At a glance
Alcove does not require an account for your local Library. Your Library stays on this iPhone unless you deliberately export it.
Alcove does not include advertising, behavioural analytics, or cross-app tracking.
What stays on this iPhone
Your saved web addresses, titles and site names, Collections, archive state, reading position and history, downloaded articles, and PDFs you keep in Alcove are stored locally on your iPhone.
Deleting a Library item also removes that item's local content and reading state. Clearing Downloads removes downloaded web articles but keeps saved links, reading progress, and owned PDFs.
Publisher websites and cookies
Alcove contacts a publisher's website directly when it retrieves a page or opens the original. The publisher and its service providers receive ordinary request information such as your IP address and request headers, and handle it under their own policies.
Offline article preparation uses a non-persistent website-data store. Opening the original website uses Apple's persistent website-data store so website sessions can continue. Publishers may set cookies or other website data there. Alcove does not use those cookies for advertising or analytics. Alcove has no separate in-app website-data clearing control; deleting Alcove removes data in its app container.
Downloaded web articles stay local. They are excluded from Alcove exports and encrypted backups. After a restore, Alcove may contact the publisher again to download an article while the app is open. Availability and access can depend on the publisher.
Backups and exported files
Alcove lets you deliberately export your Library through Apple's Files picker. Encrypted backups use AES-256-GCM on the iPhone. They can contain saved web addresses, titles and site names, Collections, archive state, reading state and original PDF bytes. Downloaded web articles are excluded. A separate readable JSON export contains the ownership data without Alcove encryption and requires an explicit choice.
You choose the destination. Files and any storage provider you select handle the file operation under their own policies. A cloud provider can receive the selected file and ordinary account, network and file information, such as its name, size and timestamps. Alcove does not operate a backup server or connect directly to your Google account. It does not retain provider account credentials or a persistent destination bookmark for this export flow.
The local encryption key stays in the iPhone's Keychain. The Recovery Kit contains the secret needed to open the matching encrypted backup. You choose where to save it, and a provider receives it if you save it there. Keep it separate from the backup where possible. If every usable copy of the matching key and kit is lost, Alcove cannot recover the encrypted contents.
Alcove uses protected temporary files while preparing and validating backups and removes its staging files when the operation ends or during startup cleanup. This does not delete files you deliberately saved elsewhere. Deleting Library items or Alcove does not delete external exports or cloud copies. Files saved inside Alcove's exposed local folder are removed when the app is deleted.
Restore requires confirmation and merges data into the Library. It may replace details and reading state of matching items and restore previously deleted items; it does not remove other current Library items. Publisher access may be required to retrieve downloaded web articles again.
Deleting your data
For one item, choose Delete from Library in that item’s menu. For several items, choose Select Items, select the items, then use the Delete action showing the selected count.
Deleting items also removes those items’ downloads and local reading history from this iPhone.
Feedback
Feedback sharing begins only when you choose Share feedback in Alcove. Apple's system share sheet is editable, and you choose whether and where to send it.
Alcove prepares a generic prompt plus the Alcove version, build number, and iOS version. It does not add Library data, saved addresses, article titles, screenshots, logs, or account details, and it does not record the destination or whether you shared it.
Visiting this website
These Privacy and Support pages are delivered through Cloudflare. Cloudflare receives ordinary request information needed to serve them. The pages' HTML includes no advertising or analytics scripts.
The current site also enables Cloudflare Network Error Logging to diagnose connection failures. Cloudflare says a client IP address is kept only while a report request is processed and is then purged; it retains aggregate network and country information for connectivity diagnostics. See Cloudflare's Network Error Logging documentation.
Contact
Questions about this policy can be sent to:
alcove@gradientslabs.comIf you email this address, Gradients Labs receives your sender address, message, standard email delivery information, and anything else you choose to include. We use that information to respond to and troubleshoot your request. Your email provider and ours carry and store the message under their own terms.
There is no fixed support-email retention period. You can ask us to delete a support conversation at the same address. Copies controlled by your email provider, or retained where required for security or legal reasons, may remain.
Please do not send Library contents, saved addresses, article titles, PDFs, Recovery Kits, OAuth credentials, tokens, logs, or other private diagnostics.