Privacy and data
The Usage Analytics opt-out, what is and is not collected, the legal links and acknowledgements, and what Reset App can and cannot erase.
PreviewMonitor has no account, no cloud, and no upload. Video and audio travel from your computer to your phone over your own network and stop there — none of it reaches us, ever.
The one thing that does leave the device is anonymous usage analytics, and you can turn it off.
Opening the sheet
Tap Privacy & Legal at the very bottom of the Home screen — it is the last thing in the scroll, under both the empty state and the populated list.
Four sections: the analytics toggle, the legal links, the build version, and the reset.
Usage Analytics
A single toggle, on by default — this is opt-out, not opt-in.
Its footer reads:
PreviewMonitor collects anonymous usage data (which features you use, how often) to improve the app. No personal information, no advertising identifiers, and nothing is shared with other apps. You can turn this off here or in the iOS Settings app at any time.
The same switch appears in Settings → PreviewMonitor on the phone; both write the same preference.
Turning it off does more than suppress sending: the analytics SDK is never initialized at all when the flag is off, so there is nothing running to collect from.
What is collected
Product-interaction events, through TelemetryDeck. The complete set:
| Signal | Attached values |
|---|---|
Stream.started, Stream.stopped | none |
Settings.changed | which setting, and its new value — resolution limit, codec, GOP mode, encoder engine, audio sync mode, controls mode, stats on/off |
Layout.changed | the layout name |
Audio.sampleStarted | none |
Frame.saved | none |
MonitorClip.opened | none |
Paywall.* | which control opened it, whether a trial was offered, which product was selected, and the purchase outcome |
Plus a session-start event the SDK emits on launch.
Events are keyed to a random UUID generated on this device at first launch and stored locally. It is not the vendor identifier, not the advertising identifier, and not derived from your hardware in any way — its only purpose is to count distinct installs rather than distinct events. Nothing device-identifying leaves the phone.
What is not collected
- No video, no audio, no frames, no screenshots.
- No file names, sequence names, project names, or anything about your edit.
- No computer names, IP addresses, or pairing tokens.
- No advertising identifier. No cross-app tracking, so no App Tracking Transparency prompt is ever shown.
- No name, email, or contact details — the app has no account.
- No location.
The App Store privacy label declares this as Product Interaction, not linked to your identity and not used for tracking.
Permissions the app does request
| Permission | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Local Network | When you tap Enable network discovery in the setup wizard — deliberately deferred, never at launch | To find and stream from the plugin on your own network |
| Camera | The first time you open the QR scanner | To read the pairing code shown by the desktop Setup window |
| Photos (add only) | The first time you save a frame | To write that one image |
| Photos (read) | Only when a picked clip has to be downloaded from iCloud | To pull the original bytes |
The app requests no notification permission, ever.
Legal
Three rows:
- Privacy Policy — opens previewmonitor.app/privacy.
- Terms of Use — opens previewmonitor.app/terms, which carries the subscription auto-renewal disclosure.
- Acknowledgements — a list of the open-source components the app ships, each linking to its license:
| Component | License |
|---|---|
| Roboto | © Google. Apache License 2.0. |
| TikTok Sans | © TikTok Pte. Ltd. SIL Open Font License 1.1. |
| TelemetryDeck SDK | © Daniel Jilg. MIT License. |
| CM256 & GF256 (error correction) | © 2015 Christopher A. Taylor. BSD 3-Clause License. |
Roboto and TikTok Sans are what the Shorts and TikTok layout captions are drawn in. CM256 and GF256 are the Reed-Solomon error correction the stream runs on.
The legal documents live on the website rather than being bundled, so there is one canonical copy.
Version
A Version row showing the marketing version and build number, for example 1.2 (348). Quote it in any support message, alongside the copied statistics line.
Reset App…
The red button at the bottom. Tapping it raises a confirmation:
Reset PreviewMonitor? All settings and paired computers will be erased.
Erase Everything · Cancel
Confirming wipes:
- Every stored preference — encoding settings, HUD settings, layout choice, caption text, profile name, engagement counts, first-run flags, the live-session counter.
- Every paired computer, along with its pairing token and remembered encoder engine.
- Every file the app has written: the profile photo, imported clips in temporary storage, and caches.
Then an alert appears:
Reset complete Close the app (swipe it away in the App Switcher) and reopen it to start fresh.
Follow that instruction. The wipe clears storage, but the running process still holds the old values in memory and would write some of them back. The app cannot quit itself — Apple does not permit it — so the relaunch has to be yours.
Purchases are not affected. Subscriptions and the lifetime unlock live with your Apple ID; they come straight back. If they do not, use Restore Purchases on the paywall, reached from the Upgrade footer link.
Reset App… cannot reset the iOS Local Network permission. iOS remembers that answer per install, and no app can clear it — the setting is not the app's to change.
If you denied it and want the prompt back, the only route is to delete the app and reinstall it. Short of that, turn it on manually in Settings → PreviewMonitor → Local Network, which has the same effect without a fresh prompt.
For the full reinstall procedure on both halves of the product, see Reset and reinstall. To restore only the encoding settings without touching your paired computers, use Reset to Defaults in Encoding settings instead.
Language
The app ships in English only. There is no localization, and no plan implied by the RTL layout variants — those mirror the social-platform chrome for right-to-left content, not the app's own interface.
Last updated on
Preview from Photos or Files
Check a local video or photo against the social layouts with no computer, no network, and no subscription — plus the iCloud download path and its errors.
The Setup Window
Every card in the PreviewMonitor plugin window — QR code, device name, discoverability, trusted iPhones, and the read-only Advanced info panel.