Last updated: 15 September 2026
Applies to: Aerial for Android TV, Android, iPad, Samsung Tizen and LG webOS
Published by: abaxoft · support@abaxoft.com
Aerial has no user accounts and no analytics. It does not collect your personal data. Everything it knows about you stays on your device, except for the requests it makes to servers you configure, and two things you switch on yourself: the crash reports and the TV pairing described below. abaxoft runs one small service, used only by pairing, and it cannot read what passes through it.
All of it, unless a section below says otherwise:
None of this is transmitted anywhere. Uninstalling the app removes it.
Aerial contacts only the hosts involved in playing what you asked for:
| Request | Host | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Playlist download | the address you entered | to list your channels |
| Guide download | the address you entered, or the one your playlist declares | to build the TV guide |
| Stream and catch-up playback | the host in the channel's own URL | to play it |
| Channel logos | whichever host the playlist or guide names | to show them |
| Film and series artwork | api.themoviedb.org | only when you supply a TMDB API key |
These requests carry what any HTTP request carries, including your IP address and the URL being requested. Aerial never sees them: they go straight from your device to that host. What those hosts do with them is governed by their own policies, not this one.
Your playlist address may contain your provider account. Many IPTV providers issue URLs of the form …/get.php?username=…&password=…. Aerial stores that address as you typed it so it can refresh your channel list. Treat it as a credential: anyone who can read it can use your subscription.
Typing a playlist address on a television remote is slow and puts your provider account on a screen in your living room, so a TV can show a code for your phone to scan instead. It is optional: the typed fields are still there, and nothing about pairing happens unless you scan the code.
The code takes your phone to aerial.abaxoft.com/connect, where you paste the address. What happens next depends on where your phone is:
#. So the relay holds an encrypted block it has no key for, for five minutes at most, until your television collects it. It is then deleted immediately, and it can be collected only once.The relay stores nothing else: no account, no device identifier, no record of who paired with what. Its logs are switched off.
Aerial writes errors to a log file on your device, capped at one megabyte. Settings › About › Diagnostics bundles it into a text file that you choose what to do with. Nothing is sent anywhere automatically.
Before anything is written to that log, user names, passwords, tokens and API keys are replaced with ***, so a bundle you share does not carry your provider account.
| Permission | When it is asked for | What for |
|---|---|---|
| Microphone and speech recognition | the first time you use voice search | to turn speech into a search query |
| Notifications (Android 13+) | the first time you start or schedule a recording | to show the recording notification |
| Exact alarms (Android) | granted by you in system settings | to start a scheduled recording on time |
| Storage and removable storage | when recording | to write recordings where you chose |
Voice search uses the speech recogniser built into your device or TV. What it does with audio is governed by that vendor's policy.
Aerial is not directed at children and collects nothing from anyone. Parental controls are available and are enforced on-device.
Aerial is a player. It supplies no channels, films, series or playlists, hosts nothing, and indexes nothing. You bring your own playlist and are responsible for having the right to use it.
Settings › About › Send crash reports is off when you install Aerial and stays off until you switch it on. While it is off, Aerial initialises no crash-reporting service and contacts no server of that kind at all.
Switched on, a crash sends to Sentry (sentry.io, acting as our processor): the error and its stack trace, the same diagnostics log the Diagnostics button writes, the app version and flavour, and the device model and OS version. Playlist URLs, user names and passwords are removed before anything leaves the device — twice: once where Aerial hands over the error, and again over the whole report on its way out.
What is never sent: what you watch, your channel list, your playlist address, screenshots, and any account identifier — Aerial has no accounts.
Turning the toggle off stops it immediately, in the session you turn it off.
Settings › Backup & restore writes a JSON file containing your playlists, favourites, channel order, profiles, recording timers and settings. It stays on your device unless you choose otherwise.
Nothing Aerial stores is swept up by the system's own automatic backups either. On Android, automatic backup and device-to-device transfer are switched off for the app; on iOS, its files are marked as excluded from iCloud. This matters because your playlist address often carries your provider username and password, and copying it into a cloud account is not something you asked for. Moving a setup to another device is the export below, which you do deliberately.
"Export backup…" hands that file to your device's own share sheet, where you decide what receives it — Files, Drive, iCloud, a messaging app, or nothing at all. Aerial has no server and uploads nothing itself; once the file leaves through that sheet, it is covered by whatever you sent it to, not by this policy. Note that the file contains your playlist URLs, which for many providers carry a username and password in the address.
"Import backup…" reads a file you pick through your device's document picker. Aerial can only see the one file you choose.
Because Aerial holds no personal data on any server, there is nothing for us to export, correct or delete. Everything is on your device and under your control: individual items can be removed in the app, and Settings › Backup & restore › Reset app removes all of it at once.
Material changes will be noted here with a new date, and called out in the app's release notes.