privacy policy

The short version

We do not collect anything about you or your child. There is no account to make and no server of ours to send anything to. What your child reads, how they answer, their points and their photographs all stay on the phone.

One piece of software inside the app does talk to its maker, and we would rather say so plainly than let you find out: see Google's ML Kit below.

What the app keeps, and where

Everything below is stored on the phone, in the app's own storage, and is deleted when the app is deleted.

What the app does not keep

Photographs of pages are deleted as soon as the text has been read from them, which takes a few seconds. They are never stored and never sent.

The text of a book is never stored. It is read, used to write questions, and dropped. What remains is a list of scrambled word-hashes, which the app uses to notice when the same pages are scanned twice. The original words cannot be recovered from it.

There is no account. No email address, no password, no sign-in, no identifier of any kind is asked for or created.

Reading and questions happen on the phone

The text is read using Apple's Vision framework, and the questions are written by Apple Foundation Models — both of which run on the phone itself. This is why the app works in aeroplane mode.

Buying the app

That is handled by Apple, through the App Store, using Apple's own payment system. We never see or handle payment details. Apple tells us that a purchase happened, and gives us the sales figures every developer sees. None of it identifies anybody.

Children

This app is meant to be used by children, so we will be plain about it.

We do not collect any personal information from anybody, including children. We do not show advertising. We do not use analytics of our own. The app cannot track anybody across other apps or websites.

Setting up a reader asks for a first name and a reading age. Both stay on the phone, and a first name is enough — there is no reason to type a full one.

Backups

If iCloud Backup is switched on, Apple's backup of that phone includes this app's data, in the same way it includes every other app's. That is Apple's backup of your own device, controlled by you in iOS Settings, and we have no access to it.

Other software in the app

The app is built with Flutter and uses Apple's Vision, Foundation Models, Keychain and StoreKit. All of these run on the phone and none of them sends anything anywhere.

Google's ML Kit

The app also uses Google's ML Kit to work out the shape of paragraphs on a photographed page.

Your child's pages are read on the phone. ML Kit does not send the photograph, or the words on it, anywhere. That part is genuinely on-device.

But the software reports on itself. In Google's words, "the ML Kit APIs also send metrics about the performance and utilization of the APIs in your app to Google", and contact Google's servers for bug fixes and updated models. Google says it uses this to measure performance, debug and improve the APIs. Google does not offer a way to switch it off, and Google requires us to tell you about it — which is what this section is.

None of it includes a child's name, their reading, their answers, their points, or any photograph.

Deleting everything

Deleting the app removes all of it: readers, points, reading, rewards and cover photographs. This cannot be undone, and we cannot recover it for you, because we never had it.

A grown-up can also delete individual book covers at any time, under Grown-ups → Settings → Book covers.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and the new version appears here.

Getting in touch