Privacy policy
Last updated: 1 November 2026
Overtext reads and translates your screen on your iPhone. It does not send your screenshots, the text on them or the translations anywhere. It has no account, no ads and no analytics of its own. Some technical data does leave the phone, all of it to Google: crash reports, a check for crash-reporting settings, and usage data from Google's translation library. This page explains each one.
This policy covers the Overtext app for iPhone and this website. Overtext is made by Daniel Han, an individual developer in Sweden, who is responsible for the data this policy describes. You can write to overtext@danielhan.dev about anything on this page.
What happens when you translate a screen
- You use your gesture (Back Tap, the Action button or the floating button). This runs the Overtext shortcut in Apple's Shortcuts app, which takes one screenshot of the screen you are looking at.
- Shortcuts hands the screenshot to Overtext. Overtext reads the text with Apple's text recognition, which runs on the phone.
- Overtext translates the text with Google ML Kit, which also runs on the phone, using language files you downloaded earlier.
- Overtext draws the translation over a copy of the screenshot and hands that image back to Shortcuts, which shows it in a preview.
None of these steps sends the screenshot, its text or the translation off your phone. Overtext does not save the screenshot or the translated image. When you close the preview, the image is gone, unless you saved or shared it yourself with the share button.
When Copy translated text after each translation is on, Overtext keeps the translated text in its own private storage on the phone, so the shortcut can copy it to the clipboard. The text is deleted when the shortcut's next step asks for it, or when the next translation starts. It is only handed over if it is less than five minutes old. Text on the clipboard then follows iOS's own clipboard rules.
Overtext only sees a screenshot when you use your gesture. It does not record your screen.
What is stored on your phone
- Your settings: the language you translate into, the languages you downloaded, the gesture you chose, and your choices for copying text, downloading on mobile data and appearance.
- The language that screens were last found to be in, so the next short screen can be read correctly.
- The time of the last translation, and how far you got in setup.
- When a screen could not be translated, a short note saying why (for example, that a language needs to be downloaded), with the language names and the time. It never contains screen content.
- The downloaded language files.
- Random identifiers, settings and reports waiting to be sent, kept by Google's libraries (described below).
All of it stays on the phone. Deleting the app deletes it, except possibly one random Firebase identifier that iOS may keep in its keychain. A new installation does not reuse it.
What is sent from your phone, and why
| What | Sent to | When and why |
|---|---|---|
| Requests for language files | When a language is downloaded (about 30 MB each), to get the file. By default this happens only on Wi-Fi. | |
| Usage data from Google ML Kit | When the translation library is used. Google says it uses this data for diagnostics and usage analytics. See the list below. | |
| Crash reports | Google (Firebase Crashlytics) | Only when the app crashes, so the crash can be found and fixed. See the list below. |
| Crash-reporting settings check | Google (Firebase Crashlytics) | When the app starts and its saved settings are out of date, so crash reporting knows how to behave. The request carries the app version, the phone model, the iOS version and a random installation identifier. No screen content. |
Every request in this table reaches Google's servers, which see your IP address, as with any connection on the internet.
Usage data from Google ML Kit
Overtext cannot turn this off: Google documents no way to do so. Google's ML Kit data disclosure lists what the library collects on iOS:
- device information, such as the phone model and its hardware;
- app information, such as the app's identifier and version;
- a random identifier for this installation;
- performance figures, settings of the library, event types and error codes;
- the languages you translate from and into, and the languages it identified.
The text you translate is not on Google's list. The privacy file Google ships inside ML Kit, which tells Apple what an app's libraries collect, also names the broad category "other user content", without saying what it covers there. The only content-like items on Google's public list are the language settings above. We have no information that Google receives the text you translate. We cannot inspect Google's library from the inside, so we report its own declaration here as it is.
Crash reports
Overtext uses Firebase Crashlytics, a Google service. When the app crashes, the report contains the technical trace of the crash, the phone model, the iOS and app versions, the size of the phone's memory and storage, whether the phone is jailbroken, whether the app was in the background, and random identifiers for the installation and session. Overtext adds nothing to these reports: no screen content, no text, no translations and no settings. Google keeps crash reports for 90 days, according to Firebase's privacy page.
Neither the usage data nor the crash reports carry your name, email address or Apple ID, and Overtext has no account to link them to.
How this appears on the App Store
Apple asks every app to declare the data that it and the libraries inside it collect, and shows the answers on the App Store as a privacy label. Overtext declares exactly what Google's libraries declare in their own privacy files, so the label lists, as data not linked to you:
- Identifiers (device ID): the random installation identifiers above;
- Usage data (product interaction): events from the translation library, such as a language download;
- Diagnostics (crash data, performance data, other diagnostic data): the crash reports and the library's performance figures and error codes;
- User content (other user content): declared by Google's ML Kit, as explained above;
- Other data (other data types): also declared by ML Kit, which does not say what it covers; the languages you use are the closest item on Google's list.
None of it is used for tracking. The label lists categories, not your screens: as described above, Overtext does not send your screenshots, their text or the translations.
What Overtext does not do
- No account and no sign-in.
- No analytics of its own: Overtext adds no analytics service and does not measure how you use the app. (Google's translation library sends the usage data described above.)
- No advertising and no advertising identifiers.
- No tracking across apps or websites.
- No selling of data. The only data shared is the library usage data and the crash data described above, with Google.
- No access to your photos, contacts, location, camera or microphone.
Overtext asks for one permission: to show notifications. It uses them only to tell you why a screen was not translated. These notifications are created on your phone, not sent from a server. You can say no, and you can change it at any time in iOS Settings.
Legal basis and your rights
If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom: crash data and the library's usage data are processed on the basis of legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR), namely keeping the app working and the translation library reliable. Google processes this data, and may do so outside the EU under the safeguards in its data processing terms.
You have the right to ask for access to, correction of, or deletion of personal data about you, and to object to its processing. Because none of this data is linked to a name or an account, the developer cannot usually find data about a particular person, but write anyway and we will do what we can. You may also complain to your data protection authority. In Sweden that is the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY).
Children
Overtext is a general tool, not made for children. It collects no personal information such as names or contact details from anyone.
The App Store
Downloading Overtext is between you and Apple. Apple records its own information about downloads and gives the developer anonymous statistics. Apple's handling of that data is covered by Apple's privacy policy.
This website
This site is plain HTML and CSS with one small script for the before-and-after picture. It sets no cookies, has no analytics and loads nothing from other companies. Its font is served from this site. The site is stored on Amazon Web Services in Stockholm and delivered through Cloudflare. To deliver and protect the site, these services process your IP address and may keep short technical logs.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes too. If Overtext ever adds a feature that sends screen content off the phone, such as an online translation option, this policy will say so before that feature is released, and the feature will only be used if you choose it.
Contact
Daniel Han, Sweden. overtext@danielhan.dev