Privacy

Reel goes on the network by itself for one thing: anonymous counts of how many copies are installed and in use, which you can turn off. Otherwise it connects only when you ask it to. There are no accounts and no advertising, and nothing about what you watch is ever sent.

Usage counts

Reel sends a short message to stats.syncster.dev, a service we run:

When it's installed or updated: once, the first time it runs on a computer, and once more the first time it runs as a new version.
When it's used: at most once a day, on a day you use it.

Each message carries:

What	For example
The app and its version	`reel`, `0.1.0`
The operating system and its version	`macos`, `26.1`
The chip	`arm64` or `x64`
The system's language	`en-US`
The screen's size	`1512×982`
A random id made on that computer	`3f0c8a52-91d4-4c1e-8b7a-5d2e6f104b99`

The id is random digits made the first time Reel runs. Nothing about you or your computer goes into it: it only tells one copy of Reel from another, so each is counted once. No file names, titles or anything about what you play are ever part of a message.

The service works out the country from the network address a message comes from, and stores the country only. The address itself is never stored.

To turn them off, untick Reel ▸ Send Anonymous Usage Statistics. They're also never sent when the environment variable DO_NOT_TRACK=1 or REEL_NO_STATS=1 is set. They start with Reel 0.1.1; 0.1.0 doesn't send them.

When you ask Reel to connect

Network streams. When you open a web address (Media ▸ Open Network Stream), Reel downloads it from that address, like a browser would.
OpenSubtitles. When you search for subtitles, Reel sends the search to api.opensubtitles.com with the API key you entered in Preferences: the title, season, episode and languages, and a hash of the video file that identifies the film without revealing anything else about it. Logging in and downloading go there too. What OpenSubtitles keeps is covered by their own privacy policy at opensubtitles.com.

What stays on your computer

Your library, history, playback positions, bookmarks, playlists, per-file settings and preferences are kept in Reel's own folder on your computer and never sent anywhere. The thumbnails it makes for seek previews and the scene strip stay there too. You can clear the history in Preferences ▸ General.

This website

The site has no cookies and no tracking. When you press a download button, the page counts the download by sending the product, its version and the system (macOS or Windows) to stats.syncster.dev, a service we run. Nothing about you or your computer is sent.

Questions

Reel is made by Alexius Academia. See syncster.dev.