Legal
Privacy Policy
The short version
Crane Audiobook Player plays audiobook files that are already on your phone. Your library — the books, where you are in them, your bookmarks and your listening history — stays on your phone. We have no copy of it and no way to get one.
Two things can leave your device, and both are described in full below:
- A diagnostic report, when you send feedback — or, on Android, when the app detects that it crashed.
- Your reading progress, and only if you connect your own Hardcover account.
There are no adverts, no analytics, no trackers, and no third-party advertising or measurement SDKs in this app.
What stays on your device
All of it, unless a section below says otherwise:
- your audiobook files, and the folders you point the app at
- cover art, chapter lists and tags read from those files
- your position in every book, your bookmarks and your notes
- listening history and statistics
- every app setting
This lives in the app’s own private storage. Uninstalling the app deletes it.
The app reads your audiobook files where they already are. It does not upload them, copy them off the device, or index them anywhere but on the phone itself.
1. Diagnostic reports
When this happens
- You tap Send Feedback in Settings, or
- On Android only, the app notices on its next start that it closed by itself, and asks whether it may send a report.
Automatic crash reports are OFF unless you turn them on. The first time CAP detects that it crashed, it tells you what a report contains and asks. Nothing is sent before you answer, and if you decline, nothing is sent then or later. Your answer covers future crashes and can be changed at any time.
There is no such feature on iOS — nothing there can detect a crash — so the question is never asked and the switch is not shown.
What is sent
A report record, containing:
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| App version | 1.4.0 |
| Platform and OS version | ios, 16.7.16 |
| Device model | iPhone10,1, SM-S938U — the hardware
model, never your device’s name
|
| Category | bug / feature / general / automatic crash report |
| Your message | exactly what you typed |
| Your name or email | only if you choose to type one |
| An installation id | a random value created when the app is first run |
| A reference to the log below |
A diagnostic log — the app’s own record of what it was
doing, uploaded to private storage at api.cranesoft.com.
Please read this part.
A diagnostic log is a record of the app’s activity, so it contains the titles and file paths of books in your library, and what you played and when. That is what makes it useful for finding a fault, and it is also information about you. If you would rather not share it, do not send a report — and on Android, switch off automatic crash reports.
Before anything is uploaded, the log is stripped of: access and refresh tokens, API keys, authorization headers, JSON web tokens, email addresses, and IP addresses.
Your feedback text is sent by your own email app, as a draft addressed to feedback@cranesoft.com that you review and send yourself. If you send it, we see your email address, because you sent us an email. The draft also carries a reference to the uploaded log so the two can be matched up.
The installation id
A random value, generated on the device the first time the app runs. It is not an account, is not derived from anything about you or your hardware, and is not shared with anyone. Its only job is to let two reports from the same phone be recognised as coming from the same phone. Uninstalling the app discards it.
Who can see it
Diagnostic logs go to a private, insert-only store: the app can add a log but cannot list, read or alter anything, including its own earlier uploads. Only Cranesoft can read them, and only to investigate a fault.
They are never sold, never shared with advertisers, and never used to build a profile of you.
How long it is kept
We keep diagnostic reports until we delete them. There is no automatic deletion yet — saying otherwise would be a promise nothing performs, so we do not say it.
That is intended to change: a 90-day limit is planned, and this section will say so on the day something enforces it, not before.
You can ask us to delete your reports and logs at any time by writing to privacy@cranesoft.com. Quote your installation id — Settings ▸ About shows it; tapping it copies it, and Share sends it to another device — and we will delete everything associated with it.
2. Hardcover
Only if you connect a Hardcover account, which is entirely optional and off until you do it.
When connected, the app sends your reading progress — a
number of seconds, or a page count for a print edition — and marks books
as currently reading, to api.hardcover.app, for books you
have linked yourself.
This writes to your public Hardcover profile. That is what Hardcover is for, and it is worth being aware of: anyone who can see your profile can see that progress. What Hardcover then does with it is governed by Hardcover’s own privacy policy, not this one.
Your Hardcover access token is held in the device’s own secure storage — the Keychain on iOS, the Keystore on Android — and is never included in a diagnostic report; the scrubbing described above removes it.
Disconnecting Hardcover in Settings deletes the token from your device. It does not delete anything already on your Hardcover profile; you control that at Hardcover.
3. Wi-Fi transfer
The app can run a small web server so you can send audiobooks from a computer on the same network. While that screen is open:
- the server is reachable only on your local network — never from the internet
- a six-digit PIN, shown on the phone, is required
- five wrong PINs lock it until the app is restarted
- it stops when you leave the screen, and after ten minutes of inactivity
Files sent this way go straight into the app’s own storage on your phone. Nothing about this feature sends anything to us or to anyone else.
Permissions, and why
The app asks for as little as it can. As of this version it requests:
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Internet | Hardcover sync, diagnostic reports, and the Wi-Fi transfer page |
| Read audio files / storage | to read the audiobooks you point it at |
| Foreground service, wake lock | to keep playing with the screen off |
| Modify audio settings | to hand over audio properly to headphones and cars |
| Vibrate | the shake gesture that extends a sleep timer |
| Local network (iOS) | the Wi-Fi transfer page |
It does not ask for the microphone, the camera, your photos, your location, your contacts, or your physical activity.
Children
CAP is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has sent us a report, write to privacy@cranesoft.com and we will delete it.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see what we hold about you, to correct it, to have it deleted, or to object to our holding it.
Because the only thing we hold is diagnostic reports, the practical answer to all of these is the same: write to privacy@cranesoft.com with the installation id from Settings ▸ About, and we will tell you what we have and delete it on request.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what leaves your device, we will say so in the app’s release notes rather than quietly updating this page.
Contact
Cranesoft LLC — privacy@cranesoft.com
If you need a postal address for a formal request, ask at that address and we will provide one.