Privacy

Nothing is measured until you say yes

On your first visit a banner asks whether usage data may be collected. Until you answer, nothing is sent and nothing is stored on your device. If you decline, nothing is sent at all — no identifier is created, and any identifier from an earlier visit is deleted.

You can change your mind at any time from Analytics settings in the footer of every page. Withdrawing is one click, the same as giving it.

What the website records, if you accept

• Which page you are on, and its section and category.
• Which links you click: navigation, download buttons, plugin cards, and off-site links (destination host and address).
• How far down a page you scroll, and how long the page was actually visible.
• Which sections came into view, which FAQ entries were opened, and which install commands were copied.
• The text of the link or button you clicked, truncated, so a report can name it instead of showing a number.
• Where you arrived from: the referring site's host name and any campaign parameters in the address.

Attached to each of those: a random identifier for this browser, a session number, your operating system, your browser's language, whether your system is set to dark or light, and your IP address — which our analytics provider turns into an approximate location (country or region, not an address) and does not retain in full.

The random identifier is not derived from anything about you or your device. It is stored in your browser and clearing site data resets it.

What the desktop app records

The app asks separately, on first launch, and defaults to off. If you agree it reports that it started, which plugins are switched on, when a plugin is switched on or off, when a playback control is used and from where, when a setting is changed, when a renderer or GPU process stops unexpectedly, and how long the session lasted. Attached to each: a random installation ID, the app version, operating system, processor type, language, and approximate location.

The start-up report also says roughly how established the installation is — whether this is its first run, or its second to fifth, sixth to twentieth, or beyond. It is deliberately a range rather than a number: an exact launch count grows more distinguishing the longer you use the app, and the ranges already answer what it is for, which is how many people keep the app after installing it. The count only advances while reporting is switched on, and resetting the installation ID clears it too.

The installation ID can be reset from the app's menu, and the same menu shows exactly what has been sent.

What is never collected

• What you listen to — no track, artist, album or playlist names.
• What you search for, and no video or page addresses from inside the player.
• Anything about your Google account. The app never sees your credentials; you sign in to Google's own page inside the app, exactly as in a browser.
• Free-form text from your settings — a proxy address or a download folder is recorded as "set" or "unset", never as its contents.

This is enforced in code rather than by policy: the events the app may send are a fixed list with no free-text fields, and a test fails the build if a payload ever contains a track title, a search term or a video address.

Who else sees it

Usage data is processed by Amplitude, which stores it on our behalf. It is not sold, and it is not shared with advertisers. The site itself sets no advertising cookies and embeds no third-party trackers.

Your choices

• Website: Analytics settings, in the footer of every page.
• App: Options → Share anonymous usage data. The same menu resets the installation ID or shows what has been sent.
• Declining costs you nothing — every feature works the same either way.

Contact

Questions about any of this, including a request to delete what has been collected, can be sent to privacy@ytmdesktop.com.