How Iris Works
A guide to how Iris uses your Gmail to create personalized podcast episodes
Overview
Iris is a personalized podcast app that transforms your newsletter subscriptions into a daily podcast episode. You connect your Gmail, select which newsletters you want to hear, set an alarm, and listen to a podcast episode of your latest newsletters.
Step 1: Connect Your Gmail
When you sign in, Iris requests read-only access to your Gmail account using the gmail.readonly scope. This means Iris can view your emails but cannot send, delete, modify, or draft any emails on your behalf.
Authentication is handled through Google's standard OAuth 2.0 flow. Your Google credentials are never shared with Iris — Google handles the sign-in process directly.
Step 2: Discover Your Newsletters
After you grant access, Iris scans your inbox to identify newsletter subscriptions. This is done by analyzing email headers from the past 30 days:
- From — the sender's name and email address
- List-Unsubscribe — a standard header present in newsletter emails
- Date — to filter for recent activity
Iris uses a quality scoring algorithm that considers sender frequency, the presence of newsletter-specific headers, and known newsletter platform domains to filter out personal correspondence and transactional emails.
Only sender metadata is stored (sender name and email address). No email content is saved during the discovery process.
Step 3: Select Newsletters and Set an Alarm
You choose up to 5 newsletters to include in your daily briefing and set a alarm. You can also search for additional senders using the "Find More Newsletters" feature, which searches your Gmail for senders matching your query.
Step 4: Generate Your Podcast Episode
When your alarm time approaches, Iris generates your personalized episode:
- Fetch recent newsletters — Iris retrieves the latest emails (up to 3 per sender, from the past 7 days) from your selected newsletter senders
- Extract content — The email body text is extracted and truncated to 3,000 characters per email to keep summaries focused
- AI summarization — The newsletter content is sent to an AI language model which generates a natural, conversational script summarizing the key stories
- Text-to-speech — The script is converted to audio using AI voice synthesis, creating a podcast-style episode
What Happens to Your Email Data
| Data | What Happens |
|---|---|
| Sender name and email | Stored in our database so you can manage your newsletter sources |
| Email body content | Never stored. Processed in server memory, sent to AI for summarization, then discarded |
| AI-generated script | Stored temporarily to generate audio (episodes auto-delete after 3-14 days) |
| Audio episode (MP3) | Stored in a private bucket accessible only to you (auto-deleted after 3-14 days) |
| Google OAuth tokens | Encrypted with AES-256-GCM and stored securely on our servers |
| Personal correspondence | Never accessed. Only emails matching newsletter filters are read |
Additional Features Using Gmail
Manual Newsletter Search
At any time, you can search for additional newsletter senders from the Sources screen. This searches your Gmail inbox for senders matching your query and lets you add them to your briefing.
Saved Articles
Iris also lets you save web articles by sharing URLs into the app. This feature does not use Gmail access — articles are fetched directly from the web URL you provide.
Your Controls
- Revoke access — You can disconnect Gmail at any time through your Google Account permissions
- Delete your account — Contact info@joiniris.dev to have all your data removed
- Choose your sources — You control exactly which newsletters are included in your briefing
Questions?
If you have questions about how Iris uses your data, contact us at info@joiniris.dev.