Effective date: 26 September 2026 · Last updated: 26 September 2026 · Data controller: Birdie Ltda., Santiago, Chile · Contact: support@birdie.cl
This policy explains how the Read My Notifications app for Android and Windows handles your information: what it can access, what stays on your device, what leaves it and when, and what we deliberately do not collect.
Read My Notifications is one of several ways to use Read My Document. The Google Docs add-on and the Read My Page browser extension have their own policies.
1. What the app does
The app reads out loud the notifications that arrive on your phone or computer. To do that it needs to see their content: the name of the app that sent the notification, the sender, the conversation or group name, and the text. Deciding which notifications to read, detecting their language and composing the sentence to be spoken all happen on your device.
In the free version the speech is produced by your device’s own voice engine, and nothing about your notifications leaves your device.
2. Permissions we request, and why
Android
- Notification access — to read the notifications that arrive, which is the purpose of the app. The app explains what it reads before asking, you grant it in Android’s settings, and you can revoke it there at any time.
- Show notifications — for the app’s own notifications: the “Stop” control while it is reading, the self-test, and a reminder when the premium voices need you to sign in again.
- Foreground service (media playback) — used only while the app is reading aloud in the background, so that Android does not cut the audio mid-sentence. A notification with a “Stop” button is shown for as long as it runs.
- Internet and network state — for the premium voices, the AI summary, signing in and the voice catalogue.
Windows
- Notification access — Windows asks for your permission; you can revoke it in Settings › Privacy & security › Notifications.
- Background and start with Windows — the app keeps an icon in the notification area so it can keep reading with its window closed, and you can choose to have it start with Windows.
- Internet — for the same purposes as on Android.
The app does not request access to your contacts, microphone, camera, location, SMS, call log or files. VIP contacts are names you type or pick from senders the app has already seen in your notifications.
3. What stays on your device
- Your settings and rules: which apps to read, VIP names, keywords, quiet hours, voices and reading styles.
- A history of recent notifications (app, sender, conversation, text, whether it was read and why), so you can see what was read and ask for a summary. It is deleted automatically after 7 days and never holds more than 500 entries.
- What is needed to avoid reading a message twice: one-way fingerprints of recent notifications, kept for 24 hours, and the last 30 messages of each conversation.
- The list of apps that have sent notifications (name and identifier), so you can choose which ones to read.
- Your session, if you sign in, kept in the operating system’s secure storage.
- A monthly count of characters sent to the premium voices — a number, not the text.
All of this is private to the app. On Android it is excluded from cloud backups and device transfers, so your notification history never ends up in a backup. Uninstalling the app deletes it.
4. What leaves your device, and when
Only in the cases below, always over HTTPS to our own service at readmydoc-api.birdie.cl:
- Premium voices — only if you are signed in with an active plan and have the cloud voices turned on. The sentence to be spoken is sent to be turned into audio. Depending on the reading style you chose, it contains the app name, the sender and the message text, or only some of them. If the service cannot be reached, your device’s voice is used instead.
- “What did I miss?” — only when you tap it. The recent notifications from the history on your device (app, sender, conversation and text, up to about 6,000 characters) are sent to produce a short summary.
- Voice previews — a fixed sample sentence, never the content of a notification.
- Signing in — with Microsoft or Google, in your browser or through Android’s account picker. We receive an account identifier, your email address and your name. We never see your password.
- The voice catalogue — the list of available voices is downloaded without identifying you.
- Crash reports — if the app crashes, it sends the error, the app version, the device model and operating system version, and a short trail of the screens and actions in the app before the crash. Crash reports never contain the text of your notifications, senders, conversation names, or the names of the apps that sent notifications.
Text sent for speech or for a summary is held in memory for as long as producing the result takes, and is then discarded. It is never written to disk, never analysed for any other purpose, and never used to train any model, ours or anyone else’s.
5. What we do not collect
- Your notifications, on our servers. We do not keep a copy of any notification, message or summary.
- Your contacts, location, microphone or files. The app has no access to them.
- Advertising or analytics identifiers. The app has no advertising and no third-party analytics.
- Payment card details. The Android app sells nothing. On Windows, the app can open the Read My Document checkout in your browser, which is hosted by our merchant of record (section 7); card data never reaches us.
6. What we store on our servers
- Only if you sign in: an account identifier from your identity provider, your email address and display name, your plan and its limits, and how many characters you have used in the current period — a counter, not the text. This is the same Read My Document account you use on other surfaces.
- Aggregate service telemetry: which voice was used, how many characters, the language, latency and error rates. It never contains the text that was read.
- Crash reports, as described in section 4.
7. Who else receives data, and what for
- Microsoft Corporation — hosting, database, sign-in and crash reports (Microsoft Azure), and the AI summaries (Azure OpenAI Service).
- Speech providers — when you use a premium voice, the sentence to be spoken is sent to the provider of that voice — Microsoft Azure AI Speech, Google Cloud, ElevenLabs or OpenAI — for synthesis only.
- Google — if you choose to sign in with Google.
- Polar Software Inc. — merchant of record for Read My Document plans bought on the web: it hosts the checkout, processes the payment and issues the invoice.
We do not share data beyond what is technically necessary to run the service. We do not sell or rent your data, we do not use it for advertising or profiling, and we do not use the content of your notifications to train models.
8. Retention
- Notification history on your device: 7 days, at most 500 entries. Everything on your device: until you uninstall the app or clear its data.
- Text sent for speech or summaries: not retained.
- Account, plan and usage counters: for as long as the account exists; deleted on request (section 10).
- Service telemetry and crash reports: 90 days.
9. Where your data is processed
Our servers run in the United States (Microsoft Azure). Speech providers process text in their own regions. Birdie Ltda. is established in Chile.
10. Your controls, and deleting your account
- Revoke notification access at any time in your system settings; the app stops reading immediately.
- Choose which apps are read, use a reading style that does not read the content, or turn off the cloud voices so nothing is sent.
- Sign out from the Account screen, or uninstall the app to delete everything it kept on your device.
- To delete your Read My Document account and all the data attached to it (account identifier, email, name, plan and usage counters), write to support@birdie.cl from the email address of the account, with the subject “Delete my account”. We confirm and complete the deletion within 30 days. Cancel any active subscription first. Billing records held by Polar, as merchant of record, are governed by Polar’s own policy.
- You may also ask for a copy of your data or for it to be corrected, at the same address, and we answer within 30 days.
11. Children
The app is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data.
12. Changes
We may update this policy. When we do, we update the “Last updated” date above. Material changes to how we process your data will be announced in the app and, for subscribers, by email.
13. Contact
Birdie Ltda. — Santiago, Chile — support@birdie.cl
This policy is provided for transparency and is not legal advice.