Privacy Policy

Last updated September 21, 2026

Kite lets you control your Mac from your phone. We built it so that we can’t see what you do with it. This page explains what we collect, why, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. It works together with our Terms of Use.

What we never see

• Your screen, what you type, or what you click.
• What your Mac’s camera sees or its microphone hears, or anything you say through Talk.
• Your Mac’s Kite password.
• The apps you open or the files on your Mac.
• Your card or payment details. Apple sells and renews the Kite for iPhone subscription, and only tells the app whether your subscription is active.

Connections between your phone and your Mac are end-to-end encrypted. When they pass through our servers, we only forward encrypted data we cannot read, and we don’t store it.

What stays on your own devices

• On your Mac: your Kite password (stored only as a secure hash), the list of phones you approved, your Mac’s Kite ID and its encryption keys, and your settings.
• On your phone: the keys that let it reconnect to Macs you’ve paired with, and your remote settings. If you turn on Siri and Control Center, your Mac’s 4-digit code is also kept on that iPhone, in its keychain.
• In your iCloud: your Kite shortcuts and the apps you put on your deck, so they match on your other iPhones. This goes through Apple’s iCloud, not our servers.

The home camera

Kite can show you your Mac’s camera on your phone, let you hear the room through your Mac’s microphone, and let you talk through your Mac’s speakers.

• Off until you turn it on. It only works after you switch it on in Kite on your Mac, and only for phones you approved on that Mac.
• Only while you’re watching. The camera and microphone run only while the Camera tab is open on your phone. They stop when you leave it, lock your phone or switch apps.
• Never recorded. Kite does not record or save any video or sound, on your Mac, your phone or our servers. It is live only.
• Always visible on the Mac. While it’s in use, your Mac shows a notice from Kite, the green camera light and the orange microphone dot. Kite cannot hide any of these.
• Encrypted end to end. The video and sound travel the same way as your screen, so we can’t see or hear them.

Please use the home camera only where you’re allowed to. In many places it’s against the law to watch or listen to people without their knowledge.

What we collect

• Your account: your email address, and your name if you give one. If you sign in with Google, we also receive your name, profile picture and a Google account identifier (but never your Google password).
• Your password: if you use email sign-in, we store only a salted, slow cryptographic hash of it, never the password itself.
• Account emails: whether you’ve confirmed your email address, and one-time links for confirming it or resetting your password (stored only as a hash).
• Agreement to our terms: which version of the Terms of Use you agreed to, and when.
• Sign-in sessions: when you signed in, when the session expires, and your browser’s user-agent string (which says what kind of browser and device you use).
• Sign-in protection: recent failed sign-in attempts for an email address, to stop people guessing passwords.
• Downloads: which version of the Mac app you downloaded and when.
• Update checks: the Mac app regularly asks our server whether a new version exists. That request includes your IP address and the Kite and macOS versions, but no account or personal details.
• Connection records: to connect your phone and Mac, our servers handle your Mac’s Kite ID and public key, IP addresses, and when and how much encrypted data passes through.
• Alerts: if you turn on alerts in the iPhone app, your Mac gives our server your phone’s Apple alert address, your Mac’s name, and which alerts you want, so we can tell you when someone asks to add a phone or your Mac goes offline. Turning alerts off removes your phone’s address the next time you connect.
• Technical logs: like most websites, our hosting provider briefly records requests (such as the time, the page asked for, IP address and any errors) so we can keep Kite secure and fix problems.

How we use it

• To run Kite: create and sign in to your account, deliver the Mac app and its updates, and connect your phone to your Mac.
• To send emails you need: confirming your email address and resetting your password. We don’t send marketing emails.
• To keep Kite secure: preventing password guessing, abuse and attacks, and limiting how fast one address can make requests.
• To understand, in total, how many people download and use Kite.

If you’re in the European Economic Area or the UK, we use your information because it’s needed to provide the service you asked for, for our legitimate interest in keeping Kite secure and working, and, for Google sign-in, because you chose to use it.

Cookies and tracking

We use a single, necessary cookie to keep you signed in. We don’t use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or analytics that follow you across websites.

Who we share it with

We don’t sell your personal information, and we don’t share it for advertising. We only share it with companies that help us run Kite, and only as needed:

• Cloudflare hosts our website, accounts database and servers.
• Google, only if you choose to sign in with Google.
• An email delivery service (Resend), to send confirmation and password reset emails. It receives your email address and the message.

We may also share information if the law requires it, or if it’s needed to protect people from harm or to stop abuse of Kite. Our providers may process information in countries other than yours, including the United States.

How long we keep it

• Your account: until you delete it.
• Sign-in sessions: up to 30 days, or until you sign out.
• Email links: password reset links expire after 1 hour and confirmation links after 3 days; they are deleted soon after.
• Failed sign-in records: cleared after your next successful sign-in.
• Download records: kept, but with your identity removed if you delete your account.
• Technical logs: a few days.

Your choices and rights

• See and correct: your account page shows the information linked to your account.
• Delete: you can delete your account at any time from the Kite app on your iPhone. This removes your account, sessions and email links straight away.
• On your devices: removing a phone in Kite’s Mac settings disconnects it immediately. Uninstalling Kite and clearing your phone’s website data removes what’s stored there.

Depending on where you live (for example in the EEA, UK or California), you may have more rights, such as getting a copy of your information or objecting to how we use it. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

Security

We use end-to-end encryption between your phone and Mac, store passwords only as slow salted hashes, keep sign-in tokens as hashes, and limit repeated sign-in attempts. No system is perfectly secure, but we design Kite so that even if our servers were broken into, your screen, typing and Mac password would stay private.

Children

Kite isn’t meant for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, let us know and we’ll delete it.

Changes

If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top of this page. If a change is important, we’ll tell you in advance on the website or by email.

Contact

Questions about your privacy, or want to use any of the rights above? Email us at support@kiteremote.com. You can also see and delete your information yourself from the Kite app on your iPhone.