Privacy Policy

Last updated July 21, 2026

The short version

• No analytics, no ads, no trackers. We audited our own code to write this policy: the app contains zero analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting SDKs. The only third-party SDK in the app is RevenueCat, which handles subscriptions.
• Your library is yours. Saved articles, uploaded books and PDFs, highlights, notes, tags, and reading progress are stored privately per account and synced between your devices. You can export everything as JSON, and deleting your account really deletes it.
• AI stays on your phone. Article summaries, key points, questions, the “Ask” chat, and podcast transcription all run entirely on-device (iOS 26+, Apple Intelligence). Your article text is never sent to any cloud AI service, no microphone is involved, and your Ask conversations are never stored anywhere, by us or anyone else.
• One thing to know about transcripts: if you transcribe a public podcast episode, the resulting transcript text is shared with other Squirrel Reader users who save the same episode, so each episode only needs transcribing once.
• Questions? Email us at support@squirrelreader.com.

Who we are

Squirrel Reader is made by Swiftfox Software, and Swiftfox Software is the data controller for the personal data described here. You can reach us at support@squirrelreader.com.

This policy covers the Squirrel Reader apps (iOS today, and Android when it ships), the Squirrel Reader Chrome extension, the share extensions, and the squirrelreader.com website.

What we collect

We collect what a read-it-later app needs to be a read-it-later app, and not much else.

Account information

When you create an account we store your email address and your sign-in credentials — a password hash if you use email sign-in, or an identity token if you use Sign in with Apple or Google. You can optionally add a display name. We also store your subscription tier (free or premium) and your app preferences, such as reader defaults and your Kindle settings.

Your library

Everything you save becomes part of your library, stored under your account:

• Saved items — the URL you saved plus extracted metadata (title, author, source, excerpt, word count, published date, thumbnail).
• Article text — the full parsed article body, so it can sync to your other devices and be read offline.
• Uploaded files — EPUB and PDF files you add to your library, plus the text extracted from them (see “Uploaded files” below).
• Highlights and notes — the exact highlighted text, its color, a small amount of surrounding text used to anchor the highlight in place, and any notes you attach.
• Tags and collections — names, colors, descriptions, and which items they contain.
• Feed subscriptions — the podcast, RSS, and newsletter feeds you follow, and lightweight metadata (titles, links, excerpts) for their recent entries.
• Recipes — for a saved recipe, the extracted ingredients, steps, and other structured details, plus any photos you add, which we store directly rather than as separate files.
• Reading and playback progress — how far you’ve read or listened, so every device picks up where you left off.
• Reading Stats — per-day, per-device totals of time spent reading, listening, watching, and using read-aloud, so the in-app Reading Stats screen can show you your own habits. This is just counters — not what you read, only how long.
• AI-generated text — if you generate an on-device summary, key points, or questions for an item, that text is saved to the item and synced (more on this below). Chats with “Ask” are not saved anywhere.

All of this is protected by per-user access rules on the server: your library is readable only by you.

Your whole library is also mirrored into a database on your device, so saving, reading, searching, tagging, and highlighting all work offline. That on-device copy — including downloaded podcast and video files, your search index, and reader preferences — stays on your device and is never uploaded. The one exception is files you explicitly add to your library: EPUBs and PDFs you upload are, by design, stored on our server so they can sync to your other devices (see “Uploaded files” below).

On-device AI: summaries, key points, questions, Ask, and transcripts

On iOS 26 and later, Squirrel Reader can summarize an article, pull out its key points, suggest questions worth thinking about, answer questions about it in a chat (“Ask”), and transcribe podcast episodes — all using Apple’s on-device models. The article text and audio never leave your device for this — no cloud AI service is involved, and transcription works on the downloaded audio file, not the microphone. Only the resulting text of a summary, key points, or questions is uploaded:

• Summaries, key points, and questions are saved to your own item and synced only to your devices.
• Ask conversations are never written to disk or synced anywhere, by us or on your device — a conversation lives only in memory for as long as the app stays open, and is gone the next time you launch it.
• Transcripts are different, and we want to be clear about this: transcripts go into a pool shared across all Squirrel Reader users, keyed by the episode’s audio URL, so a popular episode only has to be transcribed once. If you transcribe an episode of a public podcast, other users who save the same episode can read that transcript. The pool records which account contributed a transcript (identified only by an internal account ID, never your name or email) so contributions can be moderated; the app never displays contributor identity. Episodes from private or tokenized feed URLs don’t match other users’ episodes, so those transcripts are effectively private to you.

If you’d rather not contribute a transcript to the pool, don’t run transcription on that episode.

Article images

When you save an article, we copy its images (up to 20 per article, plus a thumbnail) to our own storage so they load reliably and work offline. These copies are stored at unguessable, content-hashed URLs, but the URLs themselves are publicly readable — anyone who somehow obtained the exact URL could load the image. The images are copies of pictures that were already on the public web, and they’re deleted when you delete your account, but we’d rather you know how they’re hosted.

Uploaded files (EPUB & PDF)

If you upload an EPUB or PDF — or open one with Squirrel Reader from Files or Mail — the file itself is stored on our server so your books and documents can sync to your other devices. Uploaded files live in a private storage area readable only by you; unlike article images, there are no public URLs for the files themselves. When you delete an uploaded item, the file is removed from our storage within moments (which also frees your storage quota), and deleting your account removes every uploaded file along with the rest of your data.

Two related details:

• Images inside uploaded books are handled like article images: copied to our storage at unguessable, content-hashed URLs that are technically publicly readable (see “Article images” above). They are removed when you delete the book.
• The text of an uploaded book or PDF is extracted on our server and stored with your library so it can sync and be read offline, just like article text. The search index built from it lives on your device.

Send to Kindle

If you use Send to Kindle (a Premium feature), we store your @kindle.com address and your auto-send preference. Each send converts the article to an EPUB and emails it to your Kindle address. We keep a server-side log of each send attempt — the Kindle address, whether it succeeded, any error, the file size, and a timestamp — which we use to enforce a fair-use limit of 25 sends per day. Only you (and our server) can see your send log.

Imports

If you import from Pocket, Instapaper, or Omnivore, your export file is uploaded and parsed on our server to recreate your items and tags. The raw export file is processed in memory and not stored — only the resulting library items are kept. (This applies to library-import files; EPUB and PDF files you upload as reading material are stored so they can sync — see “Uploaded files” above.)

Clipboard

The app can offer to save a URL from your clipboard. It checks whether the clipboard contains a URL using the iOS privacy-safe API (which doesn’t read the contents and doesn’t trigger the paste notification). The actual clipboard value is read only when you tap the save button, and nothing is stored unless you save the link. The clipboard is never read in the background.

Sessions on your device

Your sign-in session (access and refresh tokens) is stored locally on your device: in the app’s storage, in the iOS Keychain (so the share extension can save links), in app-private storage on Android when the Android app ships, and in the Chrome extension’s local extension storage. Sessions never leave your device except to authenticate with our backend.

How saving actually works

Two details worth knowing:

• Articles are fetched by our server, not your device. When you save a URL, our backend fetches the page, strips the clutter, and stores the readable text for you. The publisher’s website sees our server’s address — not your device — along with a user agent that identifies itself as SquirrelReader. For some platforms (YouTube, Vimeo, Reddit, X), our server uses the platform’s public metadata API instead. No account information of yours is ever sent to the sites you save.
• Podcasts and videos come straight from the publisher. When you stream or download an episode, or tap “Open Original” to view a page in its original form, your device connects directly to the publisher’s servers. Like any direct web request, the publisher (or their hosting/CDN) sees your device’s IP address and standard request metadata. We don’t sit in the middle of your listening.

What we don’t collect

This list is verified against our codebase, not just our intentions:

• No analytics or telemetry SDKs. None. We don’t know how often you open the app, what you read, or how long you read it — and we’ve decided we don’t need to.
• No advertising SDKs and no ad identifiers. There are no ads, so there’s nothing to target.
• No crash reporters. If the app crashes, we find out when you tell us.
• No cross-app tracking. The app doesn’t track you across other companies’ apps or websites, and never shows the App Tracking Transparency prompt because there’s nothing to ask about.
• No access to your location, contacts, camera, or photos. The app doesn’t request these permissions.
• No microphone recording. Nothing in the app records audio. Transcription works on downloaded audio files.
• No cloud AI. Your article text is never sent to any cloud AI service. Summaries and transcription are generated on your device (iOS 26+).
• No tracking in the reader. Saved articles are sanitized on our server — scripts and trackers are stripped before the article ever reaches your screen.
• The Chrome extension requests only the minimum permissions (the active tab, its own storage, and a context-menu entry). It cannot see your browsing history and only touches the tab you explicitly save.

Services we rely on

We use a small set of service providers (subprocessors) to run Squirrel Reader. Each receives only what it needs:

We don’t sell your personal data, and we don’t share it with anyone beyond the providers above.

Your rights and your data

We extend GDPR-style rights to everyone, not just users in the EU:

• Export. You can export your items, tags, collections, and highlights as a JSON file anytime, right from Settings. Your data isn’t locked in.
• Deletion. You can delete your account in-app, no email required. Deletion is real erasure: your account, your entire library, your uploaded files and stored images, and your Loops marketing contact are all removed.
• Access and correction. You can view and edit your account details in-app, or email us for anything else.
• California residents have the rights provided by the CCPA, including the right to know, delete, and non-discrimination. We don’t sell personal information, so there’s nothing to opt out of.

Retention: items you delete are soft-deleted first (so deletions can sync across your devices), then permanently purged from our servers after 30 days. Account deletion removes everything immediately.

To exercise any of these rights, use the in-app tools or email support@squirrelreader.com.

Where your data lives

Our infrastructure (Supabase) is hosted in the United States, and we operate it to GDPR standards for everyone, everywhere. If you’re in the EU or UK, transfers to the US are covered by our providers’ standard contractual clauses.

Children

Squirrel Reader is for readers aged 13 and up. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact us and we’ll delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your data, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. We won’t quietly bury anything meaningful — the whole point of this policy is that there’s not much to bury.

Contact

Swiftfox Software support@squirrelreader.com

We store your reading, not your data — squirrels hoard acorns, not secrets.