Overview

Bookcase keeps your book collection on your iPhone. This page says, in plain words, what stays on the phone, what leaves it, and who it goes to.

What stays on your phone

Everything you keep in Bookcase stays on your phone:

• your list of books, with their titles, authors, covers, copies and conditions; covers are kept on your phone so the bookcase shows them without a connection
• the values, the prices you typed and your notes
• your groups
• small pictures of the covers of books you kept without a book number (below)
• your settings, including the country you picked
• the keys whoever set up the phone typed in or added from a keys link (the eBay secret is kept in the iPhone's Keychain); keys built into the app by whoever built it are part of the app itself and are never stored anywhere else

Bookcase has no account and no server of its own. Nothing you keep in it is sent to us.

What leaves your phone, and to whom

To fill in a book's details and value, Bookcase sends the book's number (the number above the barcode) to these services:

• Open Library (openlibrary.org), to find the title, author and cover.
• Google Books (googleapis.com), to fill in missing details and the publisher's list price. If a Google key was added or built into the app, it is sent with the request, with the app's name (its bundle identifier) so the key works only for Bookcase. The country you picked is sent too, so the price is in the right dollars.
• Apple Books (itunes.apple.com), for the ebook price when Google Books has no price. Only the book's number and your country are sent; no key is needed.
• eBay (api.ebay.com), to see what used copies sell for, only if eBay keys were added or built into the app. The keys are sent to eBay to sign in, and the book's number and your country's eBay site are sent with each search.
• BooksRun (booksrun.com), to see what it pays for the book and what it sells a used copy for, only if a BooksRun key was added or built into the app. The key and the book's number are sent with each request; nothing else.

Covers are downloaded from the address those services give for each book.

When you tap the big button on the Scan tab (or, where there is no camera, choose a photo), Bookcase reads that one picture on your phone with the iPhone's own recognition: it looks for a barcode or a book number first, and if there is neither, for the words on the cover. The picture is never sent anywhere. A barcode or a number is looked up like any scanned book; otherwise only the words found (such as the title and the author's name) are sent to Open Library and Google Books (never to Apple Books), as a search, the same way a title typed into a website's search box would be. On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence, the phone's own assistant picks the title and author out of those words first; that happens on the phone too, and nothing from it is sent anywhere. Without a connection, Keep it for now keeps those words with the book on your phone, and the same search is sent once you're back online.

If the book can't be found and you keep it anyway, Bookcase keeps a small copy of that one picture with the book on your phone, so you can read its title from it later. It is small (about 20 KB) and kept only for a book without a book number: when the book gets its number, or you remove it, the picture is deleted. It is never put in your camera roll and never sent anywhere; the only way it leaves the phone is inside a copy of your books that you save yourself (below).

Each key is sent only to the service it belongs to. Like any website, these services see your phone's internet address when Bookcase asks them something. Their own privacy policies cover what they do with a request.

When none of them has a price, Bookcase makes a rough guess on the phone from what Open Library said about the book (its binding, length, age and subjects); nothing more is sent for it.

Nothing else leaves your phone: not your list, not your prices, not your notes, not the pictures of your books.

What Bookcase does not do

• No accounts and no sign-in.
• No tracking, no analytics and no advertising.
• No selling or sharing of your information.

Files you make

When you make a list or a spreadsheet on the Sell tab, or the copy of all your books, Bookcase makes a file and opens the share sheet. The file goes only where you send it: for example to Files, Mail, or a selling site you upload it to. When you add books from a spreadsheet, Bookcase reads the file you pick on the phone and sends nothing from it except each book's number, to look the book up as above.

A copy of all your books can include the small pictures of the books you kept from a photo, if you choose With photos or Only the photos; Without photos leaves them out. Like any file, it goes only where you send it. Adding such a file back reads its pictures on the phone and sends none of them.

The camera

Bookcase uses the camera to read barcodes while the Scan tab is open, and to take one picture of the book in view when you tap the big button there. That picture is read on the phone (a barcode or a number first, else the words) and then let go; only the number or the words found are sent, as above. No video is recorded. A picture is kept only when you keep a book that could not be found, as described above, and it is never sent.

Deleting your information

• To remove one book, swipe it left on the Bookcase tab, or open it and tap Remove.
• To remove everything, delete the Bookcase app from the phone. Its list, pictures, settings and keys go with it.

Contact

Questions about this policy: