Privacy Policy

Last Updated: October 6, 2026

Kids Shelf is a reading and learning app for children aged 4 to 13, with read-aloud reading practice, math and science lessons from Kindergarten to Grade 8, and word games. This policy explains what information the app uses, what stays on your device, what reaches us, and the choices you have. The short version: your child's voice never leaves your device, your child's profile and progress stay on your device, and the only things we receive are anonymous lesson feedback and, if a parent chooses to create one, a parent account.

1. Information We Do Not Collect

• No voice recordings. Audio from the microphone is processed on your device, in memory, and discarded. It is never saved and never sent to us or to anyone else.
• No child profiles or progress on our servers. Your child's name, age, grade, reading progress and speech practice stay on your device.
• No advertising or tracking. We do not show ads, use advertising identifiers, or track your family across other apps or websites. We do not use analytics or crash-reporting services.
• No location, contacts, photos or payment information.

2. Information Stored Only on Your Device

The app keeps the following in a local database on your phone or tablet. It is not sent to us:

• Reader profiles: the name, avatar, age, grade and reading level you enter for each child.
• Reading and learning progress: stories read, lesson results and quiz scores, time spent learning, stars, streaks, badges and goals.
• Learning Record: the parent summary of days and time learned and lessons completed is built on your device from this progress. If you choose to email or copy it, it goes through your own email app or clipboard; we do not receive it.
• Speech practice: the words a child tried to read and the text the on-device speech engine heard (not audio), and which sounds they find easy or hard.
• Settings: preferences such as text size and time limits, and the optional parent PIN (stored in scrambled, hashed form).
• Downloaded content: stories and lessons saved for offline use.

3. How Speech Recognition Works

When your child reads aloud, the microphone audio is handled by a speech recognition engine that runs on your device. The recognized words are compared with the words on the page, and the audio is discarded immediately. The first time speech recognition is used, the app downloads the speech model file (from Hugging Face, a model-hosting service); after that, speech recognition works without any internet connection. No audio is ever sent anywhere.

4. Information We Receive

a. Anonymous lesson feedback

To find lessons and questions that need improving, the app sends us, when a lesson is finished:

• which lesson it was (and which version of it), the app version, the score, and how long the lesson took;
• for each quiz question, which answer was picked first and whether it was right in the end;
• the optional rating the child gives (a happy, okay or sad face) and any reasons tapped, such as "too hard".

This feedback contains no name, profile, account, device identifier or other information that identifies a child or a family. We keep the individual feedback records for 12 months and then delete them; we keep only anonymous totals (such as how many children found a question hard) after that.

b. Optional parent account

A parent may create an account. It is not needed to use the app. If you create one, we store:

• your email address and name;
• your password, stored only as a secure one-way hash (bcrypt), never in readable form;
• when the account was created or updated, and, while a password reset is in progress, a temporary reset code that expires after 30 minutes.

We use this information only to run your account and to send you messages you request, such as a password-reset code. Your children's profiles and progress are not uploaded to your account. We keep the account until you delete it.

c. Notifications

If you allow notifications, the app registers with Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, which gives the device a notification token. We store that token on our server so we can send announcements such as new stories. The token is not linked to your child. You can stop notifications at any time in your device settings. Reading reminders that you set are created on your device.

d. Technical information

Like any internet service, our servers and our providers' servers receive your device's IP address and basic request details when the app downloads stories, lessons and pictures. We use this only to deliver content and to protect the service from abuse (for example, limiting how many requests one address can make). The app does not store IP addresses in any of its records; our hosting providers may keep standard server logs for a short period.

e. Purchases and subscriptions

Kids Shelf is free to download. If we offer a paid subscription and a parent buys one, the payment is handled by Apple (App Store), Google (Google Play) or, for purchases on our website, Stripe. We never see or store card numbers. To know which features to unlock on each of your devices, we and our subscription service, RevenueCat, receive a record of the purchase: the product, price, dates, whether it is a trial, its renewal status, and an anonymous app user ID or your parent account ID. We do not receive your child's information with a purchase. Purchases can only be started by a grown-up, behind a parent check.

If you redeem a gift or promo code on our website, we record the code, the campaign it belongs to, the parent account that used it and when, so we can apply it and count how many codes were used.

f. Ratings

The app may ask a parent, in the parent area only, to rate it. The rating window is provided by Apple or Google; we only see ratings and reviews the way the store shows them publicly.

5. This Website

kidsshelf.app does not use cookies, analytics or advertising. Pages load fonts from Google Fonts, the download QR codes from api.qrserver.com, and a badge image from Product Hunt; those services receive your IP address and basic browser details when your browser loads them. Lesson pictures shown on the website come from our own media server.

6. Service Providers

We use a small number of providers to run the app. They process data only to provide their service to us:

• Railway hosts our server, which stores parent accounts, notification tokens and anonymous lesson feedback.
• Cloudflare stores and delivers story and lesson pictures and audio, and hosts this website.
• Google Firebase delivers notifications and provides app settings (Remote Config). Firebase uses an app-instance identifier to do this.
• Free Dictionary API (dictionaryapi.dev) returns a definition when a word is tapped. Only the word is sent.
• Hugging Face hosts the speech model file the app downloads once.
• Shorebird delivers app updates; the app checks for updates with its version number and an anonymous install identifier.
• An email delivery service sends password-reset emails to parents who ask for them.
• Apple, Google and Stripe process payments if you buy a subscription; RevenueCat keeps track of which subscriptions are active so the right features unlock.

7. Children's Privacy (COPPA)

Kids Shelf is designed for children and for the families and teachers who support them. We comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA):

• We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. Information about a child stays on the device; lesson feedback is anonymous.
• Parent accounts are for adults. Settings can be protected with a parent PIN.
• There are no ads, no chat or social features, and no third-party advertising or tracking. Any purchase can only be made by a grown-up, behind a parent check.
• A parent may contact us at any time with questions or requests about their family's information.

8. Data Security

• All connections between the app and our servers use encrypted HTTPS.
• Passwords are stored only as bcrypt hashes; our logs do not record passwords, reset codes or request contents.
• Information on your device is protected by your device's own security (passcode, fingerprint or face unlock).

9. How Long We Keep Information

• Parent account: until you delete it.
• Notification token: until notifications stop working for that device (for example, the app is removed), at which point it is deleted.
• Individual lesson feedback: 12 months; anonymous totals may be kept longer.
• Purchase records: while the subscription is active, then as long as tax and accounting law requires.
• Gift and promo code use: 24 months after the code is used.
• On-device information: until you delete it or remove the app.

10. Your Choices and Rights

• Delete your parent account in the app under Settings > Parent Account > Delete Account, or ask us to delete it (see how to delete your account). This removes your account information from our server.
• Turn off notifications in your device settings.
• Remove information on your device by deleting a reader profile, clearing the app's data, or uninstalling the app.
• Microphone: you can turn off microphone access in your device settings. Stories and lessons still work; reading-aloud feedback will not.
• Questions or requests: you may ask what information we hold about you, or ask us to correct or delete it, by emailing [email protected].

11. Changes to This Policy

If we change this policy, we will update the "Last Updated" date above. If a change is significant, we will also tell you in the app before it takes effect.

12. Contact Us

Email: [email protected]
Website: https://kidsshelf.app