Booknook
Privacy Policy
Booknook keeps your library on your iPhone. There is no account, no sign-in, no advertising, no analytics and no tracking. We, the developer, never receive your books, notes, quotes or photos.
What stays on your iPhone
Your books, their covers, your notes and quotes, finished dates and the order of your shelves are saved only on your device, in the app’s own storage, which the Home Screen widget can also read. Photos you take or choose for a cover are saved there too, downscaled, and never uploaded. If your iPhone backs up to iCloud or a computer, this data is included in that backup, under your control, like any other app’s data.
The one thing that leaves your iPhone: cover searches
When you add or edit a book, the app looks for its cover on Open Library, a free public catalogue run by the non-profit Internet Archive. To do that, it sends only the title and author you typed to openlibrary.org, and requests the cover images from covers.openlibrary.org. This happens only while the add/edit card is open, over an encrypted connection (HTTPS), without cookies, without any identifier for you or your device, and without your notes, other books or photos.
Like any website, Open Library’s servers receive your device’s IP address with the request and may keep server logs under their own policy: Internet Archive terms and privacy. We don’t receive or store any of this.
If you never type a title, or you’re offline, nothing is sent; the app works fully without a connection.
Camera and photos
“Scan Cover” uses the camera only while you’re scanning, and “Choose Photo” uses the system photo picker, which gives the app only the photo you pick. The image becomes the book’s cover on your device and nowhere else.
Sharing
Nothing is shared unless you choose to. When you share a book, a quote or a shelf, the app makes an image and hands it to the iOS share sheet. Where it goes then is up to you and the app you share to. Your notes are included only when you choose “Share with My Note”, “Share Passage” or “Share Quote”.
Children
The app collects no personal information from anyone, including children.
Deleting your data
Remove a book to delete it and its cover. Deleting the app deletes everything it stored.
Changes
If this ever changes (for example, if a future version offers to sync between devices), this page will be updated before that version is released, and the app will ask you before anything new leaves your device.
This website
If you write through the contact form, your name, message and (if you give it) email address are sent to me through Netlify, which hosts this site, so I can reply. They’re used for nothing else and deleted when the conversation is done. The site sets no cookies and has no analytics.
Contact
Questions about privacy: use the contact form.