Your data in MoodLit

Private library and public reviews

Your books, private owned-copy records (editions, copy ISBNs, condition, signed status, room, bookcase, shelf and notes), optional setup genres, private reasons for pausing or not finishing books, custom collections, borrowed/lent records (including names, due dates and notes), series reading orders, private journal notes and quotes, reading progress, sessions, goals, private reviews and uploaded covers are stored against your browser’s guest session (or your original account for older libraries). Guest reviews stay private; posting and custom cover uploads require sign-in. In account mode, reviews are private unless you turn on Public review. Public reviews share your reader name, book details, ratings, tags, text and any BookTok link—not your sign-in email.

Copy records and shelf locations are never shared on profiles, feeds or reviews. Collections, loan details, journal notes, favourite quotes and series lists are never included in public reviews or the moderation queue. Downloaded library backups include this private information, so store them securely.

Spoiler warnings hide review text, tags and video previews until readers choose to reveal them. They are not access restrictions: public reviews can still be read by anyone with access to the community page.

Reader profiles and conversations

Your reader profile starts private. Publishing shares your chosen name, bio, favourite genres and profile colour with anyone on the internet. Posting requires a signed-in account and a published profile. Posts and replies, including optional book titles and genres, are public—not private messages. Your account email, shelves and journals are never attached to them.

Unpublishing your profile hides it and your posts and replies until you publish again. Spoiler warnings conceal text in the interface, not in the public data. Moderators can review reported profiles, posts and replies and hide or restore them. Blocking applies to profiles, feed posts, replies and book reviews while signed in; it cannot prevent access while signed out. Posting and reporting have rate limits to reduce spam.

You can delete your own posts and replies. Deleting a top-level post also deletes its conversation, including other readers’ replies. Account export includes your profile, posts, replies and social reports. Account deletion removes them and replies to your own posts. Copies others have saved cannot be recalled.

Sharing shelves and reading together

Publishing a profile can also show your chosen username and uploaded picture. Shelves, collections, goals and reading activity start unshared; you choose which to share and whether shelves are visible publicly, to followers or to accepted friends. Private copy records and shelf locations, journal notes, loan contacts, private reviews and private mood labels are never included. Following and friendship are separate; friendship requires an accepted request. Shared-taste scores use only the books each reader has shared and are estimates, not predictions.

Only a person you follow can send you an in-app book recommendation. It contains the selected book details and their message, not their journal. Blocking removes follow and friend connections and direct recommendations between you. Reactions and comments follow the visibility of their original content. Activity sharing covers future shelf changes and public ratings; turning it off removes your activity posts. Public reviews remain visible independently of profile publication.

Public clubs and buddy reads are discoverable, but their discussions require membership. Private groups require a link and owner approval. Members share their progress with the group. Messages beyond your reading percentage are withheld until you reach that point or explicitly reveal them; this is spoiler protection, not secrecy from other group members. Reported group details and messages, including private-group content, can be reviewed by moderators. Never put sensitive information in a group message. Changing the group book starts a new discussion round; accepted members can revisit earlier discussions in reading history. Archived spoiler messages remain hidden until explicitly revealed. Earlier rounds created before history tracking may not have a recorded book title. Deleting a group or its owner’s MoodLit data deletes its messages, memberships and votes. Account export includes your social settings, connections, recommendations, reactions, comments, learning history and group contributions. Uploaded profile pictures are not embedded in exports.

Friends-only messages and shared reading lists

Direct messages are off by default. Both people must opt in and be accepted friends with published, visible profiles. Messages are stored in MoodLit, not end-to-end encrypted, and are not public. Only the participants can open their conversation; a reported message can also be reviewed by authorised moderators. Turning messages off prevents new sends but retains existing messages. Unfriending, blocking or hiding a profile makes its conversations unavailable in the app. You can delete your sent messages for both participants; either participant’s account deletion removes the conversation records involving them. Copies recipients saved elsewhere cannot be recalled.

Shared reading lists start private to the owner and accepted collaborators. The owner may share them with accepted friends or publish them for anyone on the internet. Only accepted friends can be invited as collaborators, and they must accept. Collaborators may add or remove book entries, but only the owner can change visibility or delete a list. Only selected titles, authors, ISBNs and genres are copied—not private journals, reviews, copy records or library identifiers. Collaborators lose private-list access when unfriended or blocked; public content remains publicly readable. Saving/following a list keeps a reference to its current contents, does not add its books automatically. Readers can opt into followed-list change alerts; repeated edits are grouped into the latest update. If its visibility changes, saved links do not bypass privacy.

Friend tags link to accepted friends’ public profiles in public posts and replies; tagged friends can opt into notifications. Hidden, deleted, blocked or no-longer-friend profiles are omitted from tag links. Messages, list ownership, memberships, saved lists and tags are included in account exports and removed with account deletion. Deleting a list owner’s data removes their lists; deleting a collaborator’s account removes their membership, but the selected book metadata they added can remain on another owner’s list. Moderators can review reported lists, including private lists reported by a person with access. Avoid putting sensitive information in messages or shared list descriptions.

Sign-in, storage and other services

Google sign-up and sign-in are optional and use Supabase to verify your account. MoodLit checks the session on the server before opening an account library. Sign-in cookies are HTTP-only and not placed in offline storage. Google receives a sign-in request only when you choose it. Email/password is not available yet, and ChatGPT sign-in is not offered. Without signing in, each browser gets a random session cookie, valid for up to one year and renewed when you visit the app. Its one-way hash identifies that browser’s library; the secret cookie is not included in exports or offline storage. Losing the cookie means losing automatic access to that library. Guest shelves stay separate from account libraries and are not automatically merged. You can use a downloaded backup to move books. Prior Supabase and ChatGPT account data has not been deleted, merged or made public.

Library records and restore points use the site’s cloud database; uploaded covers use private object storage. The latest 30 pre-change library snapshots are available as restore points.

Book searches and ISBN requests are sent to Open Library and, when configured, Google Books. Optional series lookup sends only your entered book title or chosen series identifier to Wikidata. Catalogue orders can be incomplete and must be reviewed before saving. Discover genre and mood browsing and Open Library book-detail requests go to Open Library. Google Books receives only the search terms or ISBN, not your private library. Loading external covers contacts the image provider. BookTok previews use TikTok’s public preview service; opening a link takes you to TikTok. These services can receive network information such as your IP address. MoodLit does not send your private library to them to generate suggestions.

Display preferences are saved in your browser. Shelf filters, browsing mood and genre, your Community section and section scroll positions are remembered in this browser tab’s session storage. They are interface preferences, not a library backup. Discover suggestions use catalogue topics, not guaranteed content ratings. My Next Read ranks your saved books in your browser using your selected moods, private mood labels, reading-effort labels, favourites, saved ratings, authors, genres, page counts and dates added. Private learning is off by default. If you enable it, MoodLit stores counts and last interaction dates for saved books you open or match through your shelf search, not search text or browsing elsewhere. You can clear this history or turn learning off to delete it. Private genre and author preferences can also guide picks. Explicit recommendation feedback is stored privately with your account (or this browser’s guest library): “More like this” strengthens matching authors and genres, while “Not interested” and “Already read” hide the title from discoveries. Feedback is separate from optional behaviour learning and can be undone in My Next Read. “Already read” does not create a completion date. Feedback is included in account exports and removed during account deletion. Its controls reset when you leave the section; private book labels are saved with your library and included in backups. They are not published with your reviews, profiles or feed posts. Genre-based mood clues are tentative; unknown length and effort are not guessed.

Where to buy and nearby bookshops

Buying links open external search providers or retailers in a new tab, using the book’s title and author. We do not check prices, stock or delivery, and these links do not contain affiliate identifiers. Only open a link if you want to share that search with the destination.

Nearby bookshops are a Google Maps search, not a promise that a shop stocks your book. You can enter a suburb/postcode and country without granting location access. Use my location requests browser permission only when you press it. Coordinates are rounded to approximately neighbourhood level in memory and sent to Google only when you open Maps. MoodLit does not save your area or coordinates to your account or browser storage; closing the panel clears them. Google’s own privacy practices apply after opening its site.

Service diagnostics

MoodLit records daily totals for catalogue requests, response categories and response times, books added, library saves, picker outcomes and import outcomes to help find problems. Diagnostic events do not include search text, ISBNs, book titles, filenames, journals, review text, raw error messages or IP addresses. Browser-reported outcomes are best-effort and may be missing or inaccurate.

To count libraries used on each day, successful online library loads and saves record a keyed, one-way account or guest-library identifier and a UTC date, retained for 35 days. Guest browsers are counted separately and are not necessarily separate people; background library refreshes also count. The private admin dashboard receives only totals, never these identifiers. Aggregate counters are kept for 90 days; expired rows are removed as new monitoring activity arrives. New history starts when monitoring is deployed, with no reconstruction of earlier activity. This is separate from optional personalised reading learning and does not share data with an advertising or analytics provider.

Optional notifications

In-app notifications are off by default. You can enable them from the bell or Settings, and separately choose friend requests, replies to your posts/reviews/reading updates, book recommendations, and reading reminders. Direct messages, friend tags and followed-list changes have separate switches that start off. Preferences and read status are stored with your account and sync across devices. Notification emails are not sent. Phone alerts are a separate, optional device permission; your browser or phone controls their sound.

The notification centre shows up to 50 eligible updates from the last 30 days while MoodLit is open and online. It refreshes periodically and when you return to the app. Summaries contain the sender’s public name and action, not message text or spoilers. Blocked, hidden and deleted content is excluded on refresh. Turning an option off hides its alerts; turning it on again starts with future activity rather than replaying missed updates. The original requests and conversations are not deleted. Reading reminders use your private logged goals, borrowed-book due dates and approved reading-group memberships. If phone alerts are enabled, a scheduled check can also deliver eligible unread updates while the app is closed. Checks run about every five minutes in small batches; delivery is not guaranteed or exact to the minute. Choose reminder categories, a time zone and daily goal time, or hide all alerts during quiet hours. Due-date reminders repeat daily while outstanding; completing goals, returning books or finishing a group read removes the corresponding reminder on refresh. MoodLit stores the browser push endpoint privately and sends a generic alert through your browser’s push provider (Google, Mozilla or Apple), without names, book titles, reviews or notes. Supabase schedules the checks without receiving your library. Quiet hours and category switches apply to phone alerts too. You can disable one device or all devices. Signing out revokes all phone subscriptions for the account. Account export includes notification preferences, read records and device registration dates, not push endpoints. Account deletion removes these records.

Bringing books from another service

File imports stay private and keep existing books. Batch ISBN scanning holds up to 20 ISBNs in a temporary review list and looks them up through the book catalogues described above. Nothing is added to your library until you confirm; unsaved scans are lost if you leave or refresh the page. The link-import feature is in preparation; Goodreads and Fable requests remain disabled until approved provider access is configured. When enabled, it retrieves only the public bookshelf or list you explicitly provide. MoodLit does not ask for, send or store another service’s password or session cookies.

A link preview is temporary in this tab and does not save books until you confirm. Only supported book fields are transferred. Fable notes and personal rating fields are ignored. Goodreads ratings and review text are optional and imported privately. Remote cover images are loaded in the preview; image providers can receive your IP address. No downloaded ebooks or purchased content are transferred. Pagination, duplicate checks and limits help detect partial imports; an import is not a guarantee of a full account backup or an ongoing sync.

Home-screen app and offline copies

Offline library access is optional for each browser or installed app. When enabled in Settings, this device stores a read-only copy of your library, including private reviews, journal notes, favourite quotes, series, collections and loan details. Anyone using this browser can open it without signing in. Enable it only on a personal device. Book covers, ebook files and audiobook files are not downloaded.

The copy refreshes after successful cloud loads and saves, and expires after 30 days without an online refresh. Turning the feature off or signing out here clears the copy; account changes and rejected sign-in checks also clear it. Deleting data or signing out on another device cannot instantly clear a device that is offline. Reconnect or remove that device’s MoodLit site data to clear it. Your browser may evict offline files when storage is low. This feature is not a backup.

The service worker caches only the offline reader and installation assets, not signed-in pages, API responses or private covers. Offline use does not queue edits or change your cloud library.

Reports, blocks and moderation

Reports store your account identifier, reason, optional details and time. Authorised moderators can read them, hide or restore reviews, and resolve reports. They are not shared with the reported reader. Reports and moderation decisions have no automatic expiry currently; related records are removed during account deletion.

Blocking hides each reader’s reviews from the other while signed in, including the averages they see. It does not prevent reading public reviews while signed out. Block lists sync and can be managed in Settings.

Do not post harassment, hate, spam or someone else’s private information. Mark spoilers and report genuine concerns. Moderation is manual, not a promise of immediate review.

Export and delete

Settings offers a JSON download of your current library and safety data. Custom cover image files and historical restore points are not embedded. Save images separately before deleting; their private links will stop working. Imports & backups provides library exports and available restore points.

Delete MoodLit data removes your library (including journals, quotes, series, collections and loans), reviews, history, goals, restore points, uploaded covers, reports, blocks and helpful votes from active app storage. It does not delete your external Google or ChatGPT account, your Supabase authentication record, or copies other people have saved.

A minimal account identifier, deletion status and timestamp remain to stop old tabs recreating deleted data. Automatic account reactivation is not offered in this version. Display preferences and any legacy library on other devices must be cleared in those browsers. Hosting-provider logs and infrastructure backups are separate from app restore points; immediate removal from those systems is not promised.

Beyond your library suggestions

Suggestions use the library currently open in MoodLit. Author and genre patterns, favourites, high ratings and saved preferences help rank new books; low-rated and did-not-finish books are not positive signals. Optional opening and search counts are used only when private learning is enabled. Matching is calculated in your browser and is not shared with other readers.

To find candidates, MoodLit sends a small set of author, genre and mood search terms to its book catalogues. It does not send your full library, account details, ratings, review text or journal. Only books you choose to save are added to your wishlist. These are topic- and author-based recommendations, not guaranteed predictions of enjoyment.