Privacy Policy

Refract ("we", "us", or "our") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we handle your information when you use the Refract mobile application (the "App").

1. Local-First Processing

Refract is designed as a local-first application. Key aspects of our privacy model include:

• No Data Collection: We do not collect personal information, documents, annotations, or usage data, and the App does not send any of it to our servers or to anyone else's. There are no accounts and no cloud sync.
• Local Storage: Everything you add to the App (pasted text, web articles, and files such as PDF, EPUB, MOBI, FB2, Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), OpenDocument text (.odt), RTF, HTML, Markdown, and plain text) is stored on your device. Your documents, highlights, notes, bookmarks, vocabulary, collections, reading history, training results, goals, and settings are kept in a private, app-sandboxed local database (Room/SQLite) and in the App's private preferences, which other apps cannot read. Copies of files you import, covers and images from your documents, and thumbnails made from PDFs are kept in the same app-private storage. The App does not add its own encryption to this data; Android's app sandbox is what keeps other apps out of it.
• No Analytics/Telemetry: We do not use any third-party analytics, crash-reporting, or telemetry SDKs to track your behavior. The statistics, streaks, goals, and achievements in the App are worked out on your device from your own reading sessions and are never sent anywhere.
• On-Device Features: Previews, skims, quizzes, and vocabulary study are made from your text on your device. Reading aloud uses the text-to-speech engine installed on your phone (see Section 3).

2. Information You Provide

The App only processes information that you explicitly provide, such as:

• Documents: Text you paste or copy from the clipboard, files and folders you import, text you select in another app and send to Refract, and web addresses you paste into the App, share with it from other apps, or open in its browser.
• Annotations and study material: Highlights, notes, bookmarks, vocabulary words, collections, and tags created within the App.

Note: This data is kept on your device. The App hands your data to another app or file only when you ask it to:

• "Share Notes", the Notebook exports (Markdown, text, CSV, JSON, HTML), and quote cards send your highlights and notes to the app you pick in Android's share sheet or to a file you choose.
• "Copy Text" puts a document's text on the clipboard, and "Copy paragraph", an accessibility action in the Kinetic view, does the same for one paragraph.
• "Share a progress card" and the CSV exports in Progress send a picture or two files of your reading statistics (without document titles in the picture) to the app you pick.
• "Look up" and "Translate" on a vocabulary word send that word to the dictionary or translation app you pick; "Web definition" opens that word's Wiktionary page in your browser; exporting your words as CSV or for Anki sends the list to the app you pick.
• A backup (see Section 5) is a file you save in a place you choose.
• "Report a problem" and "Suggest a feature" open an email to us in your own email app, with the App's version, your Android version, and your phone's maker and model filled in under your message. Nothing is sent unless you send it, and you can delete any of it first.

3. Permissions and Network Use

The App requests the following permissions:

• Internet Access & Network State: Internet access is used only for things you ask for:
  • Web pages and PDFs you add. When you add a web address, with "Pasted URL" in the App, a link you paste, or from another app's Share menu, the App downloads that page (or PDF) once to extract its text. The request goes to the website at that address.
  • The Original view. For a web article, the App shows the live page, and any links you follow from it, in a built-in browser view.
  • The built-in browser. When you open the browser, it loads any address you type and, if you type words instead of an address, sends the search to the search engine you picked in the browser (DuckDuckGo unless you change it; Startpage, Brave Search, Qwant, and Mojeek are the others). "Read this page" and "Read selection" read the page on screen and add it to your library.
  • Project Gutenberg. Opening the free classics list, searching it, viewing a book's details and cover, and adding a book send requests to gutenberg.org. Lists are kept for up to a day in the App's cache.
  • Wikipedia. Random, featured, and search results, and adding an article, send requests to the Wikipedia site for the language you choose (for example en.wikipedia.org). The article's title or your search words are part of the request. Wikipedia text is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, and the App adds a credit line with the article's address to every article you add.
• What a request carries: In every case the request goes to the site you chose, which receives what any browser or web client would send, such as your IP address and the App's user agent ("Refract (Android reader app)"). Requests to Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia send no cookies and no sign-in. In the Original view and the built-in browser the page runs as it would in a browser: it can load its own images, scripts, and third-party content, and it can set cookies, which are kept in the App's private storage (third-party cookies are blocked in the built-in browser). Nothing is fetched in the background, and nothing is fetched ahead of what you open. The libraries Refract uses may also check whether your device is online; nothing about that leaves your device. We do NOT use these permissions to collect or transmit your personal data.
• Notifications (Android 13 and later): Asked for only when you turn on the daily reading reminder, or when you agree to show controls while reading aloud. The reminder is a notification on your phone at the time you choose, if you have not met your goal that day. Nothing about it leaves your device.
• Receive Boot Completed: Lets the daily reminder be set again after your phone restarts. It does nothing if reminders are off.
• Foreground Service (media playback): Used only to keep reading aloud going when you leave the App or lock your phone. While it runs, the App shows a notification with pause, skip, and stop buttons.
• Reading aloud: The App speaks with the text-to-speech engine you have installed on your phone. Refract does not send text anywhere itself. Most engines speak on the phone. If you choose a voice that your engine marks as needing the internet (Refract labels these "Needs internet"), that engine sends the text to its own voice service, under its own privacy policy.
• Google Play billing: Lets the App ask Google Play, through the Play Store app on your phone, whether your Google account has an active Refract subscription, and start a purchase when you choose to subscribe. See Section 4.
• Cleartext Traffic: The App allows connections to unencrypted (HTTP) websites if you provide a non-HTTPS URL. Such connections are not encrypted, so we recommend using HTTPS whenever possible.

4. Third-Party Services

Refract does not integrate with any third-party services that collect your data. The App contains no social media plugins, advertising networks, or tracking pixels. The sites you choose to open are the exception: web pages shown in the Original view or the built-in browser, and the sites behind Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia, are loaded from their own servers and are under their own privacy policies. Pages may include their own ads, analytics, or trackers, which the websites control. Your speech engine and the dictionary, translation, and storage apps you choose to use are likewise separate from Refract.

Purchases and subscriptions. After a 24-hour trial, Refract is used with a subscription bought through Google Play. Google Play handles the purchase and your payment details under Google's own terms and privacy policy; Refract never receives your payment details and has no account of its own. The App asks Google Play whether your Google account has an active Refract subscription and keeps that status, and the time your trial started, on your device. Nothing about your purchase is sent to us. The Google Play billing library inside the App, which the subscription needs, is Google's own code: it talks to Google Play and can send Google diagnostic information about how it ran, under Google's privacy policy.

Ratings. "Rate Refract" opens Refract's page in the Google Play Store. After you have used the App for a few days, and not more than a few times a year, the App may also ask Google Play to show its own rating card, using Google's In-App Review library. The card is Google Play's: a rating or review you give there goes to Google Play under your Google account, as it would on the store page, and the App is not told whether you rated it or what you wrote.

5. Data Retention & Deletion

Since your data is stored on your device, you control it:

• Deleting a document within the App removes it, its highlights and notes, and any file copy, cover, or thumbnail the App made when you imported it.
• If you unlock a password-protected PDF, an unlocked copy is kept in the App's private storage so it can be opened again without the password; deleting the document removes it.
• Backups: "Back up now" saves a .refract file in a place you choose. It holds your documents' text, highlights, notes, collections, vocabulary, your settings, and, unless you turn them off, your reading history and training results. If you turn it on, it also holds your original files. Automatic backup keeps one file of your choosing up to date about once a day while you use the App. The file is not encrypted by Refract. Where you put it decides who can read it: a folder on your phone, a memory card, or a cloud app such as Google Drive, whose own privacy policy then applies. Refract never uploads it itself. If you pick a file in a synced folder on two phones, each phone offers to merge in the other's changes. Deleting the backup file is up to you; deleting a document in the App does not change a backup that already exists.
• Clearing the App's storage in Android Settings, or uninstalling the App, removes all of the App's data from your device, including cookies set by web pages. It does not remove backup files you saved elsewhere.
• Refract opts out of Android's cloud backup, so your library is not copied to your Google account. On Android 12 and later, a direct transfer from your old phone when you set up a new one can still copy the App's data.

6. Changes to This Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be reflected in the updated "Effective Date" at the top of this document and will be included in future App updates.

7. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at: vajrafoundry@gmail.com