Kalika Lyceum — MynaBooks

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 22 September 2026

The short version

MynaBooks has no account, no sign-up and no server of its own. What you say is understood on the iPhone itself. Everything the app remembers — your place in a book, your favourites, how much you have listened — stays on that iPhone, and the app never sends any of it anywhere.

Who this is about

MynaBooks is used by a listener, usually someone who cannot see the screen, and often set up by a caregiver who is a family member or support worker. This policy covers both.

What MynaBooks keeps, and where

All of it is stored on the iPhone, inside MynaBooks' own storage. None of it is uploaded.

• Your audiobooks, and any files copied in — so they can be played, including with no signal.
• Where you got to in each book — so "play" carries on where you left off.
• Favourites, and the order of your shelves — so the shelf reads out the way it was arranged.
• Which shelves are set up — so they are still there next time.
• Counts of what the app was used for — so a caregiver can see whether it is being used.
• Phrases MynaBooks could not understand — so the app can be taught to understand them.
• Audio MynaBooks made by reading a document or a Project Gutenberg book aloud — so it plays like any other book. A document you chose is not copied in; see below.
• Project Gutenberg's list of books — so searching it is instant and works with no internet.
• The name you give for yourself, if you give one — so a book you added can say who added it.
• A hint for the settings passcode, if you write one — so you can get back in if you forget.
• A written record of what was said, only if it has been switched on — so a relative can work out what went wrong.

Most of these are excluded from your iCloud backup, so they do not leave the iPhone that way either.

Speech

MynaBooks listens only while somebody is holding the screen, or has just tapped the microphone button. Recognition runs on the iPhone, using Apple's on-device speech recognition. No audio is recorded, kept or sent anywhere, ever — not by MynaBooks, and not to us.

What recognition returns is text. That text appears on the screen as a transcript, which is erased when the app closes.

Reading a document aloud

MynaBooks can read a PDF, or a book from Project Gutenberg, aloud and keep the result as an audiobook. Apart from fetching a Gutenberg book's text, all of it happens on this iPhone:

• the words are taken out of the document on the device, and turned into speech on the device, using the voices iOS provides;
• nothing is sent anywhere — not the document, not its text, not the audio;
• the document is not copied into MynaBooks. MynaBooks opens it where it already is, reads it, and keeps only the audio it made. If you delete or move the original afterwards, the audiobook is unaffected;
• the audio is stored like any other book on the phone, and excluded from your iCloud backup because audiobooks are large and can be made again;
• if you have given a name for yourself, the first chapter says who added the book, so that name is inside those audio files. Changing your name later does not change books already made.

You can delete any of it, a chapter or a whole book at a time, in Admin.

The written record, which is off unless someone turns it on

MynaBooks can keep the conversation on the iPhone so a caregiver can read later what happened. It is the most personal thing the app writes, so it is guarded more tightly than anything else:

• it is off until a caregiver turns it on;
• the switch is disabled until a passcode has been set, so it cannot be turned on by accident or by someone passing;
• it can never be turned on by voice, so nobody can start it by talking to the phone;
• the listener can always stop it by voice, without help and without needing to see anything, by saying "stop recording";
• it holds words, never sound;
• it is kept on the iPhone, excluded from backup, and pruned automatically;
• a caregiver can read it, share it deliberately, or delete it, in Admin.

The listener can stop it and only the caregiver can start it. That asymmetry is deliberate: the person being written about always holds the off switch.

What MynaBooks sends, and when

MynaBooks sends nothing on its own initiative. There is no analytics service, no advertising, no tracking, and no company server.

The app uses the internet only for content a caregiver has deliberately set up:

• LibriVox (librivox.org) and the sites it stores its recordings on, such as archive.org, when a caregiver browses or plays free public-domain audiobooks, or downloads one to keep on the iPhone.
• Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org), when a caregiver looks for a free out-of-copyright book or fetches one to be read aloud. MynaBooks downloads Gutenberg's list of books about once a week and keeps it on the phone, so searching happens on the iPhone rather than being sent anywhere — Gutenberg is not told what you searched for, only which book you chose to download.

Like any request to any website, these carry your device's IP address to the site being asked. We do not receive, see or store that. Those sites have their own privacy policies, and we do not control them.

If no shelf needs the internet, MynaBooks makes no network requests at all.

Information Apple gives us

If you install MynaBooks from the App Store, Apple gives us the ordinary App Store reports every developer receives — for example how many people installed the app, in which countries, and anonymous crash reports. These come from Apple as totals, not as information about any individual, and only about people who have agreed to share analytics with developers in their iPhone settings. Apple's handling of this is covered by Apple's own privacy policy, and you can turn it off in Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements.

MynaBooks itself sends Apple nothing beyond what any app does by existing.

Permissions MynaBooks asks for

• Microphone and Speech Recognition — to hear spoken commands. Both are asked for the first time you try to speak to the app, not at launch, so the reason is clear. Refusing them leaves the buttons and Siri working.
• Files — only for folders or files a caregiver chooses, and only those.

Sharing

We do not sell, rent, trade or share any information about you, because we do not have any.

The only information that ever leaves the iPhone is what a caregiver chooses to send: the usage summary and the written record both have a Share button, and both show you exactly what will be sent before you send it. Where it goes after that is up to whoever sends it.

Children

MynaBooks is not aimed at children and does not knowingly collect anything about anybody, of any age.

Deleting everything

• Individual records: Admin has separate buttons to delete the usage counts and to delete the written record.
• Everything: delete the app. All of MynaBooks' storage goes with it, including your books, your places in them, and every record described here.

There is nothing held anywhere else for us to delete, and so nothing to request from us.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to see, correct, export or delete personal information a company holds about you. We hold none. Everything is on your iPhone, where you can read it, share it and delete it yourself, without asking us.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be published here and in the app, with a new date at the top. Material changes will also be described in the App Store release notes.

Contact

Kalika Lyceum LLC — info@kalikalyceum.com