Privacy Policy

Last updated: June 2026

Your privacy is critically important to us. At Echo, we have a few fundamental principles:

1. We Don't Collect Your Data

Echo is designed to respect your privacy. All of your audiobook files, reading progress, voice memos, photos, text notes, bookmarks, and flashcards are stored locally on your device or synced securely via your personal Apple iCloud account. Echo has no servers and no accounts.

2. No Tracking or Analytics

We do not use third-party analytics trackers, crash reporters, or advertising networks. We do not track what books you listen to, when you listen, or how you interact with the app. What happens in Echo stays on your device.

Echo's Insights feature (listening time, streaks, review statistics) is computed entirely on your device, from your own local history, for your eyes only. It is not analytics — no one but you can see it, and it never leaves your hardware except through your personal iCloud sync.

3. On-Device Speech Recognition

Echo's audio-to-text alignment uses on-device machine learning (WhisperKit / CoreML). Your audio is transcribed entirely on your own hardware and is never uploaded, transmitted, or shared — with us or anyone else.

4. Location ("Context Memory") — Opt-In Only

Echo can optionally tag your listening sessions, bookmarks, and chapter starts with an approximate place name to support context-dependent memory. This feature is governed by strict rules:

• Off by default. Echo never accesses location unless you explicitly enable Context Memory in Settings.
• Approximate by design. Echo requests reduced-accuracy (neighborhood-level) location only — it never knows your precise position.
• Stored on your device. Captured places live in Echo's local database. Your session location history is never synced or transmitted anywhere — not even to your own iCloud. Place names attached to bookmarks sync with those bookmarks through your personal iCloud only while the feature is enabled.
• Deletable in one tap. "Delete Location History" in Settings permanently erases every captured place — sessions, bookmarks, and chapter markers.
• One honest footnote: to turn coordinates into a readable name ("Maple Ridge, Halifax"), Echo asks Apple's geocoding service, the standard system facility. That lookup goes to Apple under Apple's privacy policy; Echo caches results locally to keep such lookups rare, and we never see them — we have no servers to see them with.

5. Photos, Microphone, and Notifications

If you attach photos to bookmarks, record voice memos, or enable review reminders, those permissions are used solely for those features. Photos and recordings are stored with your library on your device; notifications are generated locally. Nothing is transmitted to us.

6. Apple Health Data

If you choose to integrate Echo with Apple Health (for example, via Apple Watch), this data is processed locally and is never transmitted to us or any third parties.

7. Beta Builds (TestFlight)

If you run Echo through Apple's TestFlight beta program, TestFlight shares crash reports and any feedback you choose to send with the developer, along with device, OS, and build information. This is TestFlight's standard mechanism, governed by Apple's terms — Echo itself contains no analytics or telemetry in beta builds, exactly as in release builds. See the beta guide for details.

8. This Website

This website is a static page: it hosts its own fonts, runs no scripts, sets no cookies, and embeds no third-party resources. (It's served by GitHub Pages, which may log standard server requests; see GitHub's privacy statement.)

9. Open Source

Echo is open source under the MIT license. Every claim on this page can be verified by reading the code: github.com/dfakkeldy/Echo.

10. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please reach out via our GitHub Issues page.