Privacy policy
Turtle Shelf reads your shelf on your phone. The photographs never leave it.
What stays on your phone
Photographing the shelf, finding each spine and reading the text off it all run on the device, with no network connection involved. The photographs and the crops taken from them are written to Turtle Shelf's private storage and deleted when you delete the scan or uninstall the app. We never receive them.
What we receive
After a scan has been read on the phone, the app sends us the spine text, as text. We match it against a database of book titles, because text read off a photographed spine is rarely exact. Alongside it we receive an anonymous identifier (app generated - not an ad ID or device ID), the app and model versions, the ratings you give books, which is what recommendations are computed from, and a report if you choose to send one when a result is wrong.
The anonymous identifier
On first launch the app generates a random sixteen character identifier. It is not derived from you or your device and there are no accounts, so it is the only thing your ratings hang from. Clearing the app's data or reinstalling produces a new one.
What we do not collect
No images, no name, email address, phone number, contacts or location, and no advertising identifiers. The app shows no advertising and contains no advertising or analytics libraries. Our servers keep ordinary request logs, including IP addresses, to run the service and stop abuse. Hosting, database and error reporting providers hold this data on our behalf and may not use it for anything else.
Children
Turtle Shelf is not directed at children under 13, and the app asks nobody for personal details.
Contact
Turtle Shelf is made by Frame of Mind Software in Montreal, Quebec, and any dispute is governed by the law of Quebec, Canada. This policy may change, and the current version is always the one on this page. Write to us with questions, or to have the data held against your identifier deleted. The app's About screen shows and copies that identifier, and we need it to find anything to delete.
Last updated 30 August 2026.