Sunshine IT

Read4Me Privacy Policy

Effective 16 October 2026 · Applies to Read4Me 2.0 and later for macOS

In short: Read4Me collects no data, has no accounts, no analytics and no network access. Your documents, the speech it produces, dictation and Apple Intelligence requests are processed on your Mac and are never sent to us.
  1. What we collect
  2. Your documents
  3. Speech and voices
  4. Dictation
  5. Apple Intelligence
  6. Services and Shortcuts
  7. Settings
  8. Network access
  9. App Store
  10. This website
  11. Children
  12. Changes
  13. Contact

1. What we collect

Nothing. Read4Me does not collect, store or transmit personal data, usage data, crash reports or identifiers of any kind, and it does not track you across apps or websites. The App Store privacy label for Read4Me is "Data Not Collected".

2. Your documents

Read4Me opens the files you choose and saves to the locations you choose. The app runs in the macOS App Sandbox and can only read and write files you open or save through its dialogs or by dragging them onto the app. Document contents stay on your Mac. Audio files and audiobooks you export are written only to the location you pick in the Save dialog.

As with other Mac document apps, macOS keeps autosaved copies of open documents and a list of recent documents inside the app's own container on your Mac. These are managed by the system and can be cleared with File > Open Recent > Clear Menu.

3. Speech and voices

Speech is synthesised on your Mac by the system's speech framework using the voices installed in System Settings. Read4Me does not use any online speech service. Downloading additional voices, including Personal Voice, is handled by macOS under Apple's privacy policy; Read4Me only opens the relevant System Settings pane for you.

If you allow Read4Me to use your Personal Voice, the app receives the ability to speak with it. The voice itself remains under the control of macOS, and you can withdraw the permission at any time in System Settings > Accessibility > Personal Voice.

4. Dictation

The microphone button in the document toolbar starts the system's dictation feature. Read4Me itself does not access the microphone and has no microphone permission. Dictation is performed by macOS in its own process and is governed by your Dictation settings and Apple's privacy policy. The recognised text is inserted into your document and goes nowhere else.

5. Apple Intelligence

On macOS 26 and later, the Apple Intelligence button sends the selected text, or the whole document, as a prompt to the on-device model of Apple's Foundation Models framework. The model runs on your Mac. Read4Me does not use Private Cloud Compute or any other remote service, and it does not store prompts or replies; a reply exists only in the sheet that shows it until you copy, insert or dismiss it. The feature is unavailable unless Apple Intelligence is turned on in System Settings. Auto-Cast, which assigns voices to the characters of a story, works the same way and sends the text only to that on-device model. Translate uses Apple's Translation framework, which also processes the text on your Mac; Apple may download language files, but your text is not sent anywhere.

6. Services and Shortcuts

The "Read for me" Services menu item and the "Read Text with Read4Me" Shortcuts action receive the text you pass to them, speak it, and keep nothing. Shortcuts you create are stored by the Shortcuts app, not by Read4Me.

7. Settings

Read4Me stores your preferences on your Mac: the selected voice, the reading speed, whether dialog mode is on, the language last chosen for translation, whether all languages are shown, window positions and the toolbar layout. These are kept in the app's preferences inside its sandbox container and are not transmitted. If you installed Read4Me 1.6 earlier, macOS copies its voice, speed and dialog settings into the new container on first launch.

8. Network access

Read4Me has no network entitlement and therefore cannot connect to the internet. The Help menu's "Read4Me on the Web" item and the links to System Settings are opened by macOS in your browser or in System Settings; the app sends nothing itself.

9. App Store

When you buy or download Read4Me from the Mac App Store, Apple processes the purchase and may provide us with aggregated, anonymous statistics such as download counts by country. We receive no personal information about you from Apple. See Apple's privacy policy.

10. This website

sunshine-it.eu uses no cookies, no analytics and no third-party scripts or fonts. The hosting provider may keep standard server access logs (IP address, time, requested page, browser identification) for security and troubleshooting; these are not combined with any other data.

11. Children

Read4Me is suitable for all ages and collects no information from anyone, including children.

12. Changes

If a future version of Read4Me changes what it does with your data, this page will be updated and the effective date above will change before that version is released.

13. Contact

Questions about this policy or about Read4Me can be sent to read4me.app@icloud.com.

Read4Me is developed by Bas Meijer, trading as Bas Meijer, in the European Union.