Bindle

Bindle Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 25, 2026

This policy covers Bindle, a read-later app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. In short: Bindle has no servers, no accounts, and no analytics. What you save stays on your own devices.

What Bindle collects

Nothing. The developer never receives your links, notes, highlights, reading history, or any information about you or your devices. Bindle has no analytics, advertising, tracking, or crash-reporting SDKs.

Where your data lives

Your library is stored on each of your devices, in Bindle's app container. It syncs directly between devices you have paired, over your local network or Bluetooth. That traffic is end-to-end encrypted and mutually authenticated. No server or cloud service holds a copy, and iCloud is not used.

What Bindle works out from your library is made on your devices too: the search index, search by meaning, text read from images, summaries, tag ideas, and Ask answers. Summaries, tag ideas, and Ask use Apple's on-device model. Nothing you type or save is sent anywhere to be processed.

What Bindle connects to

  • The pages you save. Bindle fetches each page, its images, and its icon, title, and preview so you can read it offline. These requests go directly to the site that hosts the page and send no cookies and no referrer. The site sees them as it would any visit from your device. A page's own scripts run only when Bindle cannot find the article without them. When you open a link with no copy on this device, Bindle first asks your other devices on the local network for theirs, and goes to the site only if none has one.
  • Videos. For a YouTube link, Bindle makes the same kind of request to YouTube's player and caption track to get the video's transcript. While the video is open in the reader, its player loads YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed (youtube-nocookie.com), in a web view whose cookies and storage are deleted when it closes.
  • Sites you sign in to. If you sign in to a site in Bindle (Settings, Site Logins), that site's own cookies are kept on this device and sent with Bindle's requests to that site, and only to it, so it gives you what you subscribe to. A username and password you save for it stay in this device's Keychain. None of this syncs or leaves the device. Signing out deletes them.
  • The welcome link. A new library starts with one link, a Wikipedia article. Bindle fetches it from en.wikipedia.org like any page you save.
  • Apple Maps. When you search for a place, or choose Look Up on an address found in a page, the text you typed or the address is sent to Apple Maps to find it. The maps in Nearby and the place editor load Apple Maps tiles while they are shown. Your location itself is never sent.
  • Downloads. If you install a natural voice, Bindle downloads its model and language data once from Hugging Face and GitHub, where they are published. If you turn on Search by Meaning, Bindle downloads its model (all-MiniLM-L6-v2, about 23 MB) once from Hugging Face. Bindle also asks the system for Apple's English language models, which the natural voice uses; Apple serves them. Nothing about you or your library is sent with any of these downloads.
  • E-readers. If you turn on E-Readers, one of your devices answers CrossPoint e-readers on your local network (never over cellular), with its own certificate and a login only your devices and readers know, and announces the readers' name on that network. Nothing is sent beyond your local network.
  • Your other devices. Sync, handoff, and copies shared between your devices go only between devices you have paired.
  • Browser extensions. The Safari and Chrome extensions make no requests of their own. A tab's address goes only to Bindle on the same device.

A link you choose to open, such as Open Website or a link in an article, opens in your browser like any other link.

Device permissions

Bindle asks for each of these only when a feature needs it. Each is used only on the device and only for the purpose shown. Nothing is recorded, kept as history, or sent anywhere.

  • Local network: to find your other devices and sync with them, and, if E-Readers is on, to answer your e-readers.
  • Bluetooth: to sync with your devices nearby when you share no network, and to know when one is in range for handoff.
  • Camera: to scan a link's QR code when adding a link (iPhone, iPad, and Mac) and to scan a pairing code (iPhone and iPad). Only if you turn on the reader's look-away pause, to notice when you look away; on iPhone and iPad this uses face tracking, which is processed on the device and never stored.
  • Microphone: to hear the pairing sound from your other device, and links sent by sound from nearby devices, only while Bindle is listening for one.
  • Location: to show saved links near you and to find places, and, if you set place reminders, to remind you when you arrive at or leave a place, even while Bindle is closed. Your location is read on the device and no history is kept.
  • Motion: only if you turn on tilt scrolling in the reader. On iPhone, if you set the simple player to While Driving, to tell when you are in a car. The shine on book covers also follows how you tilt the device; this needs no permission and nothing is kept.
  • Notifications: to ring reminders and to tell you when a nearby device sent you a link.

Children

Bindle collects no data from anyone, including children.

Changes

Any change to this policy will be posted on this page with a new date.

Contact

Questions: blake@blakehelms.net