Privacy
Privacy policy
In short: Airplop collects no data. Your files go straight from one device to the other, encrypted, and never go through us.
Summary
- No data collected
- No account
- No server
- No ads, no analytics
Airplop sends your files straight from one device to the other, encrypted, without going through the internet or through us. We receive nothing: not your files, not their names, not usage statistics.
This is also what Airplop declares to the stores: “Data Not Collected” in the App Store’s “App Privacy” section, and no data collected or shared in Google Play’s “Data safety” section.
Who is responsible
Airplop is published by Axel Fintz EI (Galen Studio), the controller of the processing described here. The publisher’s details are in the legal notice. For any question about this policy: contact@galenstudio.fr.
What Airplop does not do
- No account. You never sign up, and never give an e-mail address or phone number.
- No server. The app contacts no server, ours or anyone else’s. There is no relay over the internet: files go from one device to the other, directly or through your local network.
- No analytics. No usage statistics, no advertising identifier, no crash report sent by the app.
- No third-party advertising or analytics code in the app.
- Nothing to sell or share. The app sends us no data about you, and we sell or share nothing.
What stays on your devices
To work, Airplop keeps a little information on the device only. It is never sent to us.
| Data | What it is for | Where it stays |
|---|---|---|
| Device name | The name nearby devices display. You can change it in Airplop. | On the device. |
| Identity key | Created at installation. It proves the device’s identity and is used to encrypt transfers. | Kept or protected by the system’s secure store: Apple Keychain; on Android, encrypted with a Keystore key; Windows data protection. The secret part never leaves the device. |
| “My devices” | For each paired device: its name, its type, its key’s fingerprint and its advertising key (to recognise it), its automatic acceptance setting, the date it was added and the date of the last connection. | On the device, until you remove them. |
| History | Name, size and date of the files sent or received, the other device and the verification fingerprint. | On the device. |
| Received | The list of what you received: files (name, sending device, location) and the content of received texts and links. | On the device. |
| Transfers in progress | What is needed to resume an interrupted transfer, including incomplete files. | On the device. Incomplete files are deleted after 7 days. |
| Settings | Visibility, download folder, options. | On the device. |
Received files are saved where you chose (Files, Photos, Downloads or another folder). Airplop never opens a received file on its own.
What nearby devices see
- Visibility “My devices” (default)
Your device announces an anonymous identifier, which changes every 15 minutes, and its type (phone, tablet, Mac or PC). Only your “My devices” recognise it, and only they can send you files; others cannot.
On Android, that is all it announces: others do not see your name, and the identifier does not let them link your device from one quarter of an hour to the next.
On iPhone, iPad and Mac, in this version, the Bluetooth announcement also contains the first 8 characters of the device’s name, which do not change: a nearby device listening to Bluetooth can read them, and use them to recognise your device from one quarter of an hour to the next. To limit what they reveal, give the device, in Airplop, a name that does not identify you; to announce nothing at all, choose “No one”.
- Visibility “Everyone (10 min)”
- Your device’s name and type are visible to any nearby Airplop device, which can offer you files. After 10 minutes, Airplop goes back to “My devices” on its own.
- Visibility “No one”
- Your device stops announcing itself altogether, over the network and over Bluetooth, and accepts no connections, not even from your devices. Nearby devices see nothing of it. You can still send: the recipient then sees what is described below.
- During a transfer
- The recipient sees your device’s name, its fingerprint (a 16-character code) and what you are offering: the number, names, sizes and types of the files. They accept or decline before the files are sent.
- On the network
- As with any connection on a local network, the other device sees your device’s local network address.
Encryption
Every connection between two devices is encrypted with TLS 1.3 and authenticated both ways: each device proves its identity with its key. On iPhone, iPad and Mac, Airplop uses the encryption built into Apple’s system; on Android and Windows, the one built into the app. Nobody else, not even us, can read what goes through.
To add a device to “My devices”, a 6-digit code appears on both screens. If it is the same, nobody has slipped in between them.
Permissions requested, and why
Airplop explains each permission before the system asks for it, at first launch or when it is needed, and you can decline it. None is used to locate you or to read your files without your action: you always choose what you send.
iPhone and iPad
| Permission | What it is for | If you decline |
|---|---|---|
| Local Network | Find your devices and send them files, over your network or, between Apple devices, directly. | Airplop sees no devices; the app tells you how to allow it in Settings. |
| Bluetooth | Spot nearby devices. No file goes over Bluetooth. | Only devices reachable over the network appear. |
| Photos, add only | Save received photos and videos to Photos, if you choose to. | Received files go to the Files app. |
| Notifications | Tell you when something arrives or a transfer ends. | No alerts; transfers still work. |
Mac
| Permission | What it is for | If you decline |
|---|---|---|
| Local Network (macOS 15 and later) | Find your devices and send them files. | Airplop sees no devices. |
| Bluetooth | Spot nearby devices. No file goes over Bluetooth. | Only devices reachable over the network appear. |
| Files | Airplop only reads what you give it (selection, drag and drop). It saves received files to Downloads, in an Airplop folder, or to the folder you choose. No access to Photos on Mac. | — |
| Notifications | Tell you when something arrives or a transfer ends. | No alerts. |
| Open at login (off by default) | Keep Airplop ready in the menu bar from login, if you turn it on. | Airplop only starts when you open it. |
Android
| Permission | What it is for | If you decline |
|---|---|---|
| Nearby devices (Android 12 and later) | Spot nearby devices over Bluetooth. Declared as not used for location. | Only devices on the same network appear. |
| Location (Android 10 to 12 only) | These Android versions require it to scan for nearby wireless devices. Airplop never reads your location. | Devices are only found over the local network. |
| Notifications (Android 13 and later) | Show a transfer’s progress and tell you when something arrives. | No alerts; transfers still work. |
| Photo location (optional) | Send your photos with their GPS location intact. Without it, Android removes the location from photos before handing them to the app. | Photos are sent without their location, and the app tells you so. |
Airplop does not ask for access to all your photos or all your files: you pick each item with Android’s picker. When a transfer continues in the background, Android shows a notification for as long as it runs.
Windows (planned version)
| Permission | What it is for | If you decline |
|---|---|---|
| Local network (private and public) | Receive connections from your devices. The Windows Firewall rule, limited to Airplop, is created at installation. | Airplop cannot receive. |
| Run at sign-in (off by default) | Keep Airplop ready in the notification area, if you turn it on. | Airplop only starts when you open it. |
List drawn up before Airplop’s launch. If a version of the app changes its permissions, this page will be updated at the same time.
The stores
Airplop is bought on the App Store and Google Play; a Windows version is planned for the Microsoft Store. Payment, your account and your receipts are handled by these stores, under their own privacy policies; we do not receive your payment details.
The stores give us sales and installation reports. Google Play draws them up order by order: order number, date, country, device model and, sometimes, the buyer’s city or postcode. Apple and Microsoft give us aggregated figures. If you agreed to share them in your device settings, the stores also pass on anonymous crash reports. This information comes from the system and the store, not from Airplop.
We use these reports to follow sales, keep our accounts and, on Google Play, find an order you ask to be refunded. This processing is based on our legal and accounting obligations (Article 6(1)(c) GDPR) and on our legitimate interest in following our business (Article 6(1)(f)). We keep these reports for as long as accounting records must be kept.
Complaints, refunds and guarantee
If you write to us with a complaint, a refund request or about the legal guarantee, we use your e-mail address, your message and what you tell us (for example your devices’ models or an order reference) to deal with your request. This processing serves to perform our contract with you and to meet our legal obligations (Article 6(1)(b) and (c) GDPR).
We keep these messages for 3 years after the last exchange, so that we can prove what was done, then we delete them.
Messages sent to contact@galenstudio.fr are received by the Email Routing service of Cloudflare, Inc. (United States), which forwards them, on our behalf, to our mailbox. Cloudflare may process them outside the European Union, in particular in the United States; for these transfers, it states that it relies on the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework and, failing that, on standard contractual clauses. They arrive in a Google Gmail mailbox. Google may process messages outside the European Union, in particular in the United States; for these transfers, Google states that it relies on the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework, to which Google LLC has certified its adherence, and, where needed, on the standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission (<a href="https://policies.google.com/privacy/frameworks?hl=en">Google’s legal frameworks</a>).
This website
This website is made of static pages. It uses no cookies, no tracking and no analytics, and loads no font, image or script from another site. That is why there is no consent banner.
If you pick a light or dark theme at the bottom of the page, that choice is kept in your browser (local storage) and sent nowhere.
The site is hosted by Cloudflare Pages, a service of Cloudflare, Inc. (United States). To deliver the pages, Cloudflare processes visitors’ IP addresses and technical connection data. For the connection logs it makes available to us, it acts on our behalf, as a processor. It also uses some of this data for its own purposes, in particular the security of its network: it then does so as a controller, under its own privacy policy.
Our part of this processing is based on our legitimate interest in delivering a site that works and stays secure (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object to it (see Your rights), but without this data the pages cannot reach you. We do not export these logs and keep no copy of them; Cloudflare sets no single retention period for them, but criteria (purpose, volume and sensitivity of the data, legal obligations), described in its policy.
Cloudflare may process this data outside the European Union, in particular in the United States; it states that it relies for this on the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework and, failing that, on standard contractual clauses. We turn on none of Cloudflare’s analytics tools.
Your rights
Apart from the messages you send us and the store reports described above, we hold no data about you. The data kept by the app stays on your devices, and you manage it directly.
If you write to us with a simple question (contact@galenstudio.fr), we use your address and your message to answer you, and to keep track of the exchange in case you write again or a complaint follows. This processing is based on our legitimate interest in answering your request and following up our exchanges with you (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR). We keep your messages for 3 years after the last exchange, then we delete them.
At any time, by writing to the same address, you can:
- access the data about you, and have it corrected or erased (Articles 15 to 17 GDPR);
- have its processing restricted (Article 18);
- receive, in a common format, the data you gave us for a complaint or the guarantee (portability, Article 20);
- object to any processing based on our legitimate interest (Article 21): simple questions, store reports, this site’s logs.
An exchange about a complaint or the guarantee may be kept until the end of the period stated above, so that we can prove what was done, and store reports for as long as accounting records must be kept.
You can also lodge a complaint with the CNIL or with the data protection authority of your country of residence.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be published on this page, with its date.