Spotneck

Spotneck: Privacy Policy

Effective date: 2026-11-02

Spotneck is an audiobook player for Android, iPhone, iPad and Mac. It has no ads, no tracking and no analytics, and it never sells or rents anything about you. Your library lives on your device. Spotneck connects to a service only when you add it yourself: your cloud storage, or Friends, which is optional.

This policy covers the Spotneck apps on Google Play and the App Store, and the Friends server that we run for them.

On your device

Your library stays on your device. The books Spotneck finds, their chapters and covers, your place in each book, your bookmarks and notes, your listening history, your searches and your settings are kept in the app's own storage on your device. We never receive them, except for what you share through Friends (below).

Folders you add. Spotneck reads only the folders and files you pick in the system's folder picker (Android's file picker, the Files app, or the Finder). It remembers that permission so it can open them again, and it never changes or deletes your audio files. Removing a book from Spotneck leaves the files where they are.

Device backups. Your device's own backup (Google's Android backup, or iCloud Backup and Finder backups on Apple devices) may include Spotneck's library and settings, under your account with that service. Sign-in tokens and downloaded audio are always left out of these backups.

Cloud storage

When you add OneDrive or Google Drive, or pick a folder in iCloud Drive, Spotneck talks to that service directly from your device. We are not in between and never see your files, your sign-in or your tokens.

• OneDrive (Microsoft): you sign in on Microsoft's own page. Spotneck asks only to read your files (Files.Read.All, plus User.Read for the account name) and plays or downloads the audio you pick.
• Google Drive (Google): you sign in with Google and pick folders and files in Google's own picker, which loads Google's script in a web view. Spotneck can then read only what you picked (drive.file).
• iCloud Drive (Apple, on Apple devices only): a location in the Files picker when you add a folder from this device, handled by your device's own iCloud. Spotneck reads the folders you pick and asks iCloud to download a file when you play it.

Sign-ins stay on your device. Tokens are encrypted with a key kept in the Android Keystore on Android, and stored in the Keychain on Apple devices. Signing out of a source in Spotneck deletes its tokens. What Microsoft, Google or Apple do with your account is covered by their own privacy policies.

Downloads. Books you download for offline listening are stored in the app's private storage on your device, and are deleted when you remove them, remove their source or sign out of it.

Friends and clubs (optional)

Friends lets you see where your friends are in the books you share, jump to each other's place and listen to a book together in a club. Only positions and the bookmarks you choose are shared, never the audio: each of you plays your own copy of the book. Nothing is sent until you set Friends up.

Your account. When you set up Friends, the app creates an account on our Friends server. It has no email, phone number or password, and we never learn your name from Apple or Google:

• On iPhone, iPad and Mac, the account is tied to the App Store's id for this app on your Apple Account (Apple's appTransactionId), so it is the same on all your devices. The server checks that Apple signed it, and learns nothing else about your Apple Account.
• On Android, the account is a random id the app makes, with a secret kept in your device's Keystore (the server stores only a SHA-256 hash of that secret). If you buy something, that random id is attached to the purchase so a new phone can find your account again. When a new account is made, the server may ask Google Play Integrity whether the app and device are genuine; it keeps only the account, not Google's answer.
• Older versions of the app used a random account id and a secret in the same way.

It carries the display name, colour and giraffe picture you pick, which your friends and club members see.

Purchases. If you buy the cloud unlock (Treetop) or subscribe to Tower, the payment is handled entirely by Apple or Google; we never see your payment details. When the app tells our server about a purchase, the server asks the App Store or Google Play whether it is real and current, and keeps what they answer: the product, the store's purchase or transaction id, its state (for example active or expired), when it ends, and whether it was a test purchase. It keeps this only to know who hosts friends and clubs, and checks it again with the store when a subscription comes up for renewal.

What the server stores, and who sees it

• Who your friends are and which clubs you belong to, with each club's name and its note on where to find the book. Invites are single use and expire after 7 days.
• For each book you choose to share: a fingerprint (a hash of the normalised title and author), its length and chapter count, the title and author your friends see, your position in it (chapter, chapter title, time), whether you finished it, and when you last listened.
• The bookmarks you choose to share in a book, with their kind, position, note and the time you saved them.
• While you play a shared book, a "listening now" mark, which expires 2 minutes after your app last checked in.

Only your friends and the members of your clubs can see these, and only for the books and switches you turned on: the switches "Share my listening positions" and "Share my bookmarks" turn sharing off for everyone at once, and each friend and each club has its own switches per book.

Friends and clubs started with a Tower subscription pause if it ends: nothing new is shared through them until it is renewed. If it isn't renewed within 180 days, the server deletes them.

Delete it any time. Delete your Friends account in the app and the server deletes the account, everything it shared and its purchase records, at once, whether or not you subscribe. Deleting the account doesn't cancel a subscription: that is done in the App Store or Google Play, and the app reminds you first. Turning off sharing for a book removes that book's position and bookmarks from the server.

Where it runs. The Friends server runs on Cloudflare (Cloudflare Workers and a D1 database), which processes the data only to run the service for us. We keep no request logs: the Worker's logging is turned off. To slow down abuse, your internet address is used as a counter key when a new Friends account is created, and the number of requests each account makes per minute is counted; your internet address is never stored. Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS).

What Spotneck does not do

• No ads, no advertising identifier and no tracking across apps or websites.
• No analytics, crash reporting or other third-party SDKs that collect data.
• No selling, renting or sharing of your data with anyone for their own purposes.
• No access to your contacts, location, microphone or photos library beyond the single image you pick as a cover.

Children

Spotneck is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them. Friends asks for no personal details; a display name can be any name.

Your rights

You can see, change and delete everything Spotneck holds about you from within the app: your library and settings on your device (or by deleting the app), and your Friends profile, sharing and account in Friends. If you live in the EU, the UK or another region with data protection laws, you also have the right to ask us about the data we hold and to complain to your data protection authority.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version is published here with a new effective date, and the app stores show the update. We will not start collecting anything new without asking you in the app first.

Contact

Spotneck is made by Zoltán Berki. Questions about this policy: [email protected]