Shelf
Privacy policy
Last updated 16 September 2026
Shelf is a reading app. It holds your books, your reading, and what you wrote about it. It does not sell any of that, and it carries no advertising and no third-party analytics.
Shelf is run by Noah Moller, in Queensland, Australia. This policy covers the Shelf iPhone app and its widgets. Questions go to noah@moller.com.au.
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Your email address, display name, username, and profile picture if you add one | To sign you in and to show you to your friends |
| The books on your shelves, their status, the page you are on, and the dates you started and finished | The shelf itself, and the numbers on your profile |
| Quotes, reflections, and ratings you write | They are yours to read again, and your friends and clubs can see the ones you put there |
| Reading sittings: when one started, when it ended, and the pages it covered | Reading time, streaks, and your year in books |
| Your friends, your shared shelves, your clubs, and what you post in them | The feed and the clubs would not work otherwise |
| Reactions, comments, recommendations, and notifications | Talking about books with the people you added |
| An identifier for your device, from the subscription service | To tie a purchase to your account when you have not signed in yet |
Shelf does not ask for your contacts, your location, your health data, or your photo library beyond a picture you choose as your profile picture.
Shelf uses the camera for two things: reading the barcode on the back of a book, and reading the title off a cover. Both run on the iPhone. The picture is not uploaded, not stored, and not sent to any server. What leaves the phone is the text that came out of it, such as an ISBN or a title, so the catalogue can find the book.
| Service | What it gets |
|---|---|
| Convex, which stores the database and runs the server code | Everything in the table above |
| Clerk, which signs you in | Your email address, your password if you set one, your sign-in method, and the usual session records such as IP address and device |
| Apple, if you sign in with Apple | Apple tells Shelf your name and an email address, which may be a private relay address |
| Google, if you sign in with Google | Your name, email address, and profile picture |
| Google Books, which answers catalogue searches | The words you search for, sent from Shelf's own server, not from your phone. No name and no account identifier go with them |
| RevenueCat, which checks whether Shelf Pro is active | Your account identifier, an identifier for your device, and the receipt from your Apple Account. Payment details stay with Apple and never reach Shelf |
| Apple, when you buy Shelf Pro | Apple takes the payment under its own privacy policy |
Nobody else gets your data, and none of these are allowed to use it for their own advertising.
Your shelf, your books, and your reading numbers are visible to the friends you accepted. A quote or a reflection you write on a book is visible to your friends, and to a club if you wrote it in one. A shared shelf is visible to the people you invited to it. Shelf has no public profiles and no discovery by strangers: another person reaches you only through your friend code, a shelf invite, or a club code.
Shelf keeps your data while your account exists. Delete the account from Profile, then Settings, then Account, then Delete account. That removes your shelf, your thoughts and quotes, your sittings, your friendships and club memberships, and your sign-in record, within 30 days across backups. Emailing noah@moller.com.au does the same thing if you cannot reach the app.
Shelf works offline by keeping a copy of your shelf on your iPhone. Deleting the app removes that copy.
Under Australian privacy law, and under the GDPR if you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, you can ask for a copy of your data, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be erased. Write to noah@moller.com.au and you will get an answer within 30 days. Shelf stores data on servers in the United States, so using it means your data is handled there.
You can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au, or to your local data protection authority in Europe.
Shelf is not made for children under 13 and does not knowingly hold their data. If a child's account exists, write to noah@moller.com.au and it will be deleted.
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and anything that affects what Shelf collects is announced in the app before it takes effect.