Privacy Policy

Effective July 22, 2026

PhonoLeaf ("the app", "we", "our") turns epub books stored in your Google Drive into read-aloud audio, on your own device. This policy explains what data the app touches, why, and — just as importantly — what it never does.

The short version PhonoLeaf has no server. There is nowhere for your data to go except between your device and Google's own services. We (the developer) never receive, see, or store your books, your Drive contents, or your listening activity anywhere.

"Does PhonoLeaf store my data or not?" Both things are true at once, and the distinction is simply where: the app does save things — your reading position, listening stats, settings and cached book covers — and all of it is written to your own device, the same way a browser saves a bookmark. None of it is ever sent to us. PhonoLeaf has no server, no database and no user accounts, so there is nowhere on our side for a copy to exist. That is also why you can export or erase everything yourself from Settings, without asking us and without waiting — see Your rights over your data below.

What the app accesses, and why

Data	Why	Where it goes
Google Drive access (read-only)	To list and download the epub files in the folder you choose	Directly between your device and Google — never through us
Your Google display name	For the "Good morning, {name}" greeting on the Home screen	Stored on your device only
Book titles/authors	To look up genre and page-count metadata	Sent to Open Library (openlibrary.org), a public, third-party book database — no personal or account data is included
Reading progress, stats, settings, voice choice	So the app remembers your place and preferences	Stored on your device only (browser storage / app storage) — never transmitted anywhere
Book covers	Cached so they don't re-download every time	Stored on your device only

Google Drive access, specifically

PhonoLeaf requests read-only access to Google Drive (the drive.readonly scope). This is a broad, Google-classified "restricted" scope — broader than the app strictly needs for the one folder you connect — chosen because it's the only way to support "connect a folder once, new books appear automatically" without you re-selecting files every time. Because of that scope, PhonoLeaf is required to go through Google's own app verification process; see Google's own explanation of what that review covers at support.google.com/cloud/answer/13463737.

The app never modifies, deletes, or uploads anything to your Drive. It only lists and downloads the epub files inside the one folder you pick.

What we never do

We do not operate a server, and no version of the app sends your books, Drive contents, reading activity, or personal data to us or to any server we control.
We do not sell, rent, or share your data with advertisers or data brokers. There is no advertising in the app.
We do not use your data to train any AI/ML model.
The text-to-speech voice runs entirely on your device (or, as a fallback, through your device's own built-in voice engine). Book text is never sent to a cloud speech service.

Third parties the app talks to

Because PhonoLeaf has no backend of its own, your device talks directly to a short, fixed list of external services:

Google (accounts.google.com, googleapis.com) — sign-in and Drive access. Governed by Google's Privacy Policy.
Open Library (openlibrary.org) — a free, public book-metadata API operated by the Internet Archive, used only to look up genre/page count from a title and author.
jsDelivr / Hugging Face (cdn.jsdelivr.net, huggingface.co) — only if your device falls back to the in-browser neural voice model, this downloads the (non-personal) voice model files.

Data stored on your device

Everything else — your reading progress, listening stats, theme choice, voice preference, and which folder you've connected — is stored locally in your browser's or app's own storage. It never leaves your device. Uninstalling the app, clearing site data, or using "Reset listening data" in Settings removes it.

Signing out

Signing out revokes the app's access to your Google account. On the native app, this also revokes the underlying Google authorization grant, not just the local session.

Your rights over your data

Because PhonoLeaf has no backend, there is no account of yours sitting on a server for us to hand over or erase — everything is on your own device, and you can act on it directly, without asking us and without waiting:

Access / portability. Settings → Export my data downloads everything the app has saved on this device as a readable JSON file: reading progress, listening stats, book metadata and settings. Sign-in tokens are deliberately excluded from the file, since a copy of one would give anyone holding it access to your Drive.
Erasure. Settings → Delete my data erases all of it from this device — local storage and the cached cover images — and disconnects your Google account, revoking PhonoLeaf's access at Google. Your ebooks in Google Drive are not touched.
Partial erasure. Stats → Reset listening data clears just your listening history and progress, leaving settings alone.

If you have a question we can't answer through the app itself, contact us using the address below.

Children's privacy

PhonoLeaf is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from children. Since PhonoLeaf has no backend, it does not collect data from anyone, of any age, on any server we operate.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this same URL with a new effective date.

Contact

Questions about this policy: baileyke90@gmail.com