Book Tracker is designed around a simple principle: your reading life belongs to you, not to the app. There are no accounts to create, no advertising, no tracking, and no data sold to third parties. This page summarizes how that works in practice.
What Book Tracker does not do
- No accounts — you never need to register, log in, or provide an email address.
- No advertising — there are no banners, pop-ups, or sponsored content anywhere in the app.
- No tracking — Book Tracker does not include third-party analytics, usage trackers, or behavioral profiling.
- No data sale or sharing — your library, reading statistics, notes, and quotes are never sold, rented, shared, or made available to advertisers.
Where your data is stored
| What | Where | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Your library (books, statuses, progress, notes, quotes, statistics, tags, series, positions, purchases) | Locally on your device | Stored in Book Tracker’s local database. |
| Automatic daily backups | Locally on your device | The most recent backups are kept; older ones rotate out automatically. |
| Manual backups | Locally (and anywhere you export them to: Files, AirDrop, iCloud Drive…) | You choose where they go. |
| iCloud sync | Apple iCloud, under your Apple ID | Encrypted and managed entirely by Apple. Book Tracker does not have access to this data. |
Book Tracker does not run any servers that store your library data, and does not build user profiles. The only third-party service involved is Apple’s own iCloud, which operates under your Apple ID and Apple’s privacy guarantees.
👉 Apple’s documentation: Where iCloud data is stored and how it’s protected
What about online book search?
When you add a book by searching online (by title or ISBN), Book Tracker queries public book databases (such as Google Books, Open Library, and Apple Books) to fetch metadata and cover images. These are public APIs and the only data sent is the search query itself: no personal information, no identifier tied to you.
If you prefer to skip online lookups entirely, you can use Book Tracker fully offline and add books manually.
Why this matters
Most book-tracking apps make money from advertising, subscriptions tied to your data, or by selling reading habits to third parties. Book Tracker has rejected that model from day one: it’s a one-time purchase, supported directly by the people who use it. This is the structural reason there are no ads and no tracking. It’s not just a promise, it’s how the business works.
You can read the full philosophy behind this choice in The Book Tracker Manifesto.