Pockd
Privacy policy
Version 3 · Effective 9 October 2026 · Version history
In short
- No account. There is nothing to sign up for or sign in to.
- No analytics, ads or tracking. Pockd measures nothing and reports nothing.
- Speech is made on your iPhone. The text being read to you is never sent anywhere to be spoken.
- Questions and summaries too. Ask & Summaries uses a language model on your iPhone. What you ask, its answers and the summaries it writes never leave it.
- Your reading stays with you. Books, articles, notes and listening history live in Pockd’s storage on your iPhone, and in your own iCloud backup if you use one.
- Nothing reaches the developer. Pockd has no server, so there is nothing of yours for us to see, keep, sell or hand over. Its App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected.
What stays on your iPhone
The books and PDFs you import, the articles you save, text you write, the passages you save, reading positions, listening history and statistics, the summaries you make, your settings, and audio Pockd has already spoken (kept so a passage doesn’t need to be spoken again, up to 2 GB). All of it is stored only in Pockd’s own storage on the device, protected by iOS.
Every time Pockd uses the network
Pockd goes online only when you ask it to. This is the complete list.
| When | What is contacted | What they see |
|---|---|---|
| You download the voice (once) | GitHub, which hosts the voice model (github.com, then release-assets.githubusercontent.com) | A download request from your device, like any download |
| You turn on Ask & Summaries and download its model (once) | Hugging Face, which hosts the model (huggingface.co, then its download servers at cdn.hf.co) | A download request from your device, like any download |
| You save an article from a link | That website. Pockd opens the page once, out of sight, the way a browser would, and keeps the article on your iPhone. | A visit to that page. The page’s own scripts run while it loads, so any analytics the website itself uses can count the visit, and cookies the site sets are kept by Pockd for later saves from that site. |
| The article has a cover image | The server that hosts the image | A request for that image |
| The link is a PDF or EPUB file | The server that hosts the file | A download request for that file |
| You choose Search the Web on a word | Safari opens a web search for that word | The search, under Safari’s and your search engine’s own policies |
Nothing else. Listening, highlighting, notes, statistics, asking and summaries work with no connection at all. You can check this yourself: turn on Airplane Mode and keep listening, or turn on App Privacy Report in iOS Settings › Privacy & Security, which lists every domain each app contacts.
The voice
Pockd’s natural voice is Kokoro-82M, an open text-to-speech model by hexgrad released under the Apache 2.0 licence, with 82 million parameters. Pockd uses the multilingual build packaged by the sherpa-onnx project (kokoro-multi-lang-v1_0, about 350 MB), and runs it entirely on your iPhone with the open-source sherpa-onnx engine. Pronunciation uses espeak-ng data (GPL 3.0). The full list of open-source software and licences is in the app under Settings › About › Acknowledgements.
Pockd reads aloud only with this voice, so listening starts once it is downloaded.
Ask & Summaries
Ask & Summaries is off until you turn it on in Settings. It lets you ask about the book you are reading and make a summary of a whole book to listen to. Both use Gemma 4 E2B, an open language model by Google released under the Apache 2.0 licence, in a 4-bit version prepared by Unsloth (about 3.1 GB). Pockd downloads it once from Hugging Face and runs it entirely on your iPhone with the open-source llama.cpp engine (MIT licence).
To answer a question, Pockd finds the relevant passages in the book on your iPhone and gives them to the model there; nothing is sent anywhere. Your questions and the answers are not saved: they are gone when you close Ask. Summaries are saved in your library like any book, and are part of your iCloud backup if you use one. The model itself is not backed up and can be removed in Settings at any time.
Apple features Pockd uses
Pockd relies on a few features of iOS. Apple handles these under its own privacy policy, as an independent controller:
- iCloud Backup. If you back up your iPhone, the backup includes Pockd’s library, notes and settings. The voice, the Ask & Summaries model and saved audio are excluded; they can be downloaded or spoken again.
- The dictionary, which runs on the device.
- The App Store, for downloading and updating Pockd.
- Crash reports, only if you have turned on Share With App Developers in iOS Settings. Apple then shares anonymous crash information with developers.
Deleting your data
Delete a book, an article, a summary or a saved passage in the app and it is gone from your iPhone. Clear Saved Audio in Settings › Reading removes spoken audio, Remove Voice in Settings removes the voice, and Remove Model in Settings › Ask & Summaries removes the language model. Deleting Pockd deletes everything it stored. Copies inside your own iPhone or iCloud backups remain until those backups are replaced or deleted.
Children
Pockd collects no personal information from anyone, including children.
This website
pockd.app is a static site with no cookies, no analytics and no third-party fonts or scripts, so there is nothing to consent to. Your theme choice is kept only in your own browser. The site is hosted by Vercel, which, like any web server, briefly processes connection data such as your IP address, the page requested and your browser to deliver the page and keep the service secure (legitimate interest, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Vercel processes this on our behalf and may do so in the United States under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.
When you contact support
If you email us, we use your message and address only to answer you (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR). We never use them for marketing and delete the conversation once your question is resolved, at the latest after 12 months.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you may ask what data we hold about you, and have it corrected, deleted, restricted or handed over, and object to its use. For the app, we hold nothing about you. For emails, write to us and we will act on your request. You may also complain to a data protection supervisory authority.
Not applicable
Pockd sells no data, makes no automated decisions about you and shares nothing with advertisers or data brokers.
Security
Your library is protected by iOS app sandboxing and Data Protection. Connections Pockd makes use HTTPS where the site supports it. Because there is no server copy, there is nothing of yours to leak from us.
Who is responsible
Pockd is made by an independent developer. For anything about privacy, contact us through the support page.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version is published here with a new date, and significant changes are announced in the app.
Version history
- Version 3, 9 October 2026: Ask & Summaries and the download of its model added; the iOS voices are no longer used.
- Version 2, 7 October 2026: every network connection listed; the voice model named; iCloud Backup, website hosting and your rights added.
- Version 1, 6 October 2026: first version.