Privacy — the app
This page is about the Pyxils desktop application. The browser extension has its own policy, because browser stores require one.
Last updated 24 September 2026
The short version
Pyxils runs on your computer and your files stay there. There is no telemetry, no analytics and no crash reporting. The one thing we count is how much you send through our relay, because the relay allowance is measured in it. Nothing is uploaded in the background, ever.
There are exactly five times the app talks to a server of ours, and four of them only happen because you asked, bought, or chose to use something.
The five times it talks to us
| When | What is sent | Can it be turned off? |
|---|---|---|
| Checking for an update | Nothing about you. Pyxils fetches a small file listing the current version. Your address is visible to the server, as it is to any website you open. | Yes, in Settings. |
| Report a problem Settings › Advanced |
Only what is shown on screen before you press send: what you wrote, the app version, the Windows version, the site involved if there was one, and the last 60 lines of the log — which you can read in full and switch off. Your email only if you type one. | It only happens when you press the button. |
| Checking a licence | Your licence key, its number, your computer’s name (so your licence can list your PCs by a name you recognise), and a code that identifies this computer. That code is a one-way hash — it cannot be turned back into anything about your machine. The key goes so our server can hand back a renewed one, which is how a renewal reaches Pyxils without you typing anything. This happens about once a day while Pyxils is open, and hourly in the last two days before a licence renews. | Only relevant if you buy Premium. |
| Sending a file to someone | Files go directly between the two computers whenever that is possible. When it is not, they pass through our relay encrypted — we carry the bytes and cannot read them. We count how many bytes you send through the relay each month, against your Pyxils ID, because that is what the relay allowance is measured in. | Yes, in Settings, or simply by not using it. |
| Being reachable for Beam | Once you have used Beam, Pyxils keeps a connection to our server while it runs, so your friends can see you are online and a transfer can start. It sends your Pyxils ID and the public half of its key, the IDs of the friends you have added (so the server can tell you which of them are online, and tell them about you), and the network addresses your PC can be reached on, so a friend can connect to you directly. The server also sees your internet address. No file names, no file contents, and nothing about what you download. | It never starts if you never use Beam. Appear offline hides you from your friends. |
What stays on your computer
- Every file you download, and where you put it.
- The list of downloads, their addresses, and their progress.
- Your settings.
- The log. Plain text, in
%APPDATA%\Pyxils, and you can open it. - Any site passwords you asked Pyxils to remember, protected by Windows so only your account can read them.
- Your licence key — also sent when a licence is checked, as described above.
None of the rest is uploaded. Deleting the folder deletes all of it.
What a problem report contains, exactly
This matters enough to be specific. Before anything is sent, the app shows you the finished report in a box you can scroll through — not a summary of it, the actual text. It contains what you typed, the app version, the Windows version, the site's domain if a failure is attached, and the log excerpt if you left that switched on.
The log is the part worth reading before you send. It lists the addresses Pyxils has handled recently, which can include pages you visited. If any of that is private, switch the log off — the report still goes, it is just less useful for finding the fault.
Reports are stored so a fault can be traced and fixed. Your reference number returns the status only; nobody who guesses a reference can read what you wrote.
What we never do
- No analytics, telemetry or crash reporting. Nothing is sent to record that a feature was used, or that something failed.
- No advertising, and no advertising identifiers.
- No selling or sharing data. There is nothing collected to sell.
- No account, no password, and no sign-in — a licence key works with no internet at all.
- No scanning of your files, and no index of what you have downloaded.
Optional components
If you ask Pyxils to set up video support, it downloads ffmpeg and yt-dlp from their own official sources. Those requests go to those projects, not to us, and their operators can see your address in the ordinary way.
Children
Pyxils is not aimed at children and collects nothing that would identify anyone.
Changes
The date at the top says when this last changed. If the app ever starts sending something it does not send today, this page changes first and the release notes say so. A change of this kind will not be made quietly.