Privacy

Last updated: 27 October 2026 · Booklight is made by Giant VFX Ltd

Booklight is a personal reading journal. Your journal stays yours: no ads, no analytics, no trackers, and no account needed. Friends is optional; if you use it, you sign in with Apple. This page says plainly what data goes where.

Your journal — private by design

Your books, reading dates, notes, quotes, ratings, profile name and photo live on your device. If iCloud is on, the journal syncs to your own private iCloud so it survives device changes — that copy belongs to your Apple account, and we operate no server that receives it. We cannot read your journal.

• Camera is used only to read book barcodes, entirely on your device. Images are never stored or uploaded.
• Your profile photo is stored only on your device.
• Export creates a CSV file on your device that you own and share as you wish.
• “Delete my journal” at the bottom of your Profile erases your books, notes, quotes and lists, along with your photo and your settings, from this phone; with iCloud on, the deletion reaches your other devices too. We hold no copy.
• Removing the app removes only the copy on that device. Your journal stays in your own iCloud until you delete it (in the app first, or under Settings > Apple Account > iCloud), your Friends account stays until you delete it inside the app, and a Pro subscription continues until you cancel it in the App Store.

Friends — optional, and only what you choose

The core journal needs no account. If you use the optional Friends features, you sign in with Apple and we store — in Google Firebase, EU multi-region — the minimum needed:

• your user ID and the name friends see: the name you type in your Profile or, if you leave it empty, the name Apple shared when you signed in. Sharing your name via Apple is your choice; we never ask for your email,
• invitations you send: a random code, your user ID and name, dates and status — a pending invitation expires by itself after 30 days,
• friendships: which two readers are connected,
• what you switch on in the in-app privacy settings — a count of the books you finished, a count for this year, what you're reading now, and your library of finished books with, only while each switch is on, your ratings and lifetime numbers. The counts are worked out on your phone; no reading date ever leaves it. A book you mark “hidden from friends” is left out of your library and of “reading now” — it still counts in the total,
• the recommendations and challenges you send: the book you chose and the short note you wrote for that friend. These exist because you sent them, not because a switch is on; either side can remove them from their own view,
• the readers you block: their user ID and, so the list in your Profile can show a name, the name they had when you blocked them. Only you can read this list,
• and, if you allow notifications, your device's push address, so a friend's invite or recommendation can reach you (see “Notifications” below).

Your journal is never uploaded. Your notes, quotes, set-aside books and reading pace are never shared — there is no switch for them, because nothing in the app can send them. Sending a recommendation or accepting a challenge is a separate, deliberate act, and it shares only what that act carries.

Saying no never sends a notification. Declining a friend invitation stores nothing at all. A recommendation you decline is marked only on your side, and the sender's app never shows it. A challenge you decline ends the sender's wait: their invitation moves to their archive as “Invitation wasn't accepted”, with no reason given.

Deleting your Friends account inside the app permanently removes from our servers your profile, the library you mirrored, your friendships, invitations, recommendations, challenges and push address, and revokes the Sign in with Apple link; you confirm with Apple first. Your journal is untouched. One thing may remain after your Friends account is deleted: another reader's own record of something you previously sent or shared with them. For example, a book they added from your recommendation may continue to show the name you used at the time, and a person who blocked you may keep that name in their private block list. These records belong to that reader and are separate from your deleted Friends account.

Signing out is not deletion: Friends returns to its sign-in screen on that phone, your account, friendships and recommendations stay on our servers, and signing in brings them back.

Notifications. If a friend sends you a challenge invitation or a book recommendation, Booklight can tell you with a notification — those two things only, never a reminder or a nudge. The notification names no one and no book: it says only that a new challenge or recommendation is waiting, and the details wait inside the app. To deliver it, we store your device's push address — a token Apple and Google issue to this installation of the app — with your account. Nothing exists until you allow notifications: Booklight asks the first time you open Friends signed in, never at first launch, and until you say yes no push address is created at all. The address is removed when you sign out, removed with your account when you delete it, and dropped by itself when it stops working; if you sign out while offline, it is invalidated the next time the app opens. You can turn notifications off in iOS Settings at any time — everything else keeps working.

Booklight Pro — payments stay with Apple

Pro is an optional purchase made in Apple's own App Store sheet. Booklight never sees your payment details, your name or your email. RevenueCat helps Booklight check purchases and Pro access. It receives your purchase information from Apple, an anonymous app user identifier and the device's vendor identifier (IDFV), which Apple provides to apps from the same developer on that device. Booklight does not use the advertising identifier (IDFA), and this information is not linked to your Friends account. If you cancel, receive a refund or have a billing issue, Apple updates RevenueCat so your Pro status stays accurate.

Third-party services, by name

• Apple — Sign in with Apple, iCloud, App Store payments, on-device barcode scanning.
• Google Firebase — sign-in and the Friends database (EU multi-region). Firebase Analytics is disabled; the analytics SDK is not in the app. The Firebase components we use report their own version and health to Google; that is about the software, never about you or your reading.
• Apple App Attest and Firebase App Check help verify that requests to our database come from the genuine Booklight app. They may send a short-lived verification token, but no name, Friends identity or journal content is included.
• Apple Push Notification service — delivers Friends notifications to your device; what it carries names no sender, book or message, while your device's push address and the moment of delivery necessarily pass through Apple.
• Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) — hands each notification to Apple's service; the same applies: no sender name, book title or message inside, but the push address and the delivery time pass through Google.
• RevenueCat — Booklight Pro subscription status, under an anonymous identifier and the device's vendor identifier (see “Booklight Pro” above).
• Google Books — your book searches (title, author or ISBN) are sent as plain queries to fetch details and covers. They carry no account or identity.
• Open Library (Internet Archive) — a fallback for book search, covers and summaries when Google Books cannot answer. Like Google Books, it receives only a book's title, author, ISBN or Open Library ID as a plain query, with no account or identity — never your notes, quotes, ratings or dates.
• Bookstore links — tapping “buy” opens the store's own website in your browser; their privacy policy applies there. We add nothing to the link beyond the book you tapped.

Like every internet service, the servers above see your IP address while answering a request. We don't collect, store or use it.

What Booklight doesn't do

No analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising SDKs, no advertising identifier (IDFA), no device fingerprinting, no reminder notifications (the only notifications are the two Friends ones above, and only if you allow them), no data brokers, no tracking of any kind. This isn't a promise buried in settings — the SDKs simply aren't in the app.

Children

Booklight is a general-audience app and collects no data requiring parental consent.

Changes & contact

If this policy changes, the date above changes with it. Questions? Support.