Privacy policy

The short version. There are no accounts. Your screen, keystrokes, clipboard and files go only between your own devices, end-to-end encrypted. We collect anonymous usage counts (like how long sessions last) tied to a random id that resets when you reinstall, and you can turn that off in Settings. We never collect your name or contacts, never sell data, show no ads and use no third-party trackers. Plans for the phone are handled entirely by Google Play. If you buy a computer license on this website, Stripe handles the payment, and we keep your email address, your license key and the computers using it, only to make the license work.

What we never collect
On your devices
The relay
Anonymous usage counts
How long we keep it
Purchases
Computer licenses
Crashes
Permissions
Your choices and deletion
Contact

Who we are

Nightdesk is made by Coded Realities LLC (“we”, “us”), the developer of the Nightdesk Android app, Nightdesk for Mac and Nightdesk for Linux. This policy covers the apps, this website, and the small online services the apps use (the relay, the usage counter and the license service). Questions go to privacy@nightdesk.app.

What we never collect

Names, phone numbers or accounts. There are no accounts. The one email address we keep is the one you give Stripe when you buy a computer license (see below).
What’s on your screen, what you type, your clipboard, your files, or the sound from your Mac.
Your Mac’s password.
Your contacts, photos, or precise location.
Your IP address (we use it only to work out your country, and for a minute to slow down anyone hammering our services, then let it go; see below).
Payment details. Google Play and Stripe handle payments; we never see your card or billing address.

What stays on your devices

These stay on your phone and your Mac, and travel only between them over the end-to-end encrypted link (P-256 key exchange, AES-256-GCM, with a key made when you paired):

Pairing keys and settings. Which Macs your phone is paired with, their keys and addresses, your shortcuts and preferences. They’re stored in each app’s private storage.
Your screen, keystrokes, pointer, clipboard and sound. Streamed live between your devices and not recorded or kept anywhere.
Links, text and files you send. They go straight from one of your devices to the other. Files are saved in Downloads › Nightdesk on your Mac and in Download › Nightdesk on your phone.
Your Mac’s password, if you use fingerprint unlock. It’s stored only on your phone, encrypted with a key in Android’s secure hardware that opens only after your fingerprint (or your phone’s PIN). It’s sent only to your own Mac, inside the encrypted link, when you unlock it; your Mac types it into its lock screen and doesn’t keep it. Removing a Mac from your phone also removes its saved password.

The relay (anywhere access)

When your phone can’t reach your Mac directly, for example on cellular, the two meet through a small relay that runs on Cloudflare. The relay only forwards data that’s already end-to-end encrypted by your phone and your Mac; it can’t read or change it. It stores nothing. While your Mac is connected to it, the relay knows that your Mac is online, so your phone can show it, and it identifies your Mac only by a random code your Mac made, not by name. Like any internet service, Cloudflare’s network processes your IP address to deliver the connection; we don’t log or keep it.

Anonymous usage counts

To learn which features people use, whether the app works well, and whether it’s worth building, the Android app sends anonymous usage events to our counter. It’s on by default, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings › Privacy › Share anonymous usage; turning it off deletes anything still waiting to be sent and stops sending.

What an event contains

Every event has its name, the time it happened, and four facts about the app: the app version, the edition (Google Play or a personal build), the Android version (as a number, such as 36) and the kind of device (phone, foldable or tablet). Some events add a few numbers or words:

Event	When	Extra details
app_open	You open the app	None
paired	You pair with a Mac	None
link	Your phone links to your Mac	Whether it linked directly or through the relay; how many milliseconds until the picture appeared
session_end	You stop using your Mac	Minutes used; direct or relay; average frame rate; average delay
trial_started, trial_expired	Your free trial starts or ends	None
paywall_view	You see the plans screen	Where it was opened from (home, settings, while using your Mac, a reminder, the share sheet, or when the free trial ended)
purchase	You buy a plan	Which plan (monthly, yearly or lifetime), its price and currency
purchase_cancelled	You back out of a purchase	Which plan
demo_open	You try the built-in demo	None
crash	The app crashed	Nothing but the fact that it happened

The install id

Events are sent with an install id: a random number the app makes the first time it runs. It isn’t linked to your name, your Google account, your phone’s hardware or your Mac, and uninstalling the app (or clearing its storage) throws it away; a reinstall gets a new one. We use it only to count how many people use Nightdesk each day, week and month, how many are new, and how many free trials become purchases.

Your country

When events arrive, our counter notes the country they came from, which Cloudflare works out from the request’s IP address. The IP address itself is never stored, and neither is your browser or device’s “user agent”. Nothing more precise than the country is used.

How it’s sent and stored

The app sends events in small batches about once a minute and when it goes to the background, over an encrypted HTTPS connection. If you’re offline it tries again later; a batch the counter refuses is dropped. On arrival, events aren’t stored one by one: they’re added straight into daily totals (for example “on October 24, 12 sessions from Germany on version 2.0, 340 minutes in all”). The counter runs on Cloudflare (Workers and the D1 database, stored in the United States).

How long we keep it

What	Kept for
Individual events	Not kept: they’re added to daily totals the moment they arrive
The days an install id was active (with its country, app version and edition)	120 days
An install id’s first day, last day, and when its free trial started and it first bought a plan (and which plan)	Until 13 months after the app was last used
Daily totals, which have no install id and can’t be traced to anyone	2 years
A computer license: your email address, its key, its plan and renewal date, and Stripe’s customer id	While the license is active, and 12 months after it ends
A computer using a license: its install id and name	Until it’s removed from the license, 60 days after it last checked in, or with the license, whichever comes first
Ids of Stripe’s payment messages (nothing about you)	30 days

Older records are deleted automatically every day.

Purchases

On the phone, subscriptions and the lifetime purchase are sold and billed by Google Play under your Google account and Google’s own terms and privacy policy. The app asks Google Play on your phone whether you’ve bought a plan. We never see your payment details. Our counter records only the purchase events described above.

Computer licenses

Using Nightdesk on a Mac or Linux computer to control another computer needs a computer license after the free trial. (The computers you control never need one.) You buy it on this website, and Stripe handles the payment on its own checkout page, under Stripe’s privacy policy. We never see your card number or billing address. When you buy, our license service keeps:

Your email address, from the checkout, so we can help you if you lose your key.
Your license key, its plan, and when its paid month ends (or that it was refunded).
Stripe’s customer id: a reference that opens your own subscription when you choose Manage subscription.
Each computer using the license: its install id (a random number Nightdesk makes on that computer, like the one above) and its name, so the license knows which computers use it and can keep to 3 at a time. If you bought from Nightdesk on a computer, that computer’s install id is how it unlocks by itself.

While Nightdesk runs on a licensed computer, it checks its license about once a day, sending the key and its install id. We use all of this only to make your license work and to answer you, never for anything else. It’s stored with Cloudflare, like the usage counts, for as long as the table above says. Stripe keeps its own records of the payment, as the law requires.

Crashes

If the Android app crashes, it keeps the technical details (which part of the app failed) on your phone and sends them to your own Mac the next time they link, over the encrypted link, so they show up in your Mac’s log. They never come to us. We only receive the crash event above: a count, with no details.

Permissions the apps use

On your phone: network access and Nearby devices / local network (to find and reach your Mac), fingerprint or screen lock (only if you use fingerprint unlock), keyboard capture (so shortcuts on a hardware keyboard go to your Mac instead of to Android), and notifications (to show a big file transfer’s progress, tell you when files from your Mac arrive, and, in the Google Play edition, remind you once the day before your free trial ends, if you allow it). That reminder is scheduled on your phone; the app may start briefly after the phone restarts to set it again. Pairing scans a QR code with Google’s code scanner, which runs in Google Play services on your phone: Nightdesk never gets camera access or the image.
On your Mac: Screen Recording (to send your screen to your paired phones), Accessibility (to turn your phone’s touches and keys into clicks and keystrokes) and Local Network (to be found by your phone). The first time a file arrives, macOS asks once to let Nightdesk use your Downloads folder and show notifications. Lid-closed mode, if you set it up, adds one narrow system rule that lets Nightdesk keep the Mac awake.

We don’t sell, rent or share data with anyone for advertising or any other purpose. Three companies provide parts of Nightdesk:

Cloudflare runs the relay, the usage counter and the license service, and hosts this website. Like any web host, it processes your IP address to deliver the pages. This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics or trackers.
Google distributes the app and handles purchases (Google Play), and provides the QR code scanner (Google Play services). When you scan a code, Google’s scanner sends Google its own diagnostics about the scan (details of the device and app, performance, and zoom data for one scan session), under Google’s disclosure and privacy policy. You can type the code instead.
Stripe processes payments for computer licenses and runs the page where you manage or cancel a subscription. It receives what you enter there (your card, email address and billing details), under its own privacy policy.

We’d disclose information only if the law required it. Apart from a computer license’s email address, the little we hold can’t identify you.

Your choices and deletion

Stop sharing usage counts: Settings › Privacy › Share anonymous usage.
Remove everything from your phone: uninstall Nightdesk (or clear its storage). That deletes your pairings, settings, saved Mac password and install id.
Remove everything from your Mac: see Delete your data.
Delete what our counter holds about your install: email privacy@nightdesk.app and we’ll delete the records linked to your install id within 30 days. Since we don’t know who you are, we can only find them by that id; if you can’t give it to us, turning off sharing (or uninstalling) means nothing more is collected, and what’s there is deleted on the schedule above.
Delete a computer license’s records: email privacy@nightdesk.app from the address you bought with, or with your key, and we’ll delete the license and its computers within 30 days (it then stops working). Cancel a subscription first so it isn’t charged again. To take one computer off a license, remove it in Nightdesk’s plans on that computer.

Depending on where you live (for example in the EU, the UK or California), you have rights to access, correct, delete or object to the use of personal data. We’ll honor them as described above; you can also complain to your local data protection authority. Where the law asks for a legal basis, ours for the usage counts is our legitimate interest in understanding and improving Nightdesk, which you can object to by turning sharing off; for a computer license, it’s providing the license you bought.

Children

Nightdesk is a tool for controlling a computer and isn’t directed to children under 13 (or the minimum age in your country). We don’t knowingly collect data from children.

Security

Everything between your phone and your Mac is end-to-end encrypted, and only phones you’ve paired can link to your Mac. Our counter only accepts requests from the app, over HTTPS, and its dashboard is protected by a secret key. License tokens are signed, so they can’t be forged, and your license key is what uses and manages your license: keep it private. No system is perfectly secure, but there’s very little here to take.

Changes

If we change this policy, we’ll update this page and its date. If a change matters (for example, collecting something new), we’ll say so in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

Privacy questions or requests: privacy@nightdesk.app. Everything else: support@nightdesk.app.