Privacy Policy

Lectern is developed by NexlyTech ("we", "us"). This policy explains what data the Lectern app handles, where it lives, and the choices you have. It applies to the Lectern mobile application published on Google Play under the application ID dev.nexlytech.Lectern.

• Your documents, their extracted text, and everything derived from them stay on your device.
• Narration, chat, summaries, and search run fully on-device. No document text is sent to any cloud AI service.
• We operate no server and no database. There is no account to create and no sign-up.
• We use no advertising SDKs, no analytics SDKs, no crash reporting, and no trackers.
• Optional backups are encrypted on your device before upload and stored in your own Google Drive. We cannot read them, and neither can Google.

The following is created and stored only on your device:

• The documents you import — PDFs, EPUBs, Word files, text files, and saved articles
• Extracted text, chapter structure, and reading position
• Search indexes and the embeddings used to answer questions about a document
• Chat conversations, summaries, quizzes, and every other AI-generated result
• Voice recordings you make for a custom voice, and the narration audio produced from them
• Your library, tags, pronunciation rules, and app settings

Narration and language models run locally on your phone. Lectern has no server-side processing of document content, and this is a permanent design decision — not a temporary limitation.

Lectern makes exactly three kinds of network request, all of which you initiate. It makes no others.

• Fetching a web article — when you paste a URL to import, Lectern requests that page directly from the site you named, so it can extract the article text. The request goes to that site and nowhere else. It does not pass through us.
• Downloading a narration or language model — models are hosted publicly on Hugging Face and downloaded only after you choose one. The download carries no information about you or your library.
• Encrypted backup and restore — only if you turn it on. See below.

Lectern has no sign-up, no login, and no user profile. Access to paid features comes from Google Play Billing, which is tied to the Google account already signed in to the Play Store on your device at the operating-system layer. The app never sees, stores, or asks for your identity, and the entitlement check happens against the Play Store app on your own phone.

Google Play processes the purchase and knows you bought Lectern, as it does for any app. We receive only the aggregate sales reporting Google gives every developer. We do not receive or store your payment card details.

Lectern can back your library up to your own Google Drive. It is off until you turn it on, and every byte is encrypted on your device before it is uploaded.

• Content is encrypted with AES-256-GCM using a key derived from a password only you know, stretched with Argon2id.
• Encryption happens before upload. Google and NexlyTech only ever see ciphertext.
• Recovery uses a 12-word phrase shown once at setup. Those words are the key — anyone holding them can decrypt your backup, and losing them means we cannot recover it. That is the design, not an oversight.
• You can connect more than one Google account, so a backup can live in more than one Drive.

Lectern requests only the drive.file Google Drive scope. That scope grants access solely to files Lectern itself created — it cannot see, read, or list anything else in your Drive.

Signing in to Google for this feature shares your email address and basic profile with the app so it can show you which account a backup belongs to. It stays on the device.

Lectern contains no advertising SDKs, no third-party analytics SDKs, no crash reporting that transmits, and no tracking technologies. Diagnostic logs, where they exist, stay on your device. We do not build profiles, we do not sell data, and we have no data to sell.

• Microphone — optional, and used only when you record a sample to create a custom narration voice. The recording is processed and stored only on your device.
• Storage and file access — used to open the documents you pick. Lectern reads only what you choose to import.
• Foreground service and notifications — used to keep narration playing and show playback controls when the app is in the background.
• Biometric authentication — optional, used to lock the app. Biometric data is handled by your device's operating system and never reaches Lectern or any server.
• Internet — used only for the three purposes listed above.

Your library is stored in the app's private storage, which Android isolates from other apps. The optional app lock adds a biometric or passcode gate on top. Backups are encrypted end-to-end with AES-256-GCM before leaving your device, under a key derived from your password with Argon2id. Communication with Google's sign-in and Drive services uses TLS.

• Documents and everything derived from them — live only on your device. Deleting a document, or uninstalling the app, removes it. We hold no copy and never did.
• Backups — stored in your own Google Drive and removable at any time from within Lectern or from your Google account directly.
• Account data — there is none to delete. We hold no personal data about you on any server.

Depending on where you live (including the EU/EEA and UK under GDPR, and applicable US state laws), you have the right to access, correct, export, or delete personal data a company holds about you. Lectern is unusual here: we hold none. There is no account, no server, and no record of you on our side, so there is nothing for us to disclose, export, or erase. Your data is already entirely in your hands. You retain the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority, and you can reach us at any time with questions.

Lectern is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. Because Lectern reads whatever document you give it, including web pages you paste, the content it narrates is entirely up to the person using it and is not filtered or age-rated by us.

We hold no personal data on any server, so there is no transfer of your data across borders by us. The optional Google sign-in and Drive backup are handled by Google under its own terms and infrastructure, and the data placed there is encrypted before it reaches them.

If we change this policy, we will update this page and the "Last updated" date above. Material changes affecting how personal data is handled will be announced in the app before they take effect.

Questions about privacy in Lectern? Email hello@nexlytech.dev.