Privacy Policy

Last updated 19 October 2026

Wristread is a reader for Apple Watch with an iPhone app that brings books, articles and news to it. It has no accounts, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. The developer runs no servers and receives no data about you, your library or your reading.

What stays on your devices

Your library. The books, articles and news stories you add, and their covers, are stored on your iPhone and your Apple Watch. On your iPhone, your library, highlights and reading places are included in its backups to iCloud or a computer, if you back it up.
Your reading. Where you are in each book, your reading speed and settings, and your reading history and stats are stored on your watch. Your watch also tells your iPhone your place in each book and when you last read it, which book you're reading, and your reading and listening speeds. Your iPhone uses these to show your progress and how long things will take at your pace, and keeps your places so a new or reset watch can carry on where you left off.
Between your iPhone and watch. Books and progress travel directly between your own paired devices using Apple's WatchConnectivity. They don't pass through any server run by the developer.
The share extension and the complication. Articles you share from Safari, and what you're reading for the watch-face complication, are passed between parts of the app on the same device through a shared container on that device.
Walking mode and the offer to read aloud when moving fast. While a book is open, from when it first plays until you close it, your watch's motion sensors tell Wristread whether you're walking, running or cycling, so it can show short phrases on foot or offer Read Along on a run or a ride. This is used in the moment, never stored, and never sent anywhere. To stop it, set Walking to Never and turn off Offer Read Along when moving fast in Settings on the watch, or deny Motion & Fitness access.
Read Along voice (Plus). Your iPhone records upcoming articles, news stories and the chapter you're reading in one of its own voices, on the iPhone itself, and sends the recordings to your watch. Only upcoming items are kept, and nothing is sent anywhere else.
Read Along. Words are spoken by the voices on your watch, including your Personal Voice if you allow Wristread to use it. The speech is made on the watch and nothing is sent anywhere.
The reading test. Your result on iPhone stays on it, and is passed to your watch as a starting pace. It's only shared if you share it yourself.
Highlights. Sentences you highlight on your watch are sent to your own iPhone and kept there, in Library → Highlights and on each book's page. They leave your iPhone only if you share them yourself, or if you've connected Readwise (below).
When you usually read. To suggest something that fits the time you have, and to show a Smart Stack card before your usual reading times, your watch notes when you read and keeps that on your watch. watchOS decides when to raise the card, for example as headphones connect. Wristread receives no location and sends none of this anywhere.
Spotlight and Siri. The titles and authors of your books are added to your iPhone's own Spotlight index, so you can search for them and ask Siri to open them. That index stays on your device.

The sites Wristread fetches from for you

Wristread connects directly from your iPhone to the sites you choose, the same way Safari would, to fetch what you asked for and the pictures that go with it:

Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org), when you browse or add a free classic: its catalogue, the book and its cover.
The news sources you follow: their feeds, and the web pages and pictures of their newest stories.
Your own libraries (Plus), when you add an OPDS catalog such as Calibre: its catalogue, its cover pictures and the books you choose, and the user name and password if you give one. The password is kept in your iPhone's Keychain and sent only to that library.
Readwise (Plus), if you connect it: your access token, kept in your iPhone's Keychain and sent only to Readwise. Wristread uses it to fetch the articles in your Shortlist and Later lists and your Daily Review, to archive each article when you finish it on your watch, and to send Readwise the sentences you highlight, marked as from Wristread. Each article's picture is fetched from wherever it's hosted, usually its publisher. Readwise's own privacy policy covers your account there.
Articles you save: the page at the link you give. When you share from Safari, the page you're looking at is read on your iPhone and nothing more is fetched, apart from its picture.

Like any website you visit, those sites receive an ordinary request from your device, which includes its IP address. What they do with it is covered by their own privacy policies. Wristread sends them nothing about you.

What goes to Apple

Wristread Plus and tips. Purchases are made through the App Store and handled by Apple. The developer never sees your payment details. Wristread only checks with the App Store whether Plus has been bought on your Apple Account.
Today in Brief and In short (Plus) are written by the on-device model on your iPhone: Today in Brief from the news stories already in your library, and In short from the start of each article or story. They're passed to your own watch and sent nowhere else.
Recaps, quick checks, word meanings and questions about your book. On devices that support Apple Intelligence, your watch uses Apple's Private Cloud Compute for these. It sends only text from before your place in the book, or, for a word's meaning, the sentence on screen:
- For a recap (Plus): the book's title and the passage just before your place, about 900 words. A recap is made by itself when you go back to a book you haven't read for 20 hours or more, and when you choose Recap so far or ask Siri "What's happened so far in Wristread?".
- For quick checks: the end of the chapter you've just finished, about 800 words. They start by themselves when you read on into the next chapter. Quick checks are on unless you turn them off in Settings on the watch.
- For a word's meaning (Plus), when you hold a word while paused: the word, the sentence it's in, and the book's title.
- When you ask Siri a question about your book (Plus): your question, the book's title and the passage just before your place, about 1,500 words.
Wristread adds nothing about you to these requests. Private Cloud Compute processes each request and keeps none of it. See Apple's Private Cloud Compute.

All of this is handled by Apple under Apple's Privacy Policy.

Deleting your data

Remove a book in the iPhone app and it's removed from your watch too. Disconnecting Readwise or removing a library deletes its token or password from the Keychain. Deleting Wristread from your iPhone and watch deletes everything it stored, with one exception: iOS can keep Keychain items after an app is deleted, so disconnect Readwise and remove your libraries first if you want their sign-ins gone too.

Two places can keep copies. Highlights already sent to Readwise stay in your Readwise account until you remove them there; deleting a highlight in Wristread doesn't remove it from Readwise, and articles Wristread archived in Reader stay archived. And if you back up your iPhone, those backups keep Wristread's files until they're replaced. The developer keeps nothing.

Children

Wristread collects no personal information from anyone, including children.

This website

This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics or trackers. It's hosted on GitHub Pages, and GitHub may keep ordinary server logs, such as IP addresses, for security; the developer does not use them.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted at this address with a new date.

Contact

Sean Henley · seanhenley@gmail.com