Privacy Policy
Leafi, for iPhone and iPad
Effective 15 September 2026 · Last updated 19 September 2026 · Developer: Letícia Sales · gwendoleaf@gmail.com
The short version. Leafi does not collect anything about you. There is no account to create, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking. Your collection is stored on your device and, if iCloud is on, in your own private iCloud account — which I cannot access. The one time Leafi talks to anyone else is when you ask it to look up a book, and even then it sends only what you are searching for.
What Leafi stores
Everything you type into the app:
- Title, author, series, publisher and ISBN
- Cover and spine images, from your photo library or your camera
- Type (manga, comic, book, light novel, magazine, artbook) and reading status
- Ratings, synopses, your private notes and favorites
- The dates each item was added and last changed
- Your display preferences: palette, light or dark mode, grid or list, sort order, which fields to show, the shelf card settings, and which books stand on the shelf and in what order
That is the whole list. Leafi never asks for your name, your e-mail address, your location, your contacts or your device identifiers, and it has no way to record how you use the app.
Where it is stored
On your device. Everything is written to a local database inside the app, which only Leafi can read.
In your iCloud, if iCloud is on. Leafi uses Apple's CloudKit to keep your collection in sync across your devices. It writes to the private database of your own iCloud account — the same place Apple's own apps keep your data. It is tied to your Apple Account, protected by Apple, and I have no access to it: I cannot read, export or recover what is in it.
Apple's handling of iCloud data is covered by Apple's Privacy Policy.
If you turn iCloud off, or sign out of iCloud, Leafi keeps working and stores everything locally on that device only.
Photos and the camera
When you pick a cover from your library, Leafi opens the system photo picker. The picker runs outside the app, so Leafi never gets access to your photo library — it receives only the single image you chose. That image is saved with the item, on your device and in your own iCloud, and nowhere else.
You can also photograph a book, or point the camera at the barcode on its back cover. iOS asks your permission the first time, and you can withdraw it at any time in Settings. A photo you take is saved with the item, the same as one from your library. While you are reading a barcode nothing is photographed or kept: the code is read on your device as you point the camera, and all that comes out of it is the ISBN number, which is used for the search below.
Looking up a book online
When you tap Search online, or scan an ISBN, Leafi sends what you are looking for — the words you typed, or the ISBN — to two public book catalogs: Google Books and Open Library, which is run by the Internet Archive. They answer with book details and cover images, and Leafi shows you the results so you can choose one. What you choose is filled into the form, still yours to correct before you save it.
Nothing about you goes with the request. There is no account and no identifier of any kind, and neither catalog is told who is asking or what is already in your collection — only the search itself, exactly as if you had typed it on their own website. Like any website, they keep their own records of the requests they receive, covered by Google's Privacy Policy and the Internet Archive's Privacy Policy.
This happens only when you ask for it. If you never use the search, Leafi never contacts either of them — and everything else in the app works with no internet at all.
What Leafi does not do
- No account, sign-up, login or password
- No analytics, telemetry or usage measurement
- No advertising and no ad identifiers
- No tracking, no profile of you, and nothing about you shared with any other company
- No third-party software development kits of any kind
- No servers of its own: the only requests Leafi makes are the ones Apple's iCloud sync makes on your behalf, and the book searches you ask for
Crash reports
If you have turned on Share With App Developers in iOS (Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements), Apple may send me crash reports and performance statistics about Leafi. These come from Apple, are aggregated and do not identify you, and they never contain your collection. You can turn this off at any time in the same place. Leafi has no crash reporting of its own.
Children
Leafi is not directed at children and collects nothing from anyone, of any age.
Your data, your control
- See it: everything Leafi holds is visible in the app itself.
- Change or remove one item: open it and edit or delete it.
- Remove everything: delete the app from your device. To remove the iCloud copy as well, go to Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Account Storage and delete the Leafi data.
Because I never receive your data, there is nothing to request, correct or delete on my side. Rights under the GDPR, the LGPD and similar laws — access, correction, deletion, portability — are exercised directly in the app and in your iCloud account, which is where the data lives.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the new version will be published at this address and the date at the top will be updated. Material changes will also be mentioned in the app's release notes on the App Store.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about Leafi: gwendoleaf@gmail.com