ReadSong · Legal
Privacy Policy
On this page
ReadSong does not collect what you read. There are no accounts and no ads. The voices run entirely on your iPhone: your documents, and the text being read aloud, are never uploaded to us or to anyone else to be spoken. The network is used only to download extra voices, to fetch a web page you ask for, and for the optional ReadSong Pro subscription, which is also where our only statistics come from.
Who this policy is from
ReadSong: Text Speech Reader (“ReadSong”, “the app”) is published by FPankau (“we”, “us”), based in Piła, Poland. This policy explains how the app handles information. It applies to the iOS app only.
Information we collect
About your documents and what you listen to: none. We operate no servers of our own and cannot see, open or receive anything you import, read or listen to, or anything the voices say. How long you listen is counted on your iPhone and never sent anywhere. We cannot identify you or contact you unless you choose to write to us.
About the subscription: what is needed to run it and to count it. Whether ReadSong Pro is active, a record of any purchase, and a few technical details about your device and the app are processed by Apple and by RevenueCat on our behalf, keyed to a random identifier and a device-level identifier rather than to your name. RevenueCat also turns them into subscription statistics for us — see When information does leave your device and Analytics, tracking and advertising.
The boundary is enforced by how the app is built rather than by policy alone: apart from RevenueCat’s subscription service, the app contains no analytics SDK, no crash reporter and no advertising framework, and it connects to the network only for the voice downloads, web imports and subscription checks described below. You can verify this yourself — see How to verify this.
What the app stores on your device
Nothing enters the app unless you add it: a file you pick, a page you scan, a photo, a web address, text you paste or type, or a file you open in ReadSong from another app (“Open in…”). Everything the app keeps stays inside its private storage area on your iPhone (the app sandbox), protected by iOS. This includes:
| Data | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Documents you import (PDF, EPUB, Word, RTF, HTML, Markdown, text and photos): a copy of the original file, the text read from it, its title and cover, and the web address it came from if you imported a link. For pages scanned with the camera, only the recognised text is kept, not the page images | So you can open and listen to your documents again |
| Where you are in each document, and its voice, speed, language and tags | So each document picks up where you left off, read the way you chose |
| Settings, voice preferences, and your pronunciation and skip rules | To remember how you like to read and listen |
| Today’s listening time on the free plan, and the last known ReadSong Pro status | To apply the free daily allowance, also without a connection |
| Voice packs you download | So those voices work without a connection |
| Speech rendered ahead of playback, voice previews, and audiobooks you make | Temporary: rendered speech is cleared by the next launch at the latest, and iOS may clear the rest when it needs space |
You can remove this data at any time by deleting documents in your library, by removing downloaded voice packs under Settings → Voices and downloads, or by deleting the app, which removes everything it stored.
Like any app’s data, your library is included in your iPhone’s own backups (iCloud Backup or a computer) if you have them turned on; those are handled by Apple under your Apple Account, not by us. Downloaded voice packs are left out of backups.
Processing happens on your device
All the work is performed locally on your iPhone: the neural voices (Kokoro and Supertonic 3, run with the open-source FluidAudio library) turn text into speech and time each word for the highlight; text is read out of PDF, EPUB, Word, RTF, HTML, Markdown and text files; a document’s language is detected; text recognition (OCR) in photos and camera scans is done by Apple’s Vision framework; and audiobooks are encoded with Apple’s audio frameworks. No page, image, text or audio is ever sent anywhere for processing.
Permissions the app asks for
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Camera | Only to scan printed pages with the document scanner. The text is recognised on your iPhone; the page images are not kept. |
| Photos | No permission needed: when you add a photo, iOS’s photo picker gives the app only the photos you choose. |
| Paste | iOS may ask before the app reads the clipboard. It reads it only when you tap “Read the clipboard” or paste into a new text. |
Each permission is requested in context, the first time you use the feature. Declining simply disables that feature. The app does not ask for your location, contacts, microphone or any other access.
When information does leave your device
Only in these situations:
- When you download a voice. The English, Spanish and French voices ship inside the app. Other voice packs — Supertonic 3, Kokoro’s Japanese and Chinese voices, and a French pronunciation model — download from Hugging Face (huggingface.co) when you add them or first play with a voice that needs one. Hugging Face sees your device’s IP address and which file is requested, as with any download; nothing about you or your documents is sent. Hugging Face’s handling of the download is governed by Hugging Face’s Privacy Policy.
- When you import a web page or a linked file. If you enter or paste a web address, or read a clipboard that holds one, the app fetches that page or file directly from the website, over an encrypted connection, much as a browser would. The site sees your IP address and the address requested, and its own privacy policy applies. The app keeps no cookies, never signs in, and nothing passes through us.
- When you deliberately send something — sharing an audiobook or its captions through the share sheet: Save to Files, AirDrop, Mail, another app. You choose the destination. Once a file has left the app, this policy no longer governs it — the receiving app, service or recipient does.
- For ReadSong Pro. Payment is processed by
Apple through the App Store; we never see your name, payment
details or Apple Account. To validate purchases, keep your Pro access working
across launches and devices, and give us statistics about the subscription,
the app uses RevenueCat (RevenueCat, Inc.), a
subscription-infrastructure service acting as our processor. When the app
starts, and when you open the plans, buy or restore, it asks RevenueCat
whether Pro is active and which plans are on sale, whether or not you ever
buy. RevenueCat receives:
- a random identifier the app creates for RevenueCat, and Apple’s identifier for vendor (IDFV): an ID iOS gives to one developer’s apps on one device. It is not the advertising identifier, and other developers’ apps can’t see it;
- the purchase record: which subscription, its price and currency, and when it was bought, renewed, cancelled or refunded;
- device and app details sent with each request: the device model, iOS version, ReadSong’s version, your preferred languages and your App Store country, and when the app first and last connected;
- your IP address, as with any connection, which RevenueCat uses to work out your country and, according to RevenueCat, does not store.
Aside from these, the app makes no network connections. Nothing you have imported, and none of the speech made from it, is ever part of a network request.
ReadSong Pro and the free plan
ReadSong is free to use with a daily allowance of listening (currently 3 minutes a day). The built-in sample, chapter one of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, plays without limit. Your listening time is counted on your iPhone only and is never sent anywhere.
ReadSong Pro, a monthly or yearly subscription bought through the App Store, removes the daily limit and adds audiobook export. Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You manage or cancel them in your Apple Account settings (Settings → your name → Subscriptions, or Manage subscription in ReadSong’s Settings). Refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.
Analytics, tracking and advertising
Subscription statistics only. The only analytics are the ones RevenueCat produces from the information above: for example how many people start, renew or cancel a subscription, the revenue, and how these differ by country, app version or device. They are pseudonymous: they tell us nothing about who you are or about what you read or listen to, and we use them only to run the subscription and improve the app.
No ads, no tracking. The app shows no ads, never asks for permission to track you, never reads the advertising identifier (IDFA), and uses no cookies, fingerprinting, crash reporting or telemetry about how you use its features. We do not sell your data or share it with advertisers or data brokers, and it is not combined with data from other companies’ apps or websites.
Children
The app is not directed at children under 13. It has no accounts and asks no one for personal details; the only information processed off the device is the subscription information described above, handled the same way for everyone.
Your rights
Privacy laws such as the GDPR (EU/UK) and CCPA/CPRA (California) give you rights to access, correct, delete, or port personal data a company holds about you, and to object to its processing or sale. The only data processed off-device on our behalf is the subscription information described above, keyed to a random identifier and the IDFV. It is processed to run ReadSong Pro (checking, validating and restoring purchases) and, for the statistics, on the basis of our legitimate interest in knowing how the subscription performs. We do not sell or share personal information, and everything you add to the app remains under your control on your own device, where you can inspect or delete it directly.
To exercise any of these rights — including deletion of your record at RevenueCat — contact us at fpankau@tutanota.com and we will respond.
How to verify this
- Airplane Mode. Turn it on and read with any voice already on your iPhone — the English, Spanish and French voices ship inside the app. Importing files, scanning, listening, word highlighting and audiobook export all work, because none of it needs a network. What needs a connection is downloading another voice, importing a web page, and buying or restoring Pro.
- iOS App Privacy Report. Settings → Privacy & Security → App Privacy Report shows every domain an app contacts. ReadSong’s list contains only Apple’s App Store endpoints, RevenueCat’s API, Hugging Face (when you download a voice) and the websites you import from — never a document upload.
- App Store privacy label. The app’s listing declares only Purchases and Identifiers (the random ID and the IDFV), used for app functionality and analytics, marked as not linked to your identity and not used for tracking — no user content, no usage data, no diagnostics.
Changes to this policy
If the app ever changes in a way that affects this policy — for example if an optional cloud feature were added — we will update this page and the “last updated” date above, and the change will be disclosed in the app before it takes effect. We will not begin collecting data retroactively.
Contact
Questions about this policy: fpankau@tutanota.com.