WordPaws — Spelling & vocabulary with your pet
Last updated: October 2026
Summary: WordPaws has no accounts, no ads and no tracking. Your children's names, answers and progress stay on your device. The few things that do go to our server — words you ask us to make cards for, and the details of a group or a shared book — are listed below.
WordPaws does not use accounts, sign-in, advertising, analytics SDKs, or tracking of any kind. It does not collect your address, phone number, location, advertising identifiers, usage analytics, cookies or tracking pixels.
When you first open WordPaws you set up a learner with a first name and a level; a phone can hold several learners. These names, every answer, the study plan and each learner's pet are stored only on your device. They are never sent to our server. A backup is a file you create and keep yourself (in Files, wherever you choose); we never receive it.
WordPaws downloads ready-made books — a picture, a recorded voice and text for every word — from our public card site. Downloading a book does not require an account and sends no information about you or your learners.
You can photograph a printed word list, choose a photo, or type words. A photo is read on your phone using Apple's on-device frameworks; the photo itself is not uploaded. If some words have no card yet, WordPaws sends us only those words (and an optional short hint for each) so that their pictures and voices can be made. The request is identified only by a random number made on your phone, never by a name. The finished cards are downloaded back to your phone, and the request is deleted from our server after about 3 days.
A group is a way for a teacher or parent (the group's leader) to give books to others. When you take part in a group or share a book, our server keeps: an anonymous number for your phone's family, the group, the title you typed for a shared book and the numbers of its lists, the time you accepted the sharing terms and their version. To join a group, a person types a name for the leader (a first name or nickname is enough); only the leader sees it, other members never do, and it is deleted 30 days after the person leaves or is removed. A shared book travels as words, and the packed copy waits for the group for about a week and is then deleted. Children's names, the name of your word book and what a learner has answered are never sent. A group has at most 50 members and a person can be in at most 3 groups. A share cannot be taken back; copies already made stay on the phones that made them. The sharing terms shown in the app give the same details in plain words.
WordPaws uses the microphone and speech recognition so a learner can spell words out loud. This recognition runs on your phone; your voice is not sent to us or stored.
The camera and photo access are used only when you choose to photograph or pick a word list, as described in section 4.
WordPaws is made for learners and families, including children. We do not collect personal information from children. A child's name never leaves the phone; the only name we ever receive is the one a person types to join a group, and it is seen by that group's leader only.
If we update this policy, the revised version will be posted at this URL with a new "Last updated" date.