Privacy policy

ShelfSync has no account system, no advertising and no tracking. The short version: your library stays between your device and your own server.

Effective 30 October 2026. This policy covers the ShelfSync apps for iOS, iPadOS and Android, and this website.

Who is responsible

ShelfSync is made by Gordie Noye, an individual developer in Canada. Questions about this policy: feedback@shelfsync.org.

What stays on your device

To do its job, the app keeps these on your phone or tablet only. None of it is sent to the developer.

• The servers you add: their names, addresses and connection settings.
• Your sign-in details for those servers (passwords, tokens, API keys, gateway credentials), kept in the device's secure storage: the Keychain on iOS and a Keystore-protected store on Android.
• A copy of each chosen library's catalogue (titles, authors, series, covers), so the app is quick and works offline.
• The books you download, in the folder you chose, and a record of them.
• Your settings, such as the theme and the sort order of each list.

The app's database is left out of device backups. Deleting the app deletes all of it, apart from books saved in a folder outside the app, which stay where you put them.

Who the app talks to

Your own servers

The app connects only to the Audiobookshelf servers you add, and to any proxy or gateway in front of them, to sign in, read your libraries and download books. That traffic goes between your device and your server; the developer never sees it. If you use single sign-on, the sign-in page is your server's identity provider, shown in the system's own sign-in browser.

Crash reports

Store builds of the app send a report to Sentry, a crash reporting service, when the app crashes or meets an error, so the developer can fix it. A report holds:

• what went wrong, and where in the app's code;
• the app's version, the device model, the operating system and its version;
• a short trail of the app's own warnings before the problem.

Before a report leaves your device, passwords, tokens, sign-in credentials and email addresses are removed from it. Reports carry no name, no account, no server address and no identifier that follows you, and they are not used for advertising or tracking. ShelfSync does not send your IP address with them. Sentry stores the reports in the European Union (Germany) and deletes them after at most 90 days.

Nobody else

There are no analytics, advertising or social media tools in the app, and no data is sold or shared.

Permissions the app asks for

• Local network (iOS): to reach a server on your home network.
• Notifications (Android): to show a download's progress while you are in another app.
• A folder you choose: to save books where your player can read them. The app reads and writes only that folder.

This website

This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics or third-party scripts. It is served by Cloudflare, which processes visitors' IP addresses to deliver and protect the site, as described in Cloudflare's privacy policy. The donation links lead to Ko-fi and to charities; what you give there is handled under their own privacy policies.

Children

ShelfSync is not directed at children under 13 and collects no personal information from anyone.

Your choices

• Remove a server in Settings to delete its sign-in details and catalogue from the device.
• Delete the app to remove everything it keeps.
• Crash reports cannot be traced to you, so there is nothing about you to look up or delete. If you would like a report removed anyway, write to the address above with the time it happened.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new effective date. A change that collects more will be described in the app's release notes first.