Privacy policy
What Mimir keeps, and where
Mimir is a local-first reading app. The short version: your books, your reading, your notes and your narration stay on your device. The only things that ever reach a server are the ones you choose to share with the Mimir community, the questions you choose to ask an AI provider with your own key, and the book lookups needed to show a cover. This page spells that out.
On your device
Everything the reader itself works with is stored in the app's own storage on your iPhone and is never sent to us:
- the books you import (EPUB, MOBI, AZW, AZW3) and their text;
- your reading position, progress and reading settings;
- highlights, notes, bookmarks and voice memos;
- audiobooks Mimir generates for you;
- any AI provider API key you enter in Settings.
Narration is produced entirely on your device by a bundled speech model. No text and no audio leave your phone to be read aloud. Deleting the app deletes all of this.
iCloud sync (optional)
If you sign in with Apple in Settings, Mimir keeps your library, progress, highlights, notes and voice memos in step across your devices through iCloud. That data lives in the private part of your iCloud account (Apple's CloudKit private database). We cannot read it, and Apple's iCloud terms and privacy policy govern it. You can stop syncing at any time by signing out, and remove the data through your iCloud settings.
Book information
To show a cover and identify an edition, Mimir looks up books on Open Library, a service of the Internet Archive. A lookup contains the book's title, author and ISBN, never anything about you. Open Library's own privacy policy applies to those requests.
AI reading companion (optional)
Mimir can start a conversation about a book or a selected passage. This feature only works if you enter your own API key for a third-party AI provider. When you ask something, the passage, some surrounding context from the book and your question are sent from your device directly to that provider under your own account; we never see them and never see your key, which is stored only on your device. The provider's privacy policy governs what it does with your requests. Without a key the feature simply asks you to add one.
The Mimir community (optional)
The Social tab is a small reading community run by us. Everything in it is opt-in: the reader works completely without an account. If you create one, this is what our server holds:
- Your account: username, a salted hash of your password (never the password itself), display name, bio and avatar. No email address is required.
- What you post: posts, quoted passages, comments, likes, bookmarks, ratings, favorites, book clubs you create or join, club discussions and chats, who you follow, and direct messages. Messages are stored on the server so both people can read them; they are not end-to-end encrypted.
- Your shelves: when you use the Social tab, the app syncs your currently-reading list with progress, and the text of notes you have written in books together with the passage they refer to, to your profile. Other signed-in members can see these shelves. Highlights without notes, and voice memos, are not uploaded.
- Share links: when you share a passage as a link, we create a public page showing the quote, the book, and your name, handle and avatar, and we count how often the link is opened.
- Server logs: like any web service, our server records the address (IP) a request came from, the path requested and how long it took. We use these only to run and protect the service, and we keep them only as long as that requires.
The community service runs on Fly.io in Toronto, Canada, and its database is stored there. We do not sell your data, do not share it with advertisers, and do not use it to train AI models.
What we don't do
Mimir contains no analytics or advertising SDKs, no tracking pixels and no fingerprinting. We do not build profiles of your reading. Apple may share crash reports and TestFlight feedback with us when you have allowed that in your iOS settings; those contain device and crash details, not your books or notes.
Children
Mimir is not directed at children under 13, and the community is for readers aged 13 and up.
Your choices
- Everything on your device is removed by deleting the app; iCloud data is managed in your iCloud settings.
- You can edit or delete anything you posted to the community from within the app.
- To delete your community account and everything attached to it, or to ask what we hold about you, email bourbeau.dave@gmail.com from the address you want us to reply to and tell us your username. We will confirm the deletion by reply.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and note the change in the app's release notes.
Contact
Mimir is built and operated by Dave Bourbeau. Questions about privacy: bourbeau.dave@gmail.com.