An unofficial Archive of Our Own reader for iOS.
Effective date: 13 August 2026
This policy covers Slowburn: Fanfiction Reader (“Slowburn”, “the app”), an unofficial iOS reader for the Archive of Our Own.
We do not collect any data about you. Not “we collect it and promise to behave” — we never receive it in the first place.
Slowburn has no backend. There is no Slowburn server, no Slowburn account, no database, no analytics, no advertising, and no crash reporting. Your device talks to archiveofourown.org directly, the way a browser does. Everything the app remembers — your shelf, where you stopped reading, your highlights, your settings — is written to storage on your own device and, for a few items, to your own iCloud account.
This is why Slowburn’s App Store listing declares “Data Not Collected”.
Most privacy policies ask you to trust the operator’s intentions. This one asks you to check a fact instead: there is nowhere for your data to go.
The app ships with exactly one third-party code library — SwiftSoup, an open-source HTML parser that runs entirely on your device and makes no network connections of its own. There is no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no attribution or tracking SDK, and no crash-reporting SDK bundled into the app. The app requests no advertising identifier and shows no tracking prompt, because it has nothing to track you with.
Every request the app makes on its own initiative goes to archiveofourown.org and nowhere else. (Two things can reach other hosts, both driven by what you read or tap rather than by us — images embedded in works, and the lookup and browser hand-offs. Section 5 describes both.) We operate no server that could receive your reading history, your library, or your identity, so we could not hand it to anyone — advertiser, broker, or otherwise — even if we were asked.
We do not sell, share, rent, or trade personal information, because we do not have any.
Slowburn stores the following in its own private container on your device, as JSON files and system preferences. None of it is transmitted to us.
One thing worth naming plainly, because the app doesn’t show it to you as a list: when you open a work, the app records the chapter you reached even if you never saved the work to your library, so that returning to it puts you back in the right place. Over time this is effectively a private record of what you have opened. It stays on your device, it is not synced to iCloud, and “Erase all data” removes it.
iOS keeps this container private to the app, and deleting the app removes all of it from the device. (Your device’s own backups also include it — see the end of Section 3.)
A small subset of your data syncs between your own devices through your own iCloud account, using Apple’s iCloud key-value storage:
This travels from your device to Apple’s iCloud and back down to your other devices signed in to the same Apple Account. It never passes through us and we cannot access it. Its handling in iCloud is governed by Apple’s Privacy Policy, and you control it from your device’s iCloud settings.
Two honest notes:
Separately from this, if you have iOS device backup turned on, your device’s backup of the app includes the app’s whole local store — downloaded chapters included. That is Apple’s backup of your device, encrypted and controlled by you, and we have no part in it.
Signing in is entirely optional — everything that doesn’t require the Archive to know who you are works signed out.
If you do sign in:
Because Slowburn is a client and not a proxy, every page you read is a direct request from your device to the Archive. The Archive therefore sees what it would see from a browser: your IP address, the pages you request, and — if you signed in — your account. That is the Archive’s data collection, not ours, and it is governed by the AO3 Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
If you enabled notifications for authors or works you follow, iOS may wake the app briefly in the background to check the Archive for updates. Those are the same kind of requests, just made while the app isn’t open.
Slowburn is a reader for the open web, and a few things you read or tap will make your device contact somewhere other than the Archive. None of these send anything to us, and none of them are analytics. We list them because “we contact only AO3” would not be true, and we would rather be accurate than tidy.
Whole-page translation of a work, where offered, goes through Apple’s translation framework, which is designed to run on your device. We send nothing anywhere for it; how Apple’s framework works internally is Apple’s to describe.
Slowburn asks for as little as it can, and only at the moment a feature you turned on needs it.
If you copied a link before opening the app, Slowburn can offer to open it. To do this it asks iOS a yes/no question — does the clipboard probably hold a web URL? — which does not give the app access to the contents and does not trigger the system paste banner. At that point the app genuinely does not know what the link is.
The clipboard’s contents are only ever read after you tap “Open” — and iOS shows you its paste notification when that happens. If the link isn’t an AO3 work, user, or tag, it is discarded on the spot: not opened, not stored, not sent anywhere.
This feature is on by default, and you can turn it off in Settings (“Open copied links”). With it off, the app never so much as asks iOS about your clipboard.
All notifications Slowburn posts are local notifications, generated on your device — new chapters from authors or works you follow, bedtime reminders, and break nudges. There are no push notifications, because there is no server to send them.
Every one of these is off by default. The app never requests notification permission on launch; the iOS prompt only appears right after you turn a switch on.
Be aware that a follow notification names the creator and the work that updated, so it can appear on your lock screen where someone else might see it. If that matters to you, iOS Settings lets you hide notification previews when locked.
Only if you save a share card or a fic’s artwork to your photo library. The app requests add-only access — it can put an image in your library and cannot read what’s already there.
If you turn on the app lock, unlocking uses iOS’s own authentication. The check happens on your device and returns only pass/fail; the app never sees your face data, fingerprint, or passcode, and none of it is stored by the app.
No location, no contacts, no microphone, no camera, no calendar, no health data, and no tracking permission.
Slowburn can export your data as an .ao3backup file so you can move to a new
device or keep an archive. It is never uploaded to us — the app hands the file to
the iOS share sheet and you choose where it goes (Files, iCloud Drive,
AirDrop, Mail, another app).
What the file contains: your library and shelves, highlights and notes, reading statistics, collections, followed authors, saved searches, content filters, your recent searches, your reading positions, the record of kudos and bookmarks you gave, and your settings. Because the kudos and bookmark records are filed per account, the file also contains your AO3 username.
What it leaves out: your downloaded chapter text (it would make the file enormous), your unsent comment drafts, and your AO3 session — a backup can never restore you into a signed-in state.
It is compressed, but not encrypted and not password-protected. Anyone who gets the file can read everything listed above. Once you have exported it, keeping it safe is up to you; treat it like any other personal document.
Separately, the app can export downloaded works as HTML for your own reading. Those files contain the full text of the works, which belongs to their authors — please keep them for yourself (see the Terms).
Slowburn is distributed through the App Store and runs on Apple’s frameworks. Apple may collect information about downloads, purchases (there are none), crashes, and app usage as part of operating the App Store and iOS. Some device features the app uses — iCloud sync, speech synthesis for text-to-speech, and on-device translation — are Apple services governed by Apple’s Privacy Policy. We receive no individual data from Apple about you. If you have opted in to sharing analytics with developers, Apple may show us aggregate, anonymised statistics; that is a report of numbers, not of people.
Slowburn is rated 17+ and is intended for adults. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone — which includes children, since we collect nothing from anyone at all.
The Archive of Our Own hosts works at every rating, including explicit content, and Slowburn can display all of it. Like a signed-in adult Archive user, the app opens adult-rated works directly rather than stopping at the Archive’s “proceed” interstitial.
The app offers content filters — by rating, archive warning, category, and excluded tags or keywords — that you can configure yourself. They start off, so nothing is filtered until you set them up, and they rely on the metadata the Archive supplies: a mistagged or untagged work can get through. They are a reading-comfort tool, not a parental control, and should not be relied on as one.
Because we hold nothing about you, there is no data of yours for us to look up, export, correct, or delete on request — a rights request to us would have nothing to act on. Instead, the controls are all in your hands:
Slowburn is under active development, and this policy describes how it works today rather than promising that its code can never change.
What we commit to: if a future version of Slowburn ever collects, transmits, or receives any personal data — including adding any analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting service — we will update this policy before that version ships, change the effective date above, and tell you inside the app. We will not start collecting data quietly, and we will not do it retroactively for data already on your device.
Other, non-material updates (clarifications, wording) will simply be published here with a new effective date.
Questions about this policy, or about anything the app does that this page doesn’t explain:
Slowburn is not affiliated with the Organization for Transformative Works or the Archive of Our Own. Please don’t write to the OTW about this app, or to us about Archive content — neither of us can help with the other’s.