Privacy Policy

Account information

• Your account. You need an account to use Afterword. You can sign in with Google, with Apple, or with your email address.
• Sign in with Google. We receive the basic profile information you agree to share through Google, such as your name and email address.
• Sign in with Apple. We receive the name and email address you choose to share through Apple. If you use Apple's "Hide My Email", we only ever see Apple's private relay address.
• Email. If you sign in with your email address, we send a one-time code to that address to confirm it is yours.
• Guest accounts. Earlier versions of Afterword let you start without signing up, using an anonymous account tied to your device. If you still have one, it is not linked to your identity until you secure it with Sign in with Apple.

Content you create or import

• Books, highlights, notes, the concept cards generated from them, your review history, reflections, reading sessions, goals, and streaks.
• Content you import from third parties you choose to connect or upload, including Readwise (via an access token you provide), Kindle "My Clippings" files, and Goodreads CSV exports.

Voice reflections

If you record a spoken reflection, the audio is sent to OpenAI's Whisper service to transcribe it. The transcript is saved as your reflection. We do not retain the audio recording after transcription completes.

Device permissions

• Microphone is used only while you are recording a voice reflection.
• Camera is used only while you are scanning a page of a book. The text is read on your device and the photo is not uploaded. Only the passages you choose to keep are saved to your library, as highlights.
• Photos access is used only to save share cards you create to your photo library. Afterword asks only for permission to add photos, so it cannot see the photos already in your library.
• Notifications are used to send local reminders (such as the daily recall nudge) from your device. You can turn these off in iOS Settings.

Diagnostic information

To keep the app working reliably, Afterword sends crash and error reports to Sentry, stored in Sentry's European data region (Frankfurt, Germany). A report contains technical details such as the app version, the device model and iOS version, and what the app was doing when the problem happened. We have set Sentry up not to attach your name, email address or account to these reports, and not to send screenshots or anything from your library. Afterword does not include third-party advertising or cross-app tracking SDKs.

Waitlist and reading lists

If you join the launch waitlist, or sign up to receive our reading lists, we collect the email address you submit, the web page that referred you (if any), which form you used, and the time you joined. We use this to send you new reading lists as they are published, to let you know when Afterword opens for iOS, and to send occasional product updates. We do not send anything else, and we do not sell or share your address. You can unsubscribe at any time, and you can ask us to delete your address by emailing us (see Contact below). Entries are stored on our behalf by our database provider, Supabase, and our emails are sent through Resend.

Website analytics

On our website we use Vercel Web Analytics, a privacy-friendly measurement tool that records anonymous, aggregated visit data — such as page views, the referring site, and approximate country, browser, and device type. It does not use cookies, does not track you across other websites, and does not collect information that identifies you personally.

• To provide the Service: store your library, generate recall cards, transcribe voice reflections, schedule reviews, sync your data across your devices, and send the reminders you enable.
• To operate, secure, debug, and improve the Service.
• To respond to your support requests.

Some features rely on AI providers acting on our behalf:

• Concept cards and sessions. Your highlights and notes, with each book's title and author, are sent to Anthropic to generate recall cards, practice exercises, and the question you take away from a daily session.
• Genres. Book titles and authors (and nothing else) are sent to Anthropic to tag each book's genre.
• Transcription. Voice-reflection audio is sent to OpenAI (Whisper) to produce text.

We ask first. Afterword sends nothing to Anthropic or OpenAI until you agree on the "Your lines, your say" screen in the app, which names both companies and what each receives. If you choose "Not now", your books, highlights and typed notes still work, and idea cards and voice notes stay off. You can change your choice at any time in Settings, under AI help.

These providers process your content only to perform these tasks and do not use it to train their models. Both are used through their business APIs, which by default exclude what we send from model training. OpenAI does not keep the voice recordings it transcribes for us, and neither do we.

We share data only with service providers that help us run Afterword, and only as needed:

Supabase

Authentication, database, file storage, and hosting.

Anthropic

Generating concept cards, practice exercises and session questions from your highlights, and tagging genres.

OpenAI

Transcribing voice reflections with Whisper.

Apple

Sign in with Apple, and App Store subscription billing.

RevenueCat

Keeping the record of your App Store subscription, linked to your Afterword account, so Pro works wherever you sign in.

Sentry

Crash and error reports from the app, without your name, email address or account.

Google

Sign in with Google, if you choose it.

Open Library

Book search and cover images. The books you search for or import are looked up in Open Library's public catalogue.

Resend

Sending our emails, such as the message that confirms your waitlist sign-up.

Readwise

Only if you connect it, to import your highlights.

Vercel

Hosting our website and providing cookieless, privacy-friendly website analytics.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising. We may disclose information if required by law or to protect the rights, safety, and security of our users and the Service.

Afterword Pro is sold as an auto-renewing subscription through the Apple App Store. Apple processes your payment; we do not receive or store your payment-card details. Apple shares limited transaction and subscription-status information with us so we can unlock Pro features.

We use RevenueCat to keep that record. When you subscribe or restore a purchase, the app sends the App Store transaction to RevenueCat together with your Afterword account ID, and our servers ask RevenueCat whether your membership is active. RevenueCat never receives your payment-card details.

We keep your information for as long as your account is active. You can delete your account at any time from Settings inside the app, which removes your data from our active database. Residual copies may persist in our database provider's routine backups for a short period (currently up to about 7 days) before being overwritten.

• Access, correct, or delete your data (delete via Settings, or contact us).
• Control camera, microphone, photos and notification access in iOS Settings.
• Disconnect Readwise at any time.
• Depending on where you live (for example the EEA, UK, or California), you may have additional rights such as data portability or the right to object to certain processing. Contact us to exercise them.
• If you are in the EEA, you have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection authority, including the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens).

Your data is access-controlled so that each account can reach only its own content, and it is encrypted in transit. No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information.

Afterword is not directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age required in your country), and we do not knowingly collect their personal information.

We and our service providers may process your information in countries other than your own. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards for these transfers.

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date above, and significant changes will be communicated in the app where appropriate.

Questions about privacy? Email us at hello@theafterword.app.