In short

We ask for no name, email, phone number or login.
Everything you add is written to the device itself.
There are no ads, no trackers and no behavioural profiles.
Your library is not sent anywhere. What leaves the device is always something you asked for — a search, a scanned barcode, the subscription check, the backup you turned on.

What the app stores

Books, authors, shelves, collections, series, readings, sessions, notes, quotes, loans, goals, challenges, and your appearance and language preferences. Also the files you attach: covers, session photos, note photos and audio, profile photo.

All of it lives in a local database and in folders inside the app’s private area. No other application can read those files, and neither can we.

What leaves the device

1. The subscription check

If you subscribe to Dousha Plus, the app asks the subscription service (RevenueCat, which talks to the App Store or Google Play) whether the subscription is active. The app sends no identifier of yours with that question — the service works from an anonymous id it generates itself — and nothing about your books goes with the request.

The payment itself is handled by Apple or Google. We neither receive nor store card details.

2. Cloud backup, if you turn it on

Cloud backup ships turned off. If you turn it on, the app builds an archive of your library and sends it to your own account: iCloud on iPhone, Google Drive on Android. The file sits in an area reserved for the app that no other application and no web page can open.

On Android we request only the drive.appdata permission, which grants access solely to files the app itself created. Dousha cannot see any other file in your Drive. You can disconnect the account at any time; the backups already uploaded remain yours, in your account.

In that flow the file is held by Apple or Google, under their own privacy terms. We keep no copy.

3. The book search, when you ask for it

When you search for a book by name or scan its barcode, the app asks public book catalogues — among them the CBL, Brazil’s own ISBN agency, plus Open Library and European national libraries. One thing leaves: the words you typed, or the thirteen digits the camera read.

Nothing from your library travels with that question. Not the books you already have, not a count of them, not a device or install identifier — not to rank results, not to suggest anything, not to warm a cache. A search is something you typed; your shelf is something that is yours, and the line between the two is the whole argument. The app does not keep what you searched for either: the list is gone when you close the screen.

What never leaves

Your books, notes and readings — except in the backup you turn on yourself.
The photos you take inside the app.
Any device, advertising or usage-analytics identifier.

Camera, microphone and photos

The camera is used to photograph a book cover, read the barcode on the back cover, read a QR code the app itself produced, and attach a photo to a session. Text recognition, barcode decoding and cover matching all happen on the device, with the system’s own libraries (Vision on iOS, ML Kit on Android). No image is sent anywhere — not for analysis, not to look the book up. What leaves when you scan is only the ISBN the camera decoded here: the thirteen digits, and nothing of the photo.

The microphone is used only when you record audio for a note. The file stays on the device, like any other attachment.

Photo library access is there so you can pick a cover. The app reads the image you selected and nothing else.

Notifications

Loan due dates, time capsules, the streak reminder and your reading-hour nudge are all scheduled locally by the device. There is no push server and we send nothing anywhere to schedule them. Each kind has its own switch in settings.

Children

The app is not directed at children and collects data from nobody — which holds equally at any age.

Deleting your data

Since we store nothing, there is nothing to ask us to delete. Inside the app, “Erase everything” under Settings › Data removes the whole library from the device. Uninstalling also erases everything it wrote.

If you turned cloud backup on, the uploaded files sit in your account and are deleted from there — in the iCloud or Google Drive settings.

Taking your data with you

Settings › Data exports the entire library as a file you keep wherever you like, covers, photos and audio included. That option is free forever and depends on no subscription, today or later.

Changes to this policy

If anything else starts leaving the device, this page changes at the same moment the app does — not afterwards. The date at the top says when that last happened.

Contact

Questions about privacy: hello@dousha.app.