Privacy and data safety

A good story. No account needed.

Every child deserves a moment of comfort, curiosity, and hope. You can start listening to StoryBeam kids stories and podcasts without signing up or giving us a child's name. Saved stories and progress stay on the device, with simple controls for a parent or trusted grown-up.

• No account needed. Open a story and start listening or reading together.
• Profiles and progress stay on your device. StoryBeam does not upload them or use advertising trackers or analytics in the listening room.
• You're in control. See and erase saved profiles, progress, and downloads from the grown-up area.
• A reviewed collection. Choose from the approved catalog, with a grown-up check before outside links open.

Last updated: September 21, 2026

This page describes the StoryBeam Kids website at storybeamkids.com and the iOS and Android apps that show that same listening room. If a parent opens the App Store, Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or another outside service from Parent Corner, that service handles its own data under its own policy.

Kids story app privacy: common questions

Can kids listen to StoryBeam without an account?

Yes. Kids can listen to stories and podcasts on StoryBeam without creating an account or providing a real name.

Does StoryBeam upload my child's reading or listening progress?

No. Listener profiles, playlists, and reading and listening progress stay on the device. StoryBeam does not upload them. Online pages and audio still send requests to the services delivering them, as explained below.

How do I delete saved StoryBeam information?

Open Grown-ups, pass the grown-up check, and choose Erase everything on this device. This clears saved profiles, progress, and offline episodes. On Android, uninstalling the app alone may leave browser site data behind.

What stays on your device

StoryBeam remembers your place so you can return to a story. Reading and listening progress includes completed stories, dates, listening time, Home and School points, and weekly goals for each local listener. It keeps up to 2,000 completion records and the most recent 366 days with recorded listening. The erase control removes this progress too.

• Watchlists and playlists: saved only in the browser's local storage on the device.
• Filters and player state: saved locally so the listening room feels familiar when it reopens.
• School morning helper: which morning steps are checked off is saved locally and starts fresh each day.
• Night Glow, Calm Mode, and Dark Mode: saved locally so bedtime settings can load before the page paints, on the listening room and in the Reading Nook alike.
• Reading Nook storybooks: the text size you picked, how far you have read in each storybook, which books a grown-up has stamped as read together, and which Story Steps talk prompts your family marked as talked about are saved locally, so a book can open back to your spot, a finished book can wear its star (and heart) on the shelf, and a talked-about prompt keeps its stamp.
• Grown-up check attempts: when the math check is answered wrong a few times in a row, the count and a short wait (up to thirty seconds) are saved locally so reloading the page cannot skip the wait. It clears itself after ten quiet minutes or as soon as the check is passed.
• Service worker cache: stores the app's own shell files and local assets so the page can load on weak bedtime wifi.
• Episodes you keep offline: when "Keep offline" is pressed on an episode, that episode's audio file is downloaded and stored on the device so it plays without a connection. Nothing is uploaded, and unpinning the episode deletes the stored copy.
• Listener names: adding or renaming a listener is behind the grown-up check. A nickname is enough; a real name is not needed. The name, stickers, and resume points stay on this device and are not uploaded to StoryBeam.

In the iOS app

What the app saves outside the browser

The iOS app shows the same listening room, so everything above applies inside it too. The app itself saves three small things of its own, which sit in the app's own storage rather than the browser's:

• Welcome screen: whether the opening screen has already been shown, so the app does not greet you again on every launch.
• Grown-up check attempts: the same wrong-answer count and short wait described above, kept by the app as well so that quitting and reopening it cannot skip the wait.
• The date the app last asked for a rating: a single date, so it waits at least 120 days before asking again. Apple's rating box is requested from Parent Corner, behind the grown-up check. Apple handles the submission; App Store reviews you publish are public.

These values are not sent to StoryBeam or attached to a name or an account. Deleting the iOS app removes them, along with everything the listening room saved inside it.

In the Android app

The same site, using your Android browser

The Android app opens storybeamkids.com through a Trusted Web Activity provided by a compatible browser, such as Chrome. The local preferences, reading progress, and offline downloads above are stored by that browser and may be shared with visits to the site in that same browser. Uninstalling the Android app alone may leave this site data behind. Use Erase everything on this device or clear storybeamkids.com site data in the browser to remove it.

The Android shell does not request an advertising ID, precise location, contacts, camera, or microphone, and does not include a separate analytics or advertising SDK. Google Play and the browser handle their own service data under their respective privacy settings and policies.

What happens when pages and media load

Vercel delivers the website, and podcast audio plays from the publisher's host. These services receive the requests needed to load a page or episode, including your IP address and browser information. Their privacy policies cover how they handle those requests. StoryBeam does not upload listener profiles, playlists, or reading progress to them.

The separate watch guide is behind a grown-up check. If you choose to play a video there, it loads from YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed domain. YouTube handles that playback, including any ads and data processing, under its own policy.

Read Vercel's privacy notice or Google's privacy policy for those services. Podcast publishers and hosts provide their own privacy terms.

What the website does not ask for

• StoryBeam Kids does not ask children to create accounts.
• StoryBeam Kids does not include comments, messaging, or chat.
• StoryBeam Kids does not add advertising pixels or analytics scripts to the listening room. The optional YouTube player and media-provider requests are described above.
• StoryBeam Kids does not host or re-upload podcast audio. Episodes stream from each publisher's own host, which means the publisher's server sees the request the way it would in any podcast app. The only copies StoryBeam Kids stores are episodes explicitly saved for offline listening, and those stay on the device.
• StoryBeam Kids removes known advertising-measurement redirects from catalog audio links. An automated check flags known tracking hosts and unreviewed delivery hosts. Audio is delivered by the publishers described above.

Emails you choose to send

Book nominations. Nominating a book happens in your own email app rather than in a form here. The ready-to-fill email asks for a book title and author. A first name or nickname and an age are optional, and they exist for one reason: if we read the book, the credit goes in the episode title, the way "Nominated by Aziza, age 5" does.

If you choose to include a name and age for a credit, they appear publicly in the episode title. A nickname is fine. Please leave out photos, school names, addresses, and other private details. To change a credit, write to us and we will update the title we control; copies already downloaded by other podcast apps may retain the earlier title.

Support email. The support page in the website and apps can open your email app to support@storybeamkids.com. If you write, our inbox receives your email address and whatever you put in the message. We use it to reply and troubleshoot. Please leave out a child's name, photo, voice recording, location, school, and other personal details.

To request deletion of a support email or other information you sent us, contact support@storybeamkids.com. Include enough detail to identify the request without sending additional information about a child. We can remove information we control; a request to StoryBeam does not remove independent provider logs or copies of a published credit held elsewhere.

Seeing and erasing what is stored

On a shared or borrowed device, use a nickname and ask a trusted grown-up to clear your saved information when you finish. Someone else using the same browser or app can see what is saved there.

• Open Grown-ups in the listening room and pass the grown-up check. The On this device panel lists what is saved: listener names, playlists, watchlist shows, stickers, and offline episodes. The full list of everything the browser keeps is above.
• Erase everything on this device in that same panel clears all of it, including audio kept for offline listening and any grown-up check wait. It asks for confirmation first and cannot be undone.
• Clearing the browser's site data for storybeamkids.com does the same thing on the web, for the local preferences and downloads described above. In the iOS app, deleting the app clears that local data, plus the app-only values described above. On Android, clear the browser's site data as well; uninstalling the shell may not clear it. This does not erase network logs held by media providers. There is no account to close. Emails you choose to send us do not live on your device: a book nomination or support note sits in our inbox like any other email, and a published nomination credit works the way described above.

Parent links only

Where outside links live

Outside links never open straight from the kids' listening room. Every App Store, podcast, social, book, and research link on this site opens through the grown-up check. They live on the parent-facing pages and the book credits: the episode guide and episode pages, the blog, Parent Corner, the shared story page a friend can send you, and the Reading Nook's gated Book Dash credit links.