Talewright Privacy Policy

Who we are

Talewright is made by JC Mobile App Studio LLC, a one-person studio based in Pennsylvania, USA. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean JC Mobile App Studio LLC. You can reach us at [email protected].

Short version

• No account, no analytics, no ads, no trackers, no third-party SDKs.
• Your books, reading places, highlights, notes, bookmarks and vocabulary stay on your device and, if you use iCloud, in your own private iCloud account. We cannot see them.
• Recaps, the dictionary, read aloud and search all run on your device.
• When you browse free books, your search goes to our catalog server. We do not keep logs of searches.
• We never sell your data or use it for advertising.

What leaves your device, and where it goes

Talewright only connects to the internet to find and download books, to sync through iCloud, and to check a Premium subscription with Apple.

• Our catalog server (catalog.jcmobileappstudio.com, run on Cloudflare). When you browse or search in Discover, the app sends the words you typed, the topic and the languages you picked. It sends nothing about you. The server answers and keeps no record of the request. Answers are cached briefly so the next person asking the same thing gets a faster reply; cached answers hold book information only. Like any website, Cloudflare handles your IP address to deliver the reply, and the server uses the country Cloudflare works out from it to leave out books that may still be under copyright there. The country is used for that answer only and isn't stored.
• Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org) and Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Book covers and the books you choose to download come straight from these libraries. They see your IP address and that the request came from Talewright, as with any download.
• Gutendex (gutendex.com). Only if our catalog server can't be reached, and only for App Store accounts in the United States, the same search is sent to this public catalog instead. The app checks your App Store country on your device.
• Apple iCloud. If you are signed in to iCloud, your library, reading places, highlights, notes, bookmarks, tags, vocabulary and reading settings sync to your own private iCloud account so they follow you to your other devices. Books you imported from Files sync too. This data is stored by Apple under Apple's Privacy Policy. We have no access to it.
• Apple's App Store. If you subscribe to Talewright Premium, Apple handles the payment and tells the app whether your subscription is active. We never see your name, email address or payment details. Apple's sales reports give us totals only.

What stays on your device

• The reading companion (Story so far, Ask this book and Who's who) is written by Apple's on-device model from pages you have already read. Your questions and the book's text never leave your device, and no outside AI service is used.
• The dictionary uses the dictionaries built into iOS.
• Read aloud uses the voices built into iOS.
• Search inside a book, Spotlight results and the Continue Reading widget are built on your device.
• Imported EPUB and PDF files are copied into the app. Highlights in PDFs are kept separately; your original files are never changed.

What reaches us

Nothing that identifies you. We don't run analytics, crash reporting or advertising. If you email us or use the support form, we receive what you send and use it only to answer you.

Deleting your data

• Remove a book from your library to delete it along with its highlights, notes and bookmarks, on every device that syncs.
• Deleting the app removes everything stored on that device.
• To delete the iCloud copy, open Settings on your iPhone or iPad, tap your name, then iCloud, then Manage Account Storage, and choose Talewright.

Children

Talewright does not collect personal information from anyone, including children. The free catalog contains classic literature for adult readers as well as children's books.

Changes

If this policy changes, we will update this page and the date at the top.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Email [email protected].