1. Our Core Philosophy on Data Collection
At Streamly, we fundamentally believe that software designed for administrative control and media orchestration should operate with absolute respect for user privacy. In an era where desktop applications increasingly function as Trojan horses for telemetry, data harvesting, and behavioral analytics, we have chosen a radically different path. Streamly is designed to be an offline-first, fully localized application.
This Privacy Policy outlines how Streamly operates, the types of data it generates, where that data is stored, and our unwavering commitment to ensuring that your private broadcasting assets remain entirely under your sovereign control. We do not track you. We do not sell your data. We do not even have the technical infrastructure in place to receive your data.
2. Localized Data Storage and Processing
When you install and execute the Streamly application on your Windows machine, all data generation and processing occur strictly within the confines of your local hardware environment.
- Video Assets: Streamly analyzes your `.mp4` and `.mkv` files using FFprobe to extract metadata such as duration, resolution, and file size. This metadata is never transmitted over the internet. It is stored inside a local SQLite database file (`streamly.db`) located within the application's root directory on your hard drive.
- Thumbnail Generation: When Streamly captures a thumbnail preview from your video, the resulting JPEG image is saved locally to the internal `thumbnails` folder. It is not uploaded to any cloud storage or external server.
- Application Settings: Your specific configurations—such as your chosen video directory, hardware encoder preferences, default bitrates, and Single Session Security settings—are serialized and stored inside a local configuration file (often in JSON format) next to the executable. We have no visibility into how you configure your software.
3. Network Communications and RTMP Streams
While Streamly is inherently an offline application in its architecture, its primary purpose is to broadcast live video to the internet. It is crucial to understand the nature of this outgoing network traffic.
When you click the "START STREAMING" button, Streamly commands the FFmpeg engine to initiate a direct, outbound TCP connection to the specific RTMP or RTMPS server URL that you provided in the dashboard. The application pushes your transcoded video and audio packets directly to that destination (e.g., YouTube's ingest servers, Twitch's ingest servers, or your custom NGINX relay). This video stream does not pass through any Streamly-owned or operated servers. It is a direct peer-to-server connection between your machine and your chosen broadcasting platform.
Consequently, the privacy and security of the video stream itself are governed by the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service of the platform you are streaming to, as well as the security of the RTMP protocol (which is inherently unencrypted unless you specifically utilize RTMPS).
4. Security Credentials and Passwords
Streamly allows you to configure sensitive credentials, notably your Stream Key and your administrative dashboard login (if Enable Login is active). It is vital to emphasize how these are handled:
Your Stream Key is stored locally in plain text or lightly obfuscated form within your settings file. It is required to be in this state so that FFmpeg can construct the final URL string for the outbound RTMP connection. Because it is stored locally, it is your responsibility to secure the physical machine and operating system where Streamly is installed. We cannot access your stream key, nor can we recover it for you if you lose it.
Your Administrative Dashboard Password, used to prevent unauthorized local network access to the Streamly web UI, is also verified locally. No authentication requests are sent to our servers. The security of this system relies on the integrity of your local network environment.
5. Telemetry and Usage Analytics
As explicitly stated above, Streamly contains absolutely zero telemetry, crash reporting, or "phone home" mechanics. We do not track how many hours you stream, the names of the videos in your playlist, your hardware specifications, or the frequency of application crashes. While this lack of telemetry makes it more difficult for us to proactively identify and patch obscure bugs, we firmly believe that the privacy tradeoff is entirely worth it for our user base.
6. Changes to This Privacy Policy
Because our software is a localized executable without external dependencies, changes to this Privacy Policy will generally only occur if we introduce entirely new, opt-in cloud features in future major version updates. Should such a structural change occur, we will prominently notify users via release notes on our official download portal prior to installation.
By using the Streamly software, you acknowledge and agree to the decentralized, localized nature of its data handling as described in this document. Your data is your property. Streamly is simply the tool you use to broadcast it.