Privacy policy

Last updated: 7 November 2026

1. Who we are

Serialect is made by Mirentha Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17207914), with its registered office at 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ. Questions about this policy: [email protected].

2. The short version

3. What the app handles

Your words

For each language, Serialect keeps a list of the words something has happened to: the word, whether it’s known, being learned or never to be used, how many times you’ve met it, how many times you’ve tapped it, where it came from (the placement test, an import, a tap or a story), and when you first and last saw it. It also keeps the result of the placement test. This is what the writer checks each story against. It’s kept in the app’s storage on your iPhone, and only you can see it.

Your stories and courses

Each language’s course holds your language and variety, your story type, your reading target, your voice and speed, where you are in the season, the characters’ names, the themes you’ve switched off, the seasons you’ve finished and any episodes that were skipped. Each episode holds its title and text, its words and how each was marked, its coverage figure, how many sentences were rewritten, how long it took, when it was written, finished and read back, and which words the phone didn’t hear. While an episode is being written, a draft is kept so that writing can carry on if the app stops; it’s deleted when the episode is saved or cancelled. All of this is kept on your iPhone, and only you can see it.

What you read aloud

Read back uses the microphone, and only when you press Start or Resume. Sound goes from the microphone to Apple’s speech recogniser on your iPhone, in memory. It’s never written to disk, and neither is the transcript. Serialect keeps only which words of the episode the phone didn’t hear. The first time you use Read back in a language, your iPhone may download Apple’s speech model for it, and Apple manages those models.

Word meanings

When you tap a word, or ask for a sentence, Serialect passes that word or sentence to Apple’s Translation framework on your iPhone, to translate into English. It keeps neither the request nor the meaning. If the language’s pack isn’t on your iPhone, Apple’s own sheet offers to download it.

Reading aloud

Listen uses the voices installed on your iPhone. The story’s text is spoken by your iPhone.

Files you import

When you import a deck or a word list, Serialect reads it on your iPhone and keeps the words and whether you know them. A file exported from Serialect itself also brings back each word’s sightings and dates. Cards, notes, media and scheduling aren’t kept. A deck is unpacked into a temporary copy while it’s read, and that copy is deleted afterwards.

Files you export

Export makes two files for one language: your words as CSV and your stories as JSON. They go wherever you send them from the share sheet, and they’re yours to look after. Serialect removes its temporary copy afterwards.

Settings on your iPhone

Serialect also stores a few settings on your iPhone: whether you’ve finished the first run, your daily reminder and its time, which language was open, when your next free episode is ready, whether your last plan was Plus, a language while it’s being deleted, whether you’ve finished an episode before, and a count of Finished sheets with the version last asked for a rating. That count is used only to decide when to show Apple’s rating prompt.

Mirentha’s role

Mirentha doesn’t process any of the above: none of it reaches us. We have no lawful basis to state for it, because we don’t hold it. The only personal data we receive from the app is in section 5.

4. Apple services and third parties

Serialect contains no third-party SDKs: no analytics, crash reporting, advertising or attribution. It opens no network connections of its own. It uses these parts of iOS, under Apple’s privacy policy:

• Apple Intelligence. Stories are written by the on-device model, which Apple downloads to your iPhone.
• Speech recognition, Translation and voices. Serialect uses them as sections 3 describes, and Apple downloads their models, packs and voices to your iPhone.
• The App Store. iOS checks your subscription with Apple, and Apple handles your purchases.
• iCloud Backup or a computer backup. If your iPhone is backed up, your words, stories, drafts and settings go in that backup, under your own Apple Account or on your own computer. Serialect has no iCloud sync. Mirentha can’t read a backup.
• Crash and usage reports. If you’ve chosen to share analytics with app developers (Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements), Apple may share crash reports and usage statistics with Mirentha.

Links in the app open in your browser, to this site or, from Word data and licences, to GitHub, Creative Commons and Open Data Commons. Those sites have their own policies.

Apple, and Google, which handles Mirentha’s email, are the only third parties that handle data from Serialect. We confirm that both give it the same or equal protection as this policy describes.

5. What you send us

Report this story opens a mail to [email protected], which you see before you send. It holds the language, the season and episode, and the episode’s text. Nothing else is attached, but it comes from your mail address. If your iPhone has no mail account set up, your default mail app receives the same text in a link.

Contact us opens a mail you write. Messages through the support page are covered by the site’s privacy policy.

We use these only to reply to you and to look into a report, because we have a legitimate interest in answering you and in keeping stories suitable (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR). We keep them for as long as we need to deal with what you sent, and you can ask us to delete them.

6. Purchases

Purchases go through Apple. Mirentha never sees your payment details and doesn’t receive your name or Apple Account. We receive only Apple’s aggregated sales reports. Serialect itself keeps only whether your last plan was Plus.

7. Keeping and deleting data

Everything stays on your iPhone until you delete it, and you decide how long:

• Delete a language: at the foot of Settings, Delete [language] removes that language’s course, words, episodes and draft from your iPhone. This can’t be undone, so export first if you want a copy. The word index, which holds nothing of yours, and the date of your next free episode stay.
• Delete everything: delete Serialect from your iPhone. That removes all of it from the phone. Any backup you’ve made keeps what it held until you delete that backup.
• Reports and messages: write to [email protected] and we’ll delete them.

8. Changing permissions

Serialect asks for the microphone and for notifications, and it works without either. If iOS also asks about speech recognition, that’s for Read back.

• Microphone: asked when you first start Read back. If you say no, Read back says how to turn it on, and everything else works, Plus included.
• Notifications: asked when you turn on the daily reminder. The reminder is scheduled on your iPhone, says “Time for a little reading.”, and sends nothing to us.

You can change either at any time in Settings › Apps › Serialect.

9. Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have the right to access your personal data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to how it’s used, and to take a copy with you. For what’s on your iPhone, you already have all of this: it’s yours to see, export and delete, and we don’t hold it. For anything you’ve sent us, write to [email protected]. If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your data, please tell us first; you also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

10. Children

Serialect isn’t directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect personal data from them. If you think a child has sent us something, write to us and we’ll delete it.

11. Changes to this policy

If Serialect changes what it handles, we’ll update this page and the date at the top.

12. Contact

Mirentha Ltd, 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom. [email protected].