Last updated: September 26, 2026
This policy describes FireTop's current connectivity, content protection, and operational-data boundaries.
FireTop requires no sign-up, login, or account. Device pairing uses a QR code or pairing code displayed by the host.
FireTop uses LAN/direct connectivity first and a FireTop-operated relay as a fallback. If both devices are on the same Tailscale network and you turn on “Verify with Tailscale”, FireTop can send screen, audio, input and files directly over that network instead of the relay. To confirm who is connecting, FireTop asks the Tailscale app on your machine which peer owns the connecting address; that answer stays on your device. This is off until you turn it on. When “Verify with Tailscale” is on and “Connection path” is set to Automatic or Never use the relay on a machine running FireTop Desktop, that machine also gives its Tailscale address to any paired device that asks for it (an iPhone, an iPad, the FireTop Mac app, or FireTop Desktop) inside the same encrypted session, so that device can connect to it directly over Tailscale instead of through the relay. Choosing Don't use Tailscale, or turning “Verify with Tailscale” off, stops the address being given, and a paired device that uses Tailscale forgets any copy it had the next time it connects; on a Windows machine that hosts with Remote login on, that choice reaches its background service when that service next starts. This works between Mac and Windows machines alike: on Windows FireTop asks the same question of the Tailscale service running on that machine, and the answer stays on the machine either way. On a Windows machine that hosts with Remote login on, a verification you turn on in the app reaches its background service when that service next starts.
FireTop does not currently package a self-hosted relay setup flow or relay configuration UI. Screen, audio, and input content are end-to-end protected with Noise from the relay: the relay forwards opaque protected content and cannot decrypt it. Routing, session, and operational metadata remain visible to the relay, and the relay keeps a record of each relayed session — the two device identifiers, when it started and ended, whether it was view-only, and a short reason it ended — for up to 90 days. That record contains no screen, audio, input, address, credential, or free-text data.
If you turn on “Share connection statistics to help improve FireTop”, the relay records a short numeric summary of each relayed session's connection quality (typical bitrate, delay and loss, and whether the network was Wi-Fi or cellular). It contains no screen content and no names, uses the same device identifiers the relay already uses to connect you, and is removed within 90 days. It stays off until you turn it on.
A machine that FireTop hosts also tells the relay about itself: its operating system and version, its hardware, which version of FireTop it runs and the build it was made from, whether it hosts as a service, where it is installed, and what it is doing about updates. The relay keeps that description, and a record of which versions each machine was offered and which it came back on. That is a description of the machine, never of anything on it: no screen, audio, input, credential or free-text data.
Protected pairing and registration identifiers or keys may also transit relay infrastructure.
FireTop includes diagnostics and update checks. Diagnostics can be collected for troubleshooting, and the desktop updater uses FireTop infrastructure.
If you send a problem report from the app, FireTop receives the text you typed, the list of machines this app is paired with (names, platforms, when they were paired and last used, and a short fingerprint of each pairing key, never the key itself), and connection statistics for that session: frame rates, bitrates, delays, queue lengths and error counts from your device, from the other device in the session if its owner allows it in Settings, and from our relay. The other device is told when its statistics were included. From FireTop Desktop, the report also includes the app's own diagnostic log for the last 15 minutes. Pairing codes, clipboard contents, file paths and machine names you chose to exclude are removed on your device before anything is sent. Statistics never contain anything from your screen, your typing, or your files. Reports are removed from our systems within 90 days.
Statistics may also include connection attempt types and outcomes, network interface types and whether devices appear on the same subnet, whether a VPN appears to carry traffic, video resolution and decoder error codes and stages, device load and thermal state, encoder type, the app build, the operating system name and version, and on Linux the desktop environment and screen-capture method.
File transfer is off until you enable “Allow file transfer” on the machine being viewed. When it is on, a paired controller can browse that machine's folders and copy files in either direction; transfers are end-to-end encrypted like everything else in a session. FireTop never stores your files, never includes file names or paths in problem reports or statistics, and FireTop for Mac from the App Store cannot share its host's files at all.
A whole folder can be copied the same way. FireTop reads what is inside the folder to work out the items to copy, and that listing stays between the two machines in the session, protected end to end like the files themselves. The names of folders and files are never sent to the relay in a form it can read, and they never appear in a problem report or in statistics. On the machine being viewed you can also add folders to the list a paired controller sees by name; that is a shortcut to folders that machine's drives already offer, not extra access, and the list is kept on that machine only.
Removing a file after it has been copied is a separate setting on the machine being viewed, “Allow the controller to delete files it moved”, and it is off until you turn it on. When it is on, a paired controller that has taken a complete copy of a file from that machine can put the original in the Trash, or the Recycle Bin on Windows, and only once the whole copy has finished. Nothing else on that machine can be removed this way, nothing is deleted outright, and FireTop for iPhone and iPad cannot remove anything at all.
The FireTop virtual display driver receives the pixels of the virtual monitor only to discard them. It stores nothing and connects to nothing.
FireTop has no third-party integrations, advertising networks, or data brokers.
Questions? Open an issue at github.com/roguecomet-dev/FireTop/issues.