Privacy Policy

In effect from 10 November 2026.

Who we are

Calibre Reader is an independent app for iPhone, iPad and Mac. It isn't affiliated with calibre or calibre-web. “We” means the people who make and run Calibre Reader and its account server at calibrereader.com. You can reach us at contact@calibrereader.com.

Reading without an account

Without an account, the app keeps everything on your device: your books, notes, highlights, reading places, settings, fonts and themes.

• Your libraries. When you connect a library (a calibre or calibre-web server, Kavita, Komga, an OPDS catalogue, WebDAV, FTP, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or Box), the app talks to it directly. Nothing goes through us. Its address and your sign-in are kept on your device, in the system Keychain.
• Done on your device. Read Aloud, Read Along (matching an audiobook to its book), translation and the reading assistant all run on your device. Read Along can use Apple's servers for a language your device can't recognise, but only if you choose that. Then a few seconds of the audiobook are sent to Apple, under Apple's privacy policy.

With a Calibre Reader account

The account is optional. You need it for friends, clubs, chats, lending and borrowing, syncing your places and notes between devices, the Daily Quiz's active days, and supporter badges. To run it, the account server keeps:

• Your account: your email address, the name others see you by, your password (only a scrambled form of it, never the password itself), and your icon, tag line, state and country if you set them.
• Where you connect from: the internet address you last connected from, and the place it points to, down to the city. The city is used only for “Read Nearby” and is never shown. Your state and country appear on your profile, and the country also picks the book lists on Home.
• Your sign-ins: each device you're signed in on (its model, system and app version, address and place), so you can see them and sign them out.
• What you share: books you mark as read or want to read, ratings, reviews and reactions; your friends, friend requests and the friends you star; and the clubs you're in.
• Messages: the messages, photos, voice messages, files and books you send in chats and clubs. Attached files are deleted after a time: after 30 days in clubs, and in other chats when the recipient has fetched them or after 60 days. Administrators may set a shorter time. The message itself stays until it's deleted.
• What you're doing: whether you're reading, listening, watching or in a club, shown to your friends. You can turn this off under Account › Show Friends What I'm Doing.
• Activity: the days you're active in the app, and your Daily Quiz results, for your level and badges.
• Sync and shared work: if you turn on sync, your reading places and notes, so your devices stay in step. Also the pages you mark up together with friends, and the places and notes of a club reading a book together.
• Lending: a lent book goes straight from one phone to the other. The server only passes on what the two phones need to find each other.
• Purchases: if you tip or support the app, Apple handles the payment. We receive the purchase (which product, when, and for how much) tied to your account, to show your badge. We never see your card or Apple account details.
• Notifications: if you allow them, the code Apple gives your device for notifications. You choose which notifications you get under Account › Notifications.
• Email: we send sign-up codes and the notices you ask for from no-reply@calibrereader.com.

Other readers see only what the app shows them. Your name, icon, tag line, state and country are on your profile. Your email address is shown only to your friends, and only if you turn on Show My Address to Friends. Friends who can see your address may call you with FaceTime Audio from your chat, unless you turn off Allow Voice Calls.

Ads

The app shows one ad, on Home (under Reading Goals unless you move it). It is served by Google AdMob, and Google may receive your device's internet address, the kind of device it is, and how the ad is seen. Calibre Reader never asks to track you across other companies' apps. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, Google's consent form asks you first. Supporters see no ad. See how Google uses information from ads.

Services the app looks things up from

Some features fetch information from other services. They receive your device's internet address and what is being looked up (a title, an author or an ISBN), but never your account or your library. These are:

• book details, covers and reviews (Google Books, Open Library, Douban, Goodreads, Wikidata, the Internet Archive);
• details of music and films (MusicBrainz, Discogs, Deezer, Apple's iTunes Search, OMDb, TMDB, TVmaze);
• the book lists on Home, from book sites in your country;
• fonts from Google Fonts;
• natural voices for Read Aloud, downloaded from our own storage at Cloudflare or from GitHub.

Anything you connect yourself, such as cloud storage, Readwise or Notion, is used under that service's own terms. Its sign-in stays on your device.

The website

calibrereader.com sets no cookies, except on the pages where administrators sign in. We keep a record of each visit for 90 days: its time, internet address, approximate place, browser and system. It is used only to count visitors and to keep the site safe.

What we don't do

• We don't sell or rent anything about you.
• We don't track you across other companies' apps or websites.
• Apart from Google's ad, the app has no analytics or tracking kit in it.
• We don't read your libraries or upload your books, except those you send or share yourself.

Deleting your account

In the app, go to Account › Delete Account. This deletes your account from the server, with everything it left there: your shared books, friends, messages, files and loans. Clubs you own pass to their longest-standing member. Accounts whose address is never confirmed are deleted after 7 days. Deleting the app deletes what it kept on your device. To ask about your data, or for a copy of it, write to contact@calibrereader.com.

Keeping it safe

The app talks to the account server over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Passwords are kept only in a scrambled form. The sign-ins to your own libraries never leave your device.

Children

Calibre Reader accounts, chats and clubs are not meant for children under 13, and we don't knowingly keep anything about them. If you think a child has made an account, write to us and we will delete it.

Changes

When this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with its date. If a change is important, we will also say so in the app.

See also the Terms of Use.