Paperly
Privacy Policy
Last updated: 2 September 2026 · Applies to the Paperly browser extension and the Paperly Android app.
The short version
Paperly has no user accounts, no servers of its own, no analytics and no trackers. Your books never leave your device — the extension reads them from a folder you choose and never uploads a file anywhere. Your highlights, notes and reading progress are stored locally. We never receive any of it, so we cannot sell, share or lose it.
Two things do reach the network, both described in full below: a passage you explicitly ask to have translated, and the book covers on the Support page.
Your books and the folder you choose
Paperly cannot see your disk. You pick one folder, and your browser grants access to that folder and nothing outside it. In the Android app the same choice is made through Android's own document picker.
- Files are read from that folder and only that folder, on your device, to display them.
- No file, no page and no fragment of a book is ever uploaded, copied to a server or sent to us.
- Nothing in the folder is modified unless you ask for it — creating a folder, renaming a book, moving one between shelves, or deleting one from inside Paperly.
- You can withdraw the grant at any time in your browser's site settings, or by removing the extension.
What is stored on your device
- Your highlights, their colours, and the notes attached to them.
- Your reading progress and history for each book.
- Words you save while reading.
- Your settings: reading colour, font size, interface language.
- A reference to the folder you picked, so you do not have to choose it again.
This lives in the browser's own local storage for the extension, and in the app's private storage on Android. It is never transmitted. Removing the extension, or the app, removes it.
Paperly identifies a book by the contents of its file rather than by its name or location. That is what lets your highlights survive renaming or moving a book. The fingerprint is computed on your device and stays there.
What leaves your device
| Service | What is sent | When |
|---|---|---|
Google Translate (translate.googleapis.com) |
Only the passage you selected | Only when you ask for a translation |
MyMemory (api.mymemory.translated.net) |
The same passage | Only as a fallback, when the request above is refused or rate-limited |
Shopee's image CDN (down-vn.img.susercontent.com) |
Nothing about you beyond what any image request carries — your IP address and browser | Only while the Support tab is open, to show the book covers on it |
That is the complete list. Paperly sends no identifier along with any of it — no account, no device ID, no advertising ID — and it never sends the book, the file name, or anything about the rest of your library. Each service handles the request under its own privacy policy. If you never translate anything and never open the Support tab, Paperly makes no network requests at all.
The Support tab, and affiliate links
Paperly is free and carries no advertising network. The Support tab does contain book links to Shopee that earn a small commission if you buy through them, and a bank QR code if you would rather give directly. Nothing about you is passed to those links beyond the ordinary contents of a click, and none of it is tied to what you read.
Why the extension asks for its permissions
| Permission | Reason |
|---|---|
Access to translate.googleapis.com and
api.mymemory.translated.net |
Chrome will not let an extension page reach any other origin without naming it. These two are named because the translate feature calls them — and nothing else is named, which is why Paperly cannot reach anywhere else. |
| The folder you choose (File System Access) | To read your books, and to create, rename, move or delete inside that folder when you ask. Granted by you, per folder, and revocable. |
| Local storage (origin private file system, IndexedDB) | To keep your highlights, notes and progress in a local database so the reader works offline. |
Beyond those two hosts the extension declares no permissions at all, and it ships no content scripts. It cannot read your tabs, your history or your bookmarks, and it does not run on, read or alter the web pages you visit — everything happens on its own page.
The Android app
The Android build declares one permission: internet access, used for the same translation request described above. It asks for no storage permission — not media access, and not all-files access. Your books are reached through Android's Storage Access Framework, meaning the folder you pick in the system picker, and nothing else.
If you send a book to Paperly from another app with Share or Open with, that single file is copied into the app's own private storage so it can be opened. That copy stays on your device.
Children
Paperly is a reading tool suitable for general audiences. It does not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, of any age — because it does not collect personal information at all.
Changes to this policy
If a future version of Paperly changes how data is handled, this page is updated with a new date above before that version ships, and the change is noted in the release notes on the Chrome Web Store.
Contact
Questions, or a data request: hoangcaophi11061999@gmail.com.