A quieter place to keep your books.
Booqly is a reading log for people who would rather finish a chapter than refresh a feed. Scan a cover, note your page, share what you're reading with a few friends. Free on iOS, with no ads and no subscription.
Booqly is a reading log for people who would rather finish a chapter than refresh a feed. Scan a cover, note your page, share what you're reading with a few friends. Free on iOS, with no ads and no subscription.
No streaks, no gamified shelves. Booqly is built to fade into the background of a reading habit and show up only when you want it to.
Free. No subscription, no ads. On the App Store today; Android later this year.
Dr. Sven-Eric Molzahn
Lommelstrasse 1, 85101 Lenting, Germany
Email: sven-eric@molzahn-software.de
Booqly respects your reading. We don't sell your data. We don't run third-party analytics SDKs. We don't show ads. Your library lives in our Supabase backend (EU region) and on your device.
When you sign in we store: your email address (used for magic-link sign-in), a generated user UUID, your handle and optional display name, and an optional avatar image if you upload one.
Legal basis: performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) — we need this data to provide the service you signed up for.
Retention: kept while your account exists. Deleted immediately when you delete your account in the app (Settings → Delete account); encrypted backups roll off within 90 days.
The books you've added, started, and finished, plus any highlights or notes — so the library syncs across your devices and so social features (the feed, read-together sessions) can work. Export at any time as CSV or JSON from Settings → Export your library.
Legal basis: performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
Retention: same as account data above.
If you use the shelf-scan feature, the photo you took is sent to Anthropic (Claude API, USA) via our Supabase Edge Function to identify the books in it. Anthropic does not retain the image beyond the request. We log a timestamp + a thumbnail (stored only on your device) + a scan counter (server-side, to enforce the per-user quota). We never retain the original photo on our server.
Legal basis: consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR) — you actively choose to scan.
Retention: the image is not stored. The scan counter is kept while your account exists.
If you switch on Share cover photos (Settings → Privacy), the covers you photograph help other readers see the right edition. What leaves your device is only the straightened crop of the cover itself — at most 1200 pixels on the long edge, with all photo metadata (location, device, time) removed. The rest of the photo — hands, table, room — is never uploaded. A shared cover is stored with your account id (not shown to anyone) and can be seen by every Booqly reader who has that edition. You can turn sharing off at any time; covers you already shared stay until you delete your account or ask us to remove them.
Legal basis: consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR) — sharing is off until you switch it on.
Retention: while your account exists. Removed with the account, or on request — see Rights holders in the Terms.
To suggest books you don't have yet, a summary of your shelf — titles, authors, reading status and ratings, never your notes — is sent to Booqly's server and from there to Anthropic (Claude API, USA), which proposes titles. Without an account this happens under an anonymous id (see below); nothing that identifies you goes along. Suggestions are kept for seven days so the same shelf isn't sent twice. Switch this off in Settings → Recommendations → Personalised picks; your shelf then stays on your device.
Legal basis: performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) — personalised picks are part of the service, and you can object at any time in Settings.
Retention: the shelf summary is replaced whenever your shelf changes; suggestions expire after seven days.
You can use Booqly without signing in. To keep recommendations working, the app then creates an anonymous account: a random id with no email, name or handle, holding only the shelf summary above. It is invisible to other readers. When you later sign in, its contributions move to your real account and the anonymous one is deleted; anonymous accounts unused for 180 days are deleted automatically.
Legal basis: performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
Retention: 180 days after last use, or until you sign in.
If you allow notifications, we store the device token Apple issues, together with the app language and whether the app is a test or App Store build, so we can tell you when a friend invites you to read together or joins your session. The token and the short notification text go to Apple (Apple Push Notification service, USA). Nothing else is sent through notifications.
Legal basis: consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR) — the system permission dialog.
Retention: while your account exists; tokens Apple reports as invalid are removed immediately.
Friends — readers you are mutually connected with — see your handle, display name, avatar, and what you've chosen to show of your shelf (Settings → Privacy). When you invite a friend to read a book together, or accept an invitation, the other person sees whether you already have that book. Notes you write in a reading session are visible to its members.
Booqly's social features — the feed, profiles, comments and reading together — are for readers 13 and up. To check, the app asks Apple's Declared Age Range service, which answers only with a bracket such as "13 or older" or "under 13", from what you or a parent declared to Apple. Booqly never learns a birthday. The answer is kept on your device and is never sent to us. Readers under 13 keep the whole reading app: library, scanning, import and recommendations.
Legal basis: legal obligation and legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(c), (f) GDPR) — keeping social features to readers of the age the platform requires.
Retention: on the device only, until the app is deleted.
Booqly links to bookshops so you can buy a book you want. Tapping a link opens the shop; only then does the shop learn anything about you, under its own privacy policy. Some links are affiliate links: as an Amazon Associate, Booqly earns from qualifying purchases. No purchase or browsing data comes back to us.
If you submit your email on this landing page, we store: your email address, which launch you asked to hear about (iOS or Android), a UUID confirmation token, a UUID unsubscribe token, the timestamp of signup and confirmation, and the IP + browser user-agent of the device that confirmed (for GDPR-compliant proof of consent). We use this only to send the one launch announcement you asked for. List storage: Supabase. Email sending: Brevo (EU-based, Paris). Every email contains an unsubscribe link.
Legal basis: consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), confirmed via double opt-in.
Retention: kept until you unsubscribe. Unsubscribed rows are flagged and deleted after 30 days.
If you accept analytics via the cookie banner, we load Vercel Analytics in cookieless mode on thebooqly.com to count page views. No cookies, no advertising identifiers, no cross-site tracking. If you reject, no analytics script is loaded.
Legal basis: consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR).
Retention: Vercel retains aggregated, non-personal page-view data for up to 12 months.
Some sub-processors are based outside the EU:
All other data processing (accounts, library, newsletter) occurs within the EU via Supabase (EU region) and Brevo (Paris, France).
Under the GDPR you have the right to:
Account deletion: Settings → Delete account, in the app, immediately. It removes your profile, friendships, reading sessions, notes and shared cover photos; the books on your device stay. Encrypted backups roll off within 90 days. If you can't reach the app, email sven-eric@molzahn-software.de from your account's address.
You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data-protection authority. Our competent authority is the Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht (BayLDA), Promenade 18, 91522 Ansbach, Germany — www.lda.bayern.de.
Supabase (EU region). All transport HTTPS. Backups encrypted at rest. Sub-processors: Supabase (storage), Brevo (newsletter and report emails), Vercel (website hosting & analytics), Anthropic (shelf-scan and recommendation requests), Apple (push notifications).
This website uses one strictly necessary cookie to remember your cookie-banner choice. That's it. The site doesn't use any tracking cookies and doesn't fingerprint your device.
localStorage. Cannot be disabled.The Booqly app itself doesn't use cookies. It stores your library and preferences in the operating system's secure container.
You can change your cookie choice at any time by clearing your browser storage for this site, or by tapping reset cookie consent.
You can use Booqly for free for personal, non-commercial reading. Don't try to disrupt the service, reverse-engineer it, or use it to harass other members of your circle.
Notes, ratings, and quotes you add stay yours. By publishing them to your circle you grant us a limited licence to store and display them to the people you've added. We never use them to train models.
Book covers are the publisher's or the artist's copyright. Booqly shows reader-photographed covers only to identify an edition, at reduced resolution (at most 1200 pixels on the long edge), the way library catalogues do. By sharing a cover you confirm that you photographed the physical book yourself, and you grant us a non-exclusive licence to store the crop and display it to other readers for that purpose. We may remove any cover at any time, and readers can report one from the book's page in the app.
If you hold the rights to a cover shown in Booqly and want it removed, email sven-eric@molzahn-software.de with the book's title or ISBN and your relationship to the work. We hide the cover as soon as we read the request, delete the image within a few days, and confirm by email.
Reading sessions, notes and comments are shared with the people in them. Keep them about the books; we may remove content and end sessions that are used to harass, deceive or spam other readers.
Links to bookshops are a convenience. The shop, not Booqly, sells you the book under its own terms. Some links are affiliate links: as an Amazon Associate, Booqly earns from qualifying purchases; the price is the same for you.
You can delete your account at any time in the app: Settings → Delete account. Your profile, friendships, reading sessions, notes and shared cover photos are removed from active systems immediately; the books on your device stay; encrypted backups roll off within 90 days. If you can't reach the app, email sven-eric@molzahn-software.de from your account's address.
Booqly is provided as is. To the extent permitted by law, we exclude implied warranties and limit our liability to the amount you've paid in the last twelve months (which is currently zero, since the app is free).
Dr. Sven-Eric Molzahn
Lommelstrasse 1
85101 Lenting · Deutschland
Email · sven-eric@molzahn-software.de
Phone · +49 151 26940575
Dr. Sven-Eric Molzahn
Lommelstrasse 1, 85101 Lenting
VAT exempted per § 19 UStG (Kleinunternehmerregelung).
The European Commission provides a platform for online dispute resolution at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr. We are not obliged, and not willing, to participate in dispute-resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board.