The small print
Privacy
Leafin has no account, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. Your library is yours, kept on your iPhone.
Last updated 26 September 2026.
What stays with you
Everything you put into Leafin — your books, ratings, notes, reviews, reading sessions, passages, shelves, goals and settings — is stored on your iPhone. We do not run a server that holds it, and we cannot see it.
If you use iCloud, Leafin keeps your library in your own private iCloud database, and your settings in your own iCloud storage, so they reach your other devices. That data is held by Apple under Apple’s privacy policy; it is not visible to us.
Deleting the app deletes the library on that iPhone. Anything kept in iCloud can be removed in the Settings app, under your name, then iCloud.
What is sent to look books up
To find a book’s details and cover, Leafin asks public book catalogues. These requests carry what is needed to answer them and nothing that identifies you:
- Open Library, run by the Internet Archive, is asked first. It receives what you type into search, the ISBN of a barcode you scan, and, to suggest more by authors you love, the names of authors whose books you rated highly. Each request names the app and gives our contact address, as Open Library asks every app to. Covers are downloaded from Open Library too. See the Internet Archive’s terms and privacy policy.
- Google Books is asked only when Open Library has no answer. It receives the same search text or ISBN, with the app’s own key and identifier. See Google’s privacy policy.
Like any website you visit, these services see the network address your request comes from. Leafin sends no name, email, account, advertising identifier or device identifier with any of them.
Collections
About once a day Leafin downloads the list of curated collections shown in Discover from leafin.app. It is a plain file download: nothing about you or your library is sent with it.
Scanning happens on your iPhone
When you scan a barcode, a cover, a shelf or a page, the reading is done on your iPhone by Apple’s on-device frameworks. The photos and camera frames are never uploaded, stored anywhere else, or used to train anything.
- Barcodes, covers and passages are read with Apple’s Vision framework, on the device. The words of a passage you save stay in your library, on your iPhone and in your own iCloud.
- A shelf scan reads the spines with Vision, then uses Apple Intelligence’s on-device model to work out which words belong to which book. That model runs on your iPhone; nothing is sent to Apple or to us.
- To find a book’s details, what was read — a barcode’s number, or the titles and authors found on a cover or a shelf — is then looked up in the book catalogues described above, exactly as if you had typed it into search. The photo itself never leaves your iPhone.
Photos and notifications
- Leafin only adds to your photo library when you save a picture you made in it.
- Reading reminders are scheduled on your iPhone. No notification is sent from a server.
Purchases
Leafin Plus is bought through the App Store. Apple handles payment; Leafin only learns whether Plus is active on your Apple Account.
What Leafin does not do
- No tracking, and no advertising identifier.
- No ads.
- No analytics or crash-reporting services, and no third-party code that collects data.
- Nothing about you is sold or shared.
This website
leafin.app sets no cookies and runs no analytics or tracking. It loads nothing from anyone else — the fonts and pictures are served from the site itself — so reading it tells no one else you were here. Like any website, it is served by a host, Cloudflare, which sees the network address a request comes from in order to answer it.
Leaving with your data
Settings › Export your library writes everything — including your passages, moods and reading time — to a CSV file you can keep or take elsewhere.
Children
Leafin collects no personal information from anyone, including children.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new date. Questions go to [email protected].