Lectio · Privacy policy · the same text as in the app · Terms of use

Privacy policy — Lectio

Last updated: October 18, 2026

Lectio reads a book you already own and tells you what is in it for you: how much of it you can read, which words to learn next, which sentences are worth studying. Doing that needs a server, because reading an EPUB or a PDF properly is real work. So your book is sent to that server, it is read, and it is not kept. And a few features of Lectio Pro — learning mode's notes, practice sentences, and Say it simpler with its two siblings — send a few sentences or paragraphs of your book to another company, Anthropic (or, if you use your own AI key, to the provider you chose), and nothing else does. This page says exactly what happens, in enough detail that you could check it against the code.

There is no account, no advertising, no analytics and no tracking anywhere in Lectio.

1. Who we are

Lectio is made by NeuroPhonetics LLC, a limited liability company registered in the State of Minnesota, United States (https://NeuroPhonetics.com) — the company behind every program in this family and the seller on Google Play. This policy covers the Lectio app for Android and the Lectio service it talks to. Questions: .

2. The short version

Your book goes to the Lectio service, is read, and is deleted when the request ends. Nothing about it is kept — not on disk, not in memory.
Subtitles, Word documents, web pages, Markdown and text files, shared text and lyrics are read on your phone and never uploaded. Only a part's text goes to the service when you study it, as a chapter's does.
With learning mode switched on at the service, the eight or ten hardest sentences of the chapter you are studying are sent to Anthropic, whose model writes the notes under them. The rest of the chapter is never sent there. With no key set at the service, nothing goes to Anthropic at all, and the sentences are still marked as hard. The list of hard sentences is free and never touches a model; the notes are part of Lectio Pro, so a free copy of Lectio never asks for them, and nothing from it can reach Anthropic.
Practice sentences (Lectio Pro) send the chosen words and the sentence each comes from — never the chapter — to Anthropic, with a random install id the service uses only to count today's five sets, in memory.
Say it simpler, Explain the meaning and What it implies (Lectio Pro) send the paragraph or click you chose — or, for a Simple version of a chapter, its paragraphs a few at a time — to Anthropic through the Lectio service. Nothing is kept there, and the answers are kept only on your phone.
Your word list, your reading history and your place in each book live on your phone, and nowhere else unless you switch on a copy to your own Google Drive or your own folder.
We store nothing about you on any server, because there is no "you" to store: no accounts.

3. What leaves your phone

In one line, the same line the app shows in Settings: the book you open and the chapter you study travel to the Lectio service, are answered, and are not stored there. In detail:

The book file itself, when you open it, ask for its chapters, ask for one chapter's text, or search it for a word. The service is handed the file, reads the part you asked about, and answers with text and numbers.

A chapter's text, when you ask for its study material, its coverage or its hard sentences. In those requests the app sends the text it already has rather than the file again.

A chapter's text, to export it as a PDF with its pronunciation. The app sends the text it already has to the Lectio service, which passes it on to its own pronunciation engine — a copy of Phonema's, running inside the same service, not shared with any other app — and sends the PDF back. Neither the text nor the PDF is kept; the file is saved only on your phone.

A chapter's text, to learn it in chunks. The app sends the chapter's text to the Lectio service, which picks its short sentences by rules and sends them back. Nothing is kept, and no language model is involved. Their broad IPA is worked out on your phone. Hearing a sentence or a word uses your phone's own voice and sends nothing anywhere.

Read aloud. Reading a chapter aloud uses your phone's own text-to-speech, and Lectio itself sends nothing. Most voices work on the phone; a voice marked "needs the internet" sends the text it reads to the voice's maker (for example Google or Samsung), under that speech engine's own terms. If you choose to see the IPA while listening ("Text + IPA" or "IPA only"), broad IPA is worked out on your phone, from a pronunciation table that comes with the app, and nothing is sent; the phone keeps it only until the app is closed. Narrow IPA is asked of the Phonema app on your phone, not of any server of Lectio's.

An enriched export (narrow IPA, connected speech) never goes to the Lectio service. Lectio hands the chapter to the Phonema app on your phone, if you have it, and Phonema does the rest under Phonema's own privacy policy. Lectio receives the finished PDF back and saves it on your phone.

Subtitles, documents, pages, shared text and lyrics: nothing, until you study them. A subtitle file (.srt, .vtt, .ass, .ssa), a Word document, an HTML page, a Markdown or text file, text shared from another app and lyrics you paste are read on your phone and kept there, in Lectio's own folder; the file is never uploaded. When you study one of their parts, that part's text travels to the service exactly as a chapter's does (above), and is not kept. Lectio never plays a film's sound and never fetches subtitles or films from the internet.

A web page you open or share, from your phone to its own site. When you give Lectio a link, your phone asks that site for the page — as a browser would, with nothing of yours attached — and keeps the article on your phone. No server of Lectio's sees the address or the page. The site sees the request under its own privacy policy.

Project Gutenberg's catalogue, a book's page and the book, only when you use its free classics. On your first visit, and at most once a week after, your phone downloads Gutenberg's public catalogue file; what you search for is looked up in it on your phone and never sent anywhere. Your phone asks gutenberg.org for a book's page when you open it and for the book when you download it; nothing else is sent, and no server of Lectio's is involved. The downloaded book stays on your phone.

The words you have told Lectio you know, with those requests, because "how much of this can I read" cannot be answered without them. They are a list of English words with nothing attached — no name, no device, no account.

One word, to Google Translate, only when you tap Translate on a word you tapped. Lectio opens Google Translate in your browser or its app with that one word; Lectio itself sends nothing there, and what Google does with it is under Google's own privacy policy.

Update check (website and test versions only). When you press "Check now", or once a week if you switch that on, the app reads one public file listing the newest version from our download page. It sends nothing about you or your device — no account, no identifier, no usage, not even the app's own version; the comparison is made on your phone. "Download" opens the file in your browser, and Android asks you before anything is installed. The version from Google Play has no update check; Google Play updates it.

Help us, only when you tap it. "Rate us" opens Lectio's page in Google Play, and only when Google Play installed this copy; to know that, Lectio asks Android which store installed it, and the answer stays on your phone. "Tell a friend" opens Android's share sheet with one line and the address of Lectio's page; you choose the app and the friend. "Suggestions" opens your own email app, addressed to . None of them sends us anything unless you send that email yourself.

Nothing else. No identifier, no location, no contacts, no analytics event, and no crash report unless you send one yourself (section 6).

If a document is one you would rather never left your phone at all, do not open it in Lectio. That is a plain statement of the shape of this program, not a disclaimer.

4. What the service does with your book, and for how long

The upload is streamed straight to a temporary file — it is never held whole in memory, so an 80 MB book is one copy on disk rather than two in memory.
The part you asked for is read from it: the chapter list, one chapter, a page range, or every chapter when you search the whole book for a word.
The answer is sent back.
The temporary file is deleted as the request ends, in every case — when the reading worked, when the file turned out not to be a book, and when you asked for a chapter that does not exist.
Nothing about the book survives the request in memory either.

Until September 24, 2026 the service kept three caches — the structure of the last eight books, the text of chapters already read, and the whole text of the last four books — so that a phone tapping back and forward did not pay for the reading twice. They have been removed. A book is your data, and a calculator has no business holding it. The cost of that is real and we would rather name it than keep the cache: asking for a second chapter uploads the book again, and for a very large PDF the reading takes seconds rather than being instant.

This is tested, not promised. The service's test suite watches the temporary folder while a book is read — through a good request, a corrupt file and an impossible chapter — and fails if any upload is still there afterwards. Another test fails if any module in the service is holding a book's text after the request that used it.

What the logs hold: sizes and formats, never content. A line says that an upload of so many bytes arrived and was read as a PDF or an EPUB, and what the extension of its name suggested. No line carries the title of your book, a sentence from it, or a word you looked up.

The one file the service writes is a counter for learning mode: a date and a number ({"day": "2026-09-24", "used": 12}), so that the daily limit below is real across restarts. It holds nothing about you, nothing about any book, and no record of who asked.

5. Learning mode: the one other company involved

Learning mode explains the sentences a chapter makes hardest work of — what the grammar is doing, any idiom, the same thing said plainly. Choosing those sentences is arithmetic on the service and costs nothing. Explaining them needs a language model, and there is no honest way to do that on your phone today.

What is sent: only those chosen sentences, usually eight or ten of them, as plain text. The rest of the chapter is never sent there — nor the book, nor your word list, nor anything about you or your device.
Who receives them: Anthropic (https://anthropic.com), whose Claude models write the notes — Claude Haiku 4.5 for ordinary sentences and Claude Sonnet 5 for the few that are hard in several ways at once. Each note says which model wrote it. Anthropic handles what it receives under its own terms; we send them nothing about you, because we have nothing about you to send.
When it happens: only in Lectio Pro (a free copy asks the service for the list alone, on a path that cannot reach a model), only when a key for Anthropic has been set on the Lectio service, and only when you open the learning screen for a chapter. It is not background work and it does not happen while you read.
How to switch it off: do not set that key. Then nothing goes to Anthropic ever, the app says so on the learning screen, and the hard sentences are still shown with the reasons they are hard. If you run your own copy of the service, this is entirely your decision; the service also has a setting (LECTIO_EXPLAIN_PER_DAY=0) that switches explanations off with a key present.
The daily limit: the service allows a fixed number of model calls per day across everyone using it — two hundred unless whoever runs it says otherwise. One chapter is one request and up to two calls. When the limit is reached, nothing more is sent to Anthropic until the next day, and the app says so in those words: today's explanations are used up, the hard sentences are still marked, the allowance comes back tomorrow. It no longer says "explanations are not switched on" when the truth is "today is spent" — that was wrong and it was fixed on September 24, 2026.

Practice sentences (Lectio Pro). Lectio can write short new sentences, four to eight words each, with the words of a chapter you are studying, to say aloud and shadow.

What is sent: the chosen words and short phrases (ten at most) and, for each, the one sentence of the chapter it comes from. The rest of the chapter is never sent to Anthropic. When a phrase comes without its sentence, the chapter goes to the Lectio service only so that the service can find that sentence, and is not kept.
Who receives them: the Lectio service, and from it Anthropic, whose Claude Haiku 4.5 writes the sentences, under Anthropic's own terms. Their broad IPA is worked out on your phone.
When it happens: only in Lectio Pro, only when a key for Anthropic has been set on the Lectio service, and only when you tap "Make practice sentences" or "More".
A random install id goes with each of these requests: a number this phone made up for itself (not your phone's hardware or Android ID, not tied to you or to any account). The service uses it only to count today's practice sets — five a day — and keeps that count in memory only: it is forgotten at midnight (UTC) and whenever the service restarts, and it is never written anywhere or used for anything else.
The daily limits: five sets a day for each install, and a ceiling for the whole service (LECTIO_PRACTICE_PER_DAY). When either is reached nothing more is sent until the next day, and the app says so.

Say it simpler, Explain the meaning, What it implies (Lectio Pro). Lectio can rewrite a paragraph, a clicked sentence or a whole chapter in simpler English, and can say what a passage means or what it implies.

What is sent: only the text you chose: one paragraph, or the sentence or sentences of one click. For a Simple version of a chapter, the chapter's paragraphs not simplified yet are sent a few at a time, never twice. With the text go the level you picked (A2, B1 or B2) and what is asked for. Nothing else from the book, your words or your reading is sent.
Who receives it: the Semantica app on the same phone, which sends the text to Semantica AI — our service on Google Cloud, which asks Anthropic's AI model and keeps nothing — and hands the answer back marked "Written by AI (Claude) — may contain mistakes". Nothing goes through a server of Lectio's. Semantica's privacy policy says exactly what is sent and kept.
When it happens: only in Lectio Pro, with Semantica AI (or Semantica's 3 free answers a day), and only when you ask: "Say it simpler", "Explain the meaning", "What it implies", or "Simplify" for a chapter. Before anything is sent, Lectio asks Semantica on the phone only whether its Pro is held.
The daily count of free answers is Semantica's, kept on the phone; nothing identifies you. When it is used up, nothing more is sent until the next day, and Semantica says so.
Where the answers live: on your phone only, in Lectio's private folder, with that mark, so nothing is asked twice. A simplified chapter is a rewrite of someone else's book, so Lectio keeps it only on your phone: not in Android's cloud backup and not in your Google Drive copy. Uninstalling Lectio removes it.
On your TV. When you pair a TV with Lectio Pro, your phone sends the TV each chapter you open there — its text, its IPA and, if you made one, its simpler version — over your home Wi-Fi, and the TV keeps them in its own private storage so you can read on. Unpair the TV or clear its storage to remove them. Nothing of this goes through a server.

Your own AI key (Lectio Pro). In Settings → AI you can use your own key with Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Google Gemini or xAI Grok instead of Lectio's included Claude Haiku.

What is sent, and where: the same as above — the chosen words with their sentences for practice sentences, or the chosen hard sentences for their notes — but straight from your phone to the provider you picked, under your own account and that provider's terms. Lectio's service is not on the way and is not told. The Test button sends the two letters "OK?" with the instruction "Reply with OK." and asks for at most five tokens back.
The key never leaves your phone. It is kept in Android's Keystore-backed storage, shown only as its last four characters, and left out of the Wi-Fi sync, Google Drive, the Documents file and Android's own backup and device transfer. Remove it in Settings → AI at any time.

Audio files you make (Lectio Pro). "Save as MP3" turns text into an audio file on your phone, with your phone's own voice: nothing is sent anywhere by Lectio (a voice marked "needs the internet" sends the text it reads to its maker, as above). The files are saved in your Documents folder, or in Lectio's folder on your SD card if you choose it. "Shadow in Antiphon" hands a file to the Antiphon app on the same phone; like everything Lectio hands to another app (Phonema, Antiphon, Semantica, VLC), it is part of Lectio Pro. "Word senses in Semantica" and "Learn in Semantica" hand the sentences of one click, a paragraph or a chapter to the Semantica app on the same phone (Lectio Pro, and Semantica Pro there); Semantica sends back only the note you choose, which Lectio saves with the click. Those two stay on the phone; "Say it simpler", "Explain the meaning" and "What it implies" go on from Semantica to Semantica AI, as section 5 says.

6. What stays on your phone

Your word list, the sentence each word was met in, the meaning you typed for a word if you did, and the lists you sort your words into (their names, icons and colours, and which list each word is in).
Your reading history: which book, which chapter, how far down the page.
The chapter text the app has already fetched, kept so that going back does not need the network.
Your settings, including which service you point the app at.
A copy of each book you open, so it still opens if the original file is moved or deleted. Books stay on your devices; nothing goes to our server except what the Lectio service already receives to read an EPUB or PDF and for learning-mode notes. The copies are left out of Android's cloud backup and go with a move to a new phone; Settings → Storage shows them and removes them.

All of it in the app's private storage. Uninstalling the app removes it.

If the app crashes or hits an error, it keeps a short technical record of it — what failed and where in the code, the app and Android versions, and the time, with no text, words, books, recordings or file names of yours — on your device only, in storage that is not backed up; it is never sent automatically, and leaves your device only if you choose to send it in a problem report you can read first. You can see it, and clear it, in Settings → Report a problem (Problem log and Diagnostics). Both logs keep 30 days of entries unless you choose 7 or 90 under "Keep logs for"; older entries are deleted.

Logs from your other devices. A problem report written on one device can include the problem and crash logs of your other paired Lectio devices — a Lectio TV, for example — when you choose them on the report page. Each paired device keeps its own log ready for the devices it is paired with and switched on in "Devices"; another device's log travels only over your own Wi-Fi, between paired devices, into the email you read before you send it. Your "Keep logs for" choice travels the same way. Nothing goes to us or to any server unless you send that email.

7. Copies you choose to make

Nothing is synchronised unless you switch it on, and when you do it goes to your account or your folder — never to us.

Google Drive: after you sign in with Google, Lectio keeps your word list in a Neurophonetics/Lectio folder in your own Drive, using the drive.file permission, which reaches only files Lectio itself created and cannot see the rest of your Drive.
A file on this phone: Documents/Neurophonetics/Lectio, visible in the Files app, and readable by you or anything you choose to share it with.
Wi-Fi sync: your words handed straight to another of your own devices on the same Wi-Fi, after the two devices have been paired with a code shown on one and typed into the other. Nothing is uploaded anywhere; the pairing key never leaves the pair.
An export: a word list you export (a spreadsheet, a text list or Anki cards) is saved as a file in Documents/Neurophonetics/Lectio/exports on this phone, and goes nowhere else.

Your book files are not copied by the sync. They are your files, they are already on your device, and the word list is a few kilobytes against a book's megabytes — which is the other reason this shape is the right one. The one copy that leaves the phone is the chapters a paired TV keeps ("On your TV" above).

8. Which server is "the Lectio service"?

The one the app is pointed at in Settings, and you can change it. It may be a NeuroPhonetics service on the internet, or a copy running on your own machine at home — Lectio is built to run that way, and if you do, your books never leave your own network. Requests over the internet travel over an encrypted connection.

9. Permissions

Internet — to reach the Lectio service. Nothing else.

Choosing a book uses Android's own file picker, which needs no permission and hands the app only the file you picked. Lectio never asks for the microphone, the camera, your contacts or your location.

10. Children and supervised devices

Lectio collects nothing from anyone, so a child using it is in the same position as an adult: the book goes to the service, is read, and is forgotten, and the word list stays on the device.

Two things a parent should know. First, if learning mode is switched on at the service, sentences from whatever book the child is reading are sent to Anthropic like anyone else's — so on a child's device, leaving that key unset is the way to keep every sentence of every book on your own machines. Second, a supervised device (Family Link) may be unable to share a Google Drive folder with a parent's account; the Documents file and Wi-Fi sync work regardless, and Lectio never withholds a feature silently — if a route cannot work on that device, it says so.

Lectio is not aimed at children under 13 and asks nothing of anyone.

11. The one exception, for when it exists

If a paid version is ever sold, the record a payment requires will be stored — and that is the only data that will ever rest on a server. This page will say what it is before it does. There is no payment today, no account, and nothing of the kind is collected.

12. Google Play

If you get Lectio from Google Play, Google handles the download and any payment under their own privacy policy. We see only the order information Google gives developers, never your card.

13. Keeping and deleting your data

On the server: nothing to delete. The book is gone when the request ends, and no cache, no queue, no backup and no retention period exists, because there is nothing to retain.
At Anthropic: the sentences and paragraphs sent for a note, practice sentences or a simpler version are handled under Anthropic's terms. We neither keep them nor receive anything back but the answer itself.
On the phone: uninstalling removes everything the app kept. Files you saved in Documents and copies in your own Drive stay until you delete them.

14. Your rights

We hold no personal data about you, so there is nothing to show, correct or delete. That is the point of this page rather than an excuse for it. If you think otherwise, write to .

15. Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes and the new text appears in the app and at NeuroPhonetics.com.

16. Contact

NeuroPhonetics LLC · 202 N Cedar Ave Ste 1, Owatonna, MN 55060-2306, USA

· · https://NeuroPhonetics.com