Maple Desk Library — Privacy policy

Last updated 29 September 2026

Maple Desk Library is a reading journal: you add the books you're reading and record or type your thoughts about them. This page explains what happens to what you put in it. The short version: your library stays on your phone. There is no Maple Desk Library account, and the developer never stores your books, notes, recordings or photos.

What stays on your phone

Your books, notes, voice recordings, transcripts, photographs of pages, quotes, reviews, summaries and settings are stored on your phone, in the app's own storage. Nobody else can read them, including the developer.

When something leaves your phone

• Finding a book. When you search for a book or scan its barcode, the title, author or ISBN you searched for is sent to Maple Desk Library's server, which looks it up in Google Books with the library's own key, and to Open Library (run by the Internet Archive). Book covers are downloaded from them. The server does not store or log what you searched for. Nothing about your notes is sent.
• About a book. When a book is added, its title, author and catalogue numbers are sent to Maple Desk Library's server, which asks Open Library, Wikidata, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons what they know about it and its author. The server keeps what they answer for a month, by book — public facts, the same for everyone — and nothing about who asked. Those sources never see your phone, and nothing about you or your notes is sent.
• The world's library. When you browse a subject or search the catalogue from the app, the subject or the words you typed are sent to Maple Desk Library's server, which asks Open Library and keeps its answer for a month — the same for everyone, with nothing about who asked, and the words are not logged. Book covers are downloaded from Open Library. If you ask it to recommend books from your shelves, a few of your books' catalogue subjects (such as "Stoics" or "Lost continents") are sent the same way — never a title, an author, a note or anything about you — and which of the books found are already yours is worked out on your phone.
• If you add your own OpenRouter key (optional, in Settings → "Bring your own key"): the app sends your data directly from your phone to OpenRouter, which passes it to an AI model to do the work you asked for — your recordings, to turn them into text (Whisper); the text of your notes, and your books' titles, to tag them, tidy them, write summaries and answer your questions (Claude, made by Anthropic); and the text of your notes, to make them searchable by meaning (OpenAI's embeddings). Every request asks OpenRouter to use only providers with a zero-data-retention policy — for Claude, Amazon Bedrock or Google Cloud — so the companies that run the models keep nothing; OpenRouter itself doesn't store what you send, only counts such as how many words went in and out. These requests go under your own key and those companies' terms. The app's developer does not see them.
• If you're a Patron (by subscription through Google Play, or by invitation, in Settings → Plans): the same requests go instead through Maple Desk Library's own server (hosted on Google Cloud in the United States), which passes them to OpenRouter under the library's key, with the same zero-data-retention rule. The server does not store or log what passes through it — not your recordings, notes, book titles or the answers that come back. To keep each Patron within the monthly allowance it records, per subscription or invitation, a random code for each of your phones (kept only in a form that can't be turned back into the code), how much each request cost and when. For a subscription it also keeps the purchase code Google Play gives your phone and what Google Play says about it — which plan, until when, and whether it renews — so it can tell whether you're still a Patron; it asks Google Play about that code and nothing else. Google Play takes the payment itself: the library never sees your name, email or card. The server holds no name, email or other detail about you, beyond a short label the developer gave an invitation. Your IP address is used for a moment to limit how often a code can be tried, and is not kept.
• Without keys, recordings are turned into text on your phone by Android's own speech recognition, and page photos and barcodes are read on your phone by Google Play services. Google Play services sends Google technical details when it does this — your phone's model and Android version, the app's version, identifiers for the device and this installation, and how long the reading took — to keep the feature working and measure it. The photo, the text and the barcode stay on your phone. Reading aloud uses your phone's text-to-speech.
• Feedback. If you send feedback from the app, your message goes to Maple Desk Library's server (hosted on Google Cloud) together with the app's version, your Android version and your phone's model, and is emailed to the developer. The server does not store it. Your IP address is used for a moment to stop the feedback form being flooded, and is not kept. The email stays in the developer's mailbox and is used only to improve Maple Desk Library; write to support@mapledesklibrary.com to have it deleted.
• Backups. If backup is turned on in your phone's settings, Android may copy the app's database and settings — not recordings, photos or API keys — to your Google account, as it does for other apps. You can also save an encrypted backup file wherever you choose; it is locked with a recovery key that only you hold.
• Sharing and exporting happen only when you choose, to wherever you choose.

What Maple Desk Library does not do

• No account, no sign-in.
• No advertising, no analytics, no tracking, no crash reporting.
• Your data is never sold, and never used to train anything by Maple Desk Library.

Permissions

• Microphone — to record your notes, only when you start a recording.
• Notifications — for the optional quote of the day, reminders you turn on, and the controls of a recording in progress.
• Photographing a page uses your phone's camera app; Maple Desk Library does not have camera access itself.

Keeping or deleting your data

You can delete any note, recording or book in the app, and remove your API keys at any time. Uninstalling Maple Desk Library deletes everything it stored on your phone. Because the developer holds no copy of your library, there is nothing to delete on our side except feedback you have sent and, for a Patron, the subscription's or invitation's records and cost counts — write to support@mapledesklibrary.com to have them deleted. A subscription is cancelled in Google Play (Payments & subscriptions); when it ends, the app goes back to the free plan and keeps everything on your phone.

Children

Maple Desk Library is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new date, and any change to what leaves your phone will be described in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions: support@mapledesklibrary.com