Privacy Policy — Plain and Simple Thoughts

Last updated: August 8, 2026

Plain and Simple Thoughts is a read-it-later app. You share a link to it from anywhere on your phone, and it keeps that link until you want it.

This app does make requests to the internet, and it is the only Plain and Simple app for iPhone that does so on your behalf. That is stated first rather than buried, because it is the thing you would want to know.

What it fetches, and from whom

When you save a link, the app asks that website for the page's title and its preview picture, so that what you saved reads as the thing it is rather than as a row of characters. That request goes to the site you saved and to nowhere else.

Three things follow from that, and all three are true:

• The site you saved can see that somebody fetched that page. As with any request from any browser, it sees an IP address and the fact of the request. This is the same thing that happens when you open the link yourself — it just happens at the moment you save rather than the moment you read.
• Nothing about you is attached to it. No account, no name, no email, no device identifier and no advertising identifier, because the app has none of those to send.
• It goes nowhere near me. There is no Plain and Simple server. The request does not pass through anything of mine, and I never learn what you saved.

The app also strips tracking parameters — utm_source, fbclid and their relatives — off a link before it stores it, so what you keep is the page rather than a record of where you found it.

It will only fetch ordinary public web addresses. Addresses on your own network and on your own machine — localhost, 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x and the rest — are refused outright, so that an app handing the share sheet a crafted address cannot make this app reach into your home network.

Data the developer collects

None. There is:

• No account or sign-in.
• No analytics or tracking of any kind — nothing counts what you save, what you read, or when.
• No third-party servers, SDKs, or advertising networks.
• No ads, no purchases, no subscription.
• No reading history sold, shared, or shown to anyone.
• Nothing downloaded after you install it except the titles and pictures of the links you chose to keep.

The app is declared as "Data Not Collected" on its App Store privacy label. That declaration is about what the developer collects, and the honest answer is nothing at all — which is why the outbound request above is described in full here rather than left to it.

Where what you save is kept

Your library — the links, their titles, your notes, and what you have read or archived — is stored on your device and in your own iCloud account, using Apple's CloudKit. That is what puts a link saved on your phone onto your iPad.

It is your iCloud, not mine. It sits in your private database, under your Apple Account. I have no access to it, no way to read it, and no way to recover it for you. There is no copy anywhere else.

Preview pictures are cached on your device, capped in size, and can be cleared at any time from Settings.

Deleting your data

Deleting a link in the app removes it from your device and from your iCloud. Deleting the app removes everything it kept on that device; to remove what is in iCloud as well, use Settings › your name › iCloud › Manage Account Storage on your device, where this app is listed like any other.

The share extension

The button you tap in another app's share sheet is part of this app. It writes the link into a private container shared between the two, and the app picks it up from there. It runs only when you tap it, and it sees only the item you shared.

Children's privacy

The app collects no data from anyone. It is not directed at children and gathers no personal information.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this same URL with a new "Last updated" date.