Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 18, 2026

Excerpt is a private audiobook player. Your library, listening activity, highlights and transcripts live on your device and — if you use iCloud — in your own iCloud account. The developer has no server and no account system, and receives none of it. This policy sets out exactly what the app stores, what syncs, and the small number of outside services it talks to.

Who we are

Excerpt is published by Octet Méditerranée (SIREN: 989258892), an auto-entrepreneur established in France. For the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, Octet Méditerranée is the data controller for this policy — although, as explained below, the app is built so that there is almost nothing for the controller to hold.

For privacy questions, contact: contact@octetmediteranee.eu.

1. The short version

2. What the developer receives

Nothing that identifies you, and nothing you create in the app.

Excerpt has no developer-operated server. There is no account to create, no login, no sync service run by us, and no endpoint that your books, highlights, transcripts, listening history or settings are sent to. We do not collect, receive, sell or share them, because there is nowhere for them to be sent. We cannot read them.

The only information we ever see about Excerpt is what Apple gives every developer: aggregate App Store sales and subscription reports, App Store analytics if you have opted in to sharing them with developers, and crash reports if you have opted in to sending them. These come from Apple, in aggregate or anonymised form, under Apple's own privacy policy and your device settings — not from the app.

That said, "the developer receives nothing" is not the same as "nothing leaves your device". Some features work by talking to other companies' services, and one of them (Readwise) exists precisely to send your highlights somewhere. Sections 4 to 10 describe each one honestly.

3. What Excerpt stores on your device

Excerpt keeps a local database and a local file store so the app can work offline. This includes:

If you connect Readwise, your Readwise API token is stored in the iOS Keychain, not in the app's database.

4. iCloud sync

Excerpt syncs between your devices using your own iCloud account. This is always on: there is no sync switch inside the app. It follows the system-level iCloud Drive setting for Excerpt in iOS Settings. If you turn iCloud Drive off for Excerpt, or sign out of iCloud, the app falls back to storing everything locally in its own sandbox.

Two things sync, both into the iCloud container belonging to your own account:

All of this goes into the private database of your own iCloud account. Excerpt does not use CloudKit's public or shared databases, does not create CloudKit shares, and has no mechanism for one user's library to reach another user. The developer has no access to your iCloud account and cannot read any of it. Once the data is in iCloud it is held by Apple under Apple's privacy policy and your iCloud settings, including Advanced Data Protection if you have enabled it.

Not synced: downloaded transcription models, local backups and exports, and device-local playback state.

If you would rather nothing left the device, turn off iCloud Drive for Excerpt in iOS Settings. Bear in mind that this also switches off sync between your own devices.

5. Transcription and speech recognition

Excerpt turns a passage of audio into text. There are two engines, and they behave differently.

Apple Speech (the default). Excerpt uses Apple's built-in speech recognition. Depending on your device, the language, and your iOS settings, iOS may perform that recognition on the device or may send the audio excerpt to Apple's speech recognition servers. Excerpt does not choose which; that is handled by iOS. Any audio handled this way is processed by Apple under Apple's privacy policy, and is not sent to the developer or to anyone else. iOS asks for your permission before speech recognition is used for the first time, and you can withdraw it at any time in iOS Settings.

WhisperKit (Excerpt Premium). Premium unlocks higher-quality transcription models that run entirely on your device. Excerpt downloads the model files once, from Hugging Face, along with a small (~7 MB) voice-activity model; that download is an ordinary file download and carries no audio and nothing about you or your library. After the download, transcription with these models happens locally and no audio leaves your device.

Excerpt transcribes excerpts of the audiobook files in your library. It does not record from the microphone and does not ask for microphone access.

Whichever engine produces it, the resulting transcript is stored with your highlight and syncs through your own iCloud as described in section 4.

6. AI clean-up of transcripts

With Excerpt Premium, you can ask Excerpt to tidy up a transcript — fixing punctuation and obvious speech-to-text errors. This uses Apple Intelligence's on-device foundation models, running locally on supported devices. The text sent to the model is the transcript itself plus the book title, author and chapter name, so that the model can make sensible corrections. It runs on the device and is not sent to the developer. Apple's own terms and privacy policy govern Apple Intelligence.

7. Excerpt Premium

Excerpt Premium is an auto-renewing subscription sold through the App Store. It unlocks the higher-quality transcription models (section 5), the AI transcript clean-up (section 6), and unlimited EPUB matching.

Payment. The purchase is made with Apple, not with us. Apple handles the entire transaction. The developer never receives your name, address, card details, Apple Account or any other payment information — only Apple's aggregate sales and subscription reports, which do not identify individual subscribers. Excerpt has no server, so nothing about your purchase is uploaded anywhere by the app: your entitlement is verified on your device against the signed receipt Apple provides. Price and terms are shown in the app and on the App Store before you buy. Managing or cancelling the subscription is done through Apple, in Settings → your Apple Account → Subscriptions. See the Terms & Conditions for the commercial terms.

One thing worth flagging. Without Premium, Excerpt gives you one free EPUB match. So that this genuinely means one, the app records that the free match has been used in your iCloud key-value store, rather than only in local storage — which means it survives deleting and reinstalling the app. It is a single flag, stored in your own iCloud account, containing no personal information, and the developer cannot read it.

8. LibriVox and Project Gutenberg

Excerpt can browse and download public-domain audiobooks from LibriVox. When you search, the text you type is sent to the LibriVox API in order to return results. Downloads are fetched from the URLs LibriVox provides, which in practice are hosted by the Internet Archive.

When you import a LibriVox recording, Excerpt also automatically looks for the matching e-book on Project Gutenberg, using details from the LibriVox record, and downloads the EPUB so the book can be paired with the audio. That request is derived from the book, not from you.

Neither service is sent any identifier from Excerpt, but, as with any web request, your IP address and standard connection information are visible to them and to their hosting providers. LibriVox, the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg have their own privacy practices. Excerpt is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of them.

9. Readwise

Excerpt has an optional Readwise integration. It is off until you set it up, and it does nothing unless you do.

To enable it, you paste a Readwise API token into Excerpt. The token is stored in the iOS Keychain on your device. Once connected, and when you choose to sync, Excerpt sends to Readwise — for each highlight — the highlight text, the book title and author, the timestamp, the position in the recording in seconds, and a link back into Excerpt. It can also read your books and highlights back from Readwise.

This is a genuine transfer of your highlights to a third party, at your instruction. Readwise is operated from the United States and becomes responsible for that data once it arrives; it is held in your Readwise account, under Readwise's privacy policy and terms, and you manage or delete it there. The developer is not involved in the transfer and receives no copy.

If you do not want your highlights leaving your device this way, simply do not connect Readwise. You can disconnect at any time in Excerpt's settings, which removes the stored token; that does not delete anything already sent to Readwise.

10. Everything Excerpt connects to, in one list

These are all of the network destinations Excerpt contacts, and why:

There is nothing else. In particular there is no developer server, and no analytics, attribution, advertising or crash-reporting service.

Hugging Face and Readwise are based in the United States, so using those features involves a transfer of data outside the European Economic Area. For Hugging Face this is a model download and carries nothing about you. For Readwise it carries the highlights you choose to sync, and happens only because you have connected the service.

11. No tracking, analytics, or advertising

Excerpt contains no analytics SDK, no crash-reporting SDK, no advertising SDK and no attribution or tracking SDK of any kind. It collects no advertising identifier and shows no App Tracking Transparency prompt, because it does not track you across other apps or websites. Excerpt's App Store privacy declaration records no tracking, no tracking domains, and no collected data types.

Apple may separately provide the developer with aggregate App Store analytics, sales and subscription reports, and crash reports, subject to Apple's privacy policy and to what you have chosen to share in your device settings.

12. Exports, backups, and sharing

Excerpt can export audiobooks, highlights, transcripts, metadata or backups. Exports are created only when you ask for them.

If you have connected Readwise, a local backup created by Excerpt includes your Readwise API token so that restoring a backup restores the connection. Treat backup files as sensitive, and be deliberate about where you save or copy them.

Once you export, share, save or back up data outside Excerpt, what happens to it depends on the destination you choose — Files, iCloud Drive, another app, email, AirDrop, or another storage provider — and it is no longer governed by this policy.

13. Retention and deletion

The developer holds no personal data about you, so there is nothing on our side to retain.

Data stored by Excerpt on your device remains there until you delete it — by deleting a book or a highlight, deleting exports or backups you created, or deleting the app. Data synced to iCloud remains in your iCloud account, and deleting it on one device removes it from the others; you can also remove Excerpt's iCloud data entirely from iOS Settings → your Apple Account → iCloud → Manage Account Storage.

Anything you have sent to Readwise is retained by Readwise and must be deleted there.

14. Security

Excerpt's local data is protected by iOS file protection, meaning it is encrypted at rest while the device is locked. Your Readwise API token is stored in the iOS Keychain. Data in iCloud is protected by Apple's encryption and by your Apple Account security, including Advanced Data Protection if you have enabled it. All network requests use HTTPS. Because there is no developer server, there is no central store of user data that could be breached.

15. Your rights under the GDPR

Under the GDPR you have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict and object to the processing of your personal data, and the right to data portability.

In practice, for Excerpt you exercise most of these yourself, because you hold the data: you can view and edit everything in the app, export it in open formats, and delete it by deleting books, highlights, the app's iCloud data, or the app itself. Where the app does process data, it does so on the following bases: performance of the contract, for running the app and providing Excerpt Premium; and your consent, for optional features such as connecting Readwise or granting speech recognition permission, which you can withdraw at any time in the app or in iOS Settings. Excerpt carries out no profiling and no automated decision-making that produces legal effects.

If you want to make a request to us directly, write to contact@octetmediteranee.eu. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the French data protection authority, the CNIL (www.cnil.fr), or with the supervisory authority of your country of residence.

16. Children

Excerpt is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect personal data from anyone, including children.

17. The support form on this website

This is about the website, not the app. The support page at octetmediteranee.eu/excerpt/support has a contact form. When you submit it, your email address, the topic you selected and your message are sent to Formspree, Inc. (United States), which forwards them to us by email. They are used only to answer your request and are not used for marketing. The page also loads a small script from the unpkg content delivery network. If you would rather not use the form, email contact@octetmediteranee.eu directly. The site's mentions légales cover this in more detail.

18. Changes to this policy

This policy will be updated if Excerpt's features change. Changes are posted on this page with an updated "Last updated" date. Material changes will be reflected in the app's App Store privacy information as well.

19. Contact

Questions about this policy: contact@octetmediteranee.eu.