Farpane Privacy policy

Who this is from

Farpane is made by Spidey, an independent developer (spidey.in). "Farpane" here means the app on your phone or tablet and the app on your computer. "We" and "us" mean Spidey.

What we collect

Nothing. Farpane has no account, no analytics, no advertising, no tracking and no crash reporting. It never sends anything to us or to anyone else's server. We can't see your screen, what you type, what you copy or anything else you do with it.

What moves between your computer and your device

While a device is connected, Farpane carries these between your computer and that device, and nowhere else:

the picture of the screen, and the computer's sound when you've picked the device as a sound output;
touches, pen strokes and key presses from the device;
whatever you copy, on either side, when clipboard sharing is on (you can turn it off on both sides, per device).

Over a USB cable this travels only through the cable. Over Wi-Fi it travels through your own local network, always encrypted, and never through the internet.

What Farpane keeps on your own devices

Farpane remembers a few things so it can reconnect and keep your settings. They stay on the computer or device they belong to, and are never sent to us.

WhereWhat

On the computerYour settings; for each paired device its name, a scrambled (hashed) copy of its pairing key and the dates it was paired and last used; the names of the Wi-Fi networks you allowed; which side of the screen each device goes on; an encryption certificate made on your computer.

On the phone or tabletYour settings; for each paired computer its name, addresses, certificate fingerprint and pairing key; images received through clipboard sharing, kept briefly in the app's cache.

On the computer these live in ~/.config/farpane/. On the device they live in the app's own storage, which Android keeps private to the app.

On your local network

While Wi-Fi is turned on in Farpane, the computer announces on the local network that Farpane is running, so your devices can find it. The announcement includes the computer's name (on networks you haven't allowed, just "Farpane") and its certificate fingerprint. Other devices on the same network can see this announcement. Turn Wi-Fi off in Farpane and the announcement stops. Over USB nothing is announced.

Permissions

Android: the app asks only for network access, which it uses to reach your computer (over the cable this still counts as network access).
USB debugging must be on for USB connections. It lets the computer open Farpane and carry the stream over the cable. You can turn it off whenever you like.
On the computer, Farpane uses GNOME's screen-sharing system to create the extra screen, creates virtual input devices (touchscreen, pen tablet, trackpad, keyboard) and a sound output for each device, and reads which network you're on to know whether you've allowed it.

Other services you might use

This website. spidey.in sets no cookies and runs no analytics. Like any website, the service that hosts it may keep short-lived technical logs of requests (such as the IP address, time and page). Pages load fonts from Google Fonts, so Google receives your IP address when you visit; see Google's privacy policy.
Support. If you write to us on Discord or by email, we see what you send and use it only to help you. Discord's own privacy policy applies on Discord.
GNOME, Android and your system have their own privacy practices, which we don't control.

Removing everything

Forget a device in the Farpane window on the computer at any time; a pairing left unused for 90 days expires by itself.
Uninstalling the Android app removes everything it stored on the device.
On the computer, uninstall Farpane and delete ~/.config/farpane/.

Children

Farpane isn't aimed at children, and it collects nothing from anyone.

Changes to this policy

If Farpane ever changes in a way that affects your privacy, this page will change first, with a new date at the top. Anything that sends data off your devices would be announced clearly before it ships.