Privacy Policy

What stays on your iPhone

To play your books and remember your place, Epilogue keeps these on your iPhone:

• Your audiobooks. The files you add are copied into Epilogue’s own folder (On My iPhone › Epilogue in the Files app).
• What’s in them. The title, author, cover, chapters and length that Epilogue reads from each file.
• How you listen. Your place in each book, your bookmarks and their notes, which books you’ve finished, your folders, any titles and authors you’ve edited, and when you last played each book.
• Your settings, such as the theme, app icon, skip intervals, playback speed and sleep timer.
• A diagnostics log (see below).

We can’t see any of it. When you delete a book, Epilogue deletes its files and everything it kept about it. When you delete the app, iOS removes all of it from your iPhone.

Adding books

You choose what Epilogue gets: files or folders you pick in Files, a file you open in Epilogue from another app, or files you copy over with File Sharing from a Mac or PC. Epilogue can’t see anything else on your iPhone. If a book is in iCloud Drive or another cloud service, iOS downloads it before handing it over; Epilogue itself doesn’t go online.

The Apple Watch app

The watch app is a remote for Epilogue on your iPhone. While you use it, your iPhone sends your paired watch what it needs to show the book that’s playing: its title, author, cover, chapters, position and playback settings. The watch sends back what you tap, such as play, skip or add a bookmark.

All of this travels between your own iPhone and watch through Apple’s Watch Connectivity, and the watch keeps only a few recent covers so it can show them quickly. None of it reaches us.

The motion sensor

While a sleep timer is running, Epilogue reads your iPhone’s motion sensor to notice a firm shake, which starts the timer again. The readings are only checked for a shake; they’re never stored or sent anywhere, and Epilogue stops reading them when the timer ends. You can turn this off with Shake to Extend in Epilogue’s Settings.

What iOS does with what’s playing

Some features hand information to iOS, and Apple’s privacy policy covers what happens to it there:

• Lock Screen and Control Centre. While a book plays, iOS shows its title, author, chapter and cover, and can pass them on to what you’re listening with, such as headphones, a car or an AirPlay speaker.
• AirPlay and Bluetooth. The audio goes to the speaker or headphones you choose.
• Backups. Your books and Epilogue’s data are part of your iPhone’s backups, in iCloud or on a computer, if you make them.
• Files and File Sharing. Epilogue’s folder can be opened in the Files app, and in Finder or iTunes while your iPhone is connected, so anyone using your unlocked iPhone can see the books in it.

The diagnostics log

Settings › Logs shows a record of what Epilogue has been doing, such as an import that failed or a file that wouldn’t play, to help track down problems. Epilogue also adds the reports iOS gives it about how the app ran, such as how quickly it opened, how much memory it used, how long it played in the background, and any crash or freeze. It stays on your iPhone. It only leaves if you copy or share it yourself, and then it goes only where you send it: to us, for example, in an email about a problem. You can read every line of it before you do.

Apple, the App Store and TestFlight

Apple handles downloading and updating Epilogue under its own privacy policy, and doesn’t tell us who you are.

If you’ve turned on Share With App Developers (in Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements), Apple sends us crash reports and anonymous usage figures, such as how many people opened the app. They don’t identify you, and we use them only to fix crashes and improve the app. You can turn this off there at any time.

If you test a beta through TestFlight, Apple also shares the feedback and screenshots you send, the beta’s crash reports and, if you were invited by email, your name and email address.

Emailing us

If you email us, we receive your email address and whatever you write or attach, such as a log. We use it only to reply and to fix what you’ve told us about, keep it only as long as that takes, and never sell or share it. Under the GDPR, the legal basis for this is our legitimate interest in answering you.

The websites

epilogueapp.io and app.epilogueapp.io use analytics and session cookies.

• Analytics shows us how the sites are used, with information such as which pages are visited, which site or link brought a visitor here, the type of device and browser, the approximate location worked out from the IP address, and how long a visit lasts. We use it only to see what people read and to improve the sites, never for advertising or to build a profile of anyone, and we don’t sell it.
• Session cookies keep track of a single visit as you move between pages, and are deleted when you close your browser.

Cloudflare, which hosts both sites, receives your IP address and browser details when you visit, as any web host does, and may log them briefly to keep the site running and secure. You can block or delete cookies in your browser’s settings.

If you pick a theme on the home page, your browser remembers it so epilogueapp.io looks the same next time. That choice stays in your browser and isn’t sent to us.

Children

Epilogue doesn’t collect personal data from anyone, children included.

Your rights

Data protection laws such as the GDPR and the UK GDPR give you the right to ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to how we use it, and to complain to the data protection authority where you live.

The app gives us no personal data. What we could hold about you is in emails you’ve sent us and in the websites’ analytics. Write to us and we’ll send you a copy of what we find, or delete it. Everything the app keeps is already in your hands, on your iPhone.

Changes to this policy

If Epilogue ever changes how it handles data, for example if optional syncing between your devices arrives, we’ll update this page before that version is released and change the date at the top. Anything that would send your data off your devices will be something you choose to turn on.

Contact

Epilogue is made by Melvin Olsson, who is responsible for the data described here (the “controller” under the GDPR). For questions about privacy or this policy, email privacy@epilogueapp.io.