Privacy Policy

Last updated: 30 July 2026

The short version: SideShelf has no servers, no accounts, and no analytics. We never receive your data because there is nowhere for it to go. The app talks to your Audiobookshelf server and nothing else, apart from checking for app updates.

Who this policy covers

This policy applies to the SideShelf mobile app for iOS and Android, and to this website. SideShelf is an open-source client for Audiobookshelf, a self-hosted audiobook server that you run yourself. In this document, "we" refers to the maintainers of SideShelf.

SideShelf is not affiliated with the Audiobookshelf project. This policy does not cover the Audiobookshelf server software, nor whoever operates the server you connect to.

What SideShelf stores on your device

All of the following stays on your device. None of it is transmitted to us, because we operate no backend service of any kind.

  • Server connection details — the address of your Audiobookshelf server, your username, and the access and refresh tokens issued by that server. These are held in the iOS Keychain or the Android Keystore, the operating system's dedicated encrypted credential storage.
  • Cached library information — titles, authors, series, cover art, chapters, and similar metadata retrieved from your server, kept in a local database so the app is fast and works offline.
  • Downloaded audiobooks — audio files you choose to download, stored in the app's private storage area, which other apps cannot read.
  • App preferences — settings such as skip intervals, smart rewind, sleep timer behaviour, home screen layout, tab order, and view mode.
  • Diagnostic logs — only if you turn on diagnostics yourself. These logs are written to your device and stay there. They are shared only if you explicitly export or copy them, for example to attach to a bug report.

What SideShelf sends to your Audiobookshelf server

To do its job, the app communicates with the server address you enter. That traffic includes:

  • Your credentials, in order to sign in and to refresh your session
  • Requests for your libraries, books, cover art, and audio files
  • Your listening position and playback progress, so it syncs across your devices

This connection is direct: it goes from your device to your server, with nothing of ours in between. How that data is then stored, logged, or retained is determined by the server, which in the typical self-hosted case means it is determined by you. If you connect to a server run by somebody else, their practices apply and you should ask them about it.

Third-party services

SideShelf includes no analytics, advertising, attribution, or tracking software. There are two limited exceptions worth naming:

  • App updates. The app uses Expo's update service to deliver bug fixes. When it checks for an update, that service necessarily receives your device's IP address along with the app and runtime version. It does not receive your server address, your credentials, or anything about your library.
  • App stores. If you installed SideShelf from the Apple App Store or Google Play, those companies collect their own installation, usage, and crash statistics under their own privacy policies. We may see aggregate, anonymised figures — such as a total download count or an unattributed crash report — through their developer dashboards. We cannot identify you from these.

What we never collect

We want to be specific rather than vague here. SideShelf does not collect, receive, store, transmit to ourselves, sell, rent, or share:

  • Your name, email address, or any contact information
  • Your Audiobookshelf server address, username, or password
  • Your library contents, listening history, or playback progress
  • Your location, contacts, photos, or device identifiers used for advertising
  • Any behavioural or usage profile

There is no SideShelf account, because there is no SideShelf server to hold one.

Deleting your data

Signing out of the app clears your stored tokens and username. Uninstalling SideShelf removes everything else it has stored — cached metadata, downloads, preferences, and any diagnostic logs. Because we hold nothing, there is no deletion request to send us.

Data on your Audiobookshelf server is unaffected by uninstalling the app, and is yours to manage through that server.

Security

Credentials are stored using the operating system's encrypted credential storage rather than in ordinary app files. We strongly recommend serving your Audiobookshelf instance over HTTPS, so that traffic between the app and your server is encrypted in transit. If you expose your server over plain HTTP on an untrusted network, anyone positioned between you and it may be able to observe that traffic — this is a property of your server setup, not something the app can fix.

Children's privacy

SideShelf is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from anyone. As described above, it collects no personal information from any user regardless of age.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the revised version will be posted on this page with an updated date above. Material changes — particularly any that would add data collection — will also be noted in the app's release notes. The full revision history of this page is public in the website repository.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about how SideShelf handles data, can be raised as an issue on our GitHub repository.

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