Privacy Policy — Zap

Last updated: August 26, 2026

1. Who we are

Zap (Universal All TV Remote — Zap) is developed by the Essenty Dev Team, based in Vietnam. Contact: hieu.dtvt10@gmail.com.

2. What Zap does

Zap turns your Android phone into a remote control for smart televisions on the same Wi-Fi network — LG (webOS), Samsung (Tizen), and Android TV / Google TV. Roku support is planned for a future release and is not offered today. It finds televisions on your network, pairs with them, sends button presses, launches apps on the television, and can cast your own videos, photos and PDFs to it. The app is standalone: no account, no sign-up, no server of ours anywhere in the picture.

3. Data we collect

3.1 On your device only — never sent to us or to anyone

• Your saved televisions: the name you give each one, its brand and model, its address on your local network, and the room you assign it to.
• Pairing credentials: the keys, tokens and certificates a television issues so it will accept commands from your phone. They are encrypted with a key held in the Android Keystore and stored in Zap's private app storage.
• Your preferences: favourite apps and their order, chosen language, haptic feedback setting, and which television each home-screen widget controls.
• A cached list of the apps installed on your television, so the Apps tab can be shown without querying the set every time. The icons beside them are fetched from the television itself, not from the internet.
• Your Pro entitlement — a single true/false flag.

All of this lives in Zap's private app storage. Zap has cloud backup switched off deliberately, so none of it is copied to Google Drive or transferred when you set up a new phone. Uninstalling Zap deletes all of it, and you would pair your televisions again on a new device.

3.2 Sent to Google (a third party — not to us)

• Google AdMob (free version only): ads are served by Google's Mobile Ads SDK. Where consent is required and you refuse it, ads are still shown but are not personalised. To choose and measure an ad, Google receives your device's Advertising ID, an approximate location derived from your IP address, device and app information, and how you interact with the ad. Zap sends nothing of its own with an ad request — no television names, no addresses, no usage data, no profile of you; it asks for an ad and nothing more. Ads appear as a banner above the tab bar, as a card in blank space on some screens, occasionally as a full-screen ad, and as a video you may choose to watch in exchange for one cast or fifteen minutes of the home-screen widget. Buying Pro removes all of them, and on a Pro device the ad SDK is never initialised at all — not disabled after starting, never started. Google's use of this data is governed by how Google uses information from apps that use its services.
• Google Play Billing: when you buy Pro, Google handles the entire transaction. We receive only a confirmation that the purchase exists. We never see your payment details. Google's handling of payment data is governed by Google's Privacy Policy.
• Firebase Analytics: Zap sends anonymous usage events — for example that the app was opened for the first time, or that someone tapped the upgrade button — so we can understand which features are used and whether the purchase flow works. Analytics also collects standard device information: model, Android version, country derived from your IP address, language, and Google's Advertising ID. The names and network addresses of your televisions are never included.
• Firebase Crashlytics: if Zap crashes, an anonymous report goes to Google containing the crash stack trace, your device model, Android version, and Zap's version, plus two non-identifying tags we set: whether you are on Free or Pro, and your chosen language. No personal information, and no television details.
• Firebase Performance Monitoring: measures how long the app takes to start and to draw its screens. We have deliberately disabled its automatic network monitoring, because that feature records the address of every request an app makes — and Zap's requests go to televisions on your home network. Turning it off means those addresses cannot be sent to Google even by accident.
• Speech recognition (only when you use the voice button): Zap hands the recording to whichever speech-recognition service your phone provides, which on most Android phones is Google's. The text that comes back is sent to your television and is never logged, stored or transmitted by Zap. If you never press the voice button, no audio is ever captured.

3.3 What Zap explicitly does NOT do

• No ads at all for Pro. A Pro purchase does not merely hide ads: the ad SDK is never started on that device, so no ad is ever requested and nothing is sent to the ad network.
• Nothing about you is given to the ad network. Zap passes no targeting information with an ad request — not your televisions, not what you do in the app, not any identifier of our own. Everything the ad network learns, it learns from Android itself.
• No accounts, no sign-up, and no way for us to identify you personally.
• Your televisions are never disclosed. Their names and local network addresses are never sent to us, to Google, or to anyone — not in analytics, not in crash reports, not in performance data. This is enforced in the app's own code: everything it records is filtered against a fixed list of permitted fields, and network addresses are not on it.
• What you type and say is never collected. Text you enter on the on-screen keyboard and text from the voice button go to your television and nowhere else.
• No server of ours. Zap has no backend. There is nowhere for your data to be uploaded to.

4. Casting your own files

When you cast a video, photo or PDF, Zap starts a small web server on your phone and tells your television to fetch the file from it. The file travels directly from your phone to your television across your own Wi-Fi network. It is never uploaded to the internet, to us, or to Google. The server runs only while a cast is in progress and is bound specifically to your phone's address on that Wi-Fi network — not to every network interface — so it is reachable only from your local network. Zap reads the file you picked and nothing else.

5. Permissions and why

• Internet, network state, Wi-Fi state — to reach televisions on your local network and to know when Wi-Fi is unavailable so the app can tell you.
• Wi-Fi multicast — television discovery protocols (mDNS and SSDP) work by multicast; Android discards those packets unless an app asks for them.
• Foreground service — lets a home-screen widget button finish reaching your television when Android has otherwise restricted the app in the background. It runs for a few seconds at a time.
• Vibrate — the optional haptic tick when you press a button. You can turn it off in Settings.
• Wake lock — added automatically by Firebase Analytics, not by Zap. Zap itself never holds a wake lock; that is why the app asks you to keep it open while a video plays rather than keeping the phone awake on your behalf.
• Billing, install referrer, and ad-services attribution — added automatically by Google Play Billing, Firebase and the Mobile Ads SDK. Zap does not use them directly.
• Advertising ID — used by Google AdMob to select and measure ads in the free version, and by Firebase Analytics to tell devices apart in anonymous statistics. You can reset it, or switch it off entirely, in Android Settings → Privacy → Ads. Buying Pro stops the ad use of it, because the ad SDK never starts.
• Microphone — Zap does not request this permission. The voice button hands over to your phone's own speech-recognition app, which asks for its own permission.

6. Third-party services

Zap uses Google services only. Each is covered by Google's Privacy Policy: Google AdMob, Google Play Billing, Firebase Analytics, Firebase Crashlytics, and Firebase Performance Monitoring. See also how Google uses information from apps that use its services.

Consent before the first ad. In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, Zap uses Google's User Messaging Platform to ask for your consent, and no ad is requested unless and until that question has been answered. Outside those regions the question is not required and is not shown. You can withdraw consent at any time by clearing Zap's storage in Android Settings, which makes the app ask again the next time it starts; and you can stop personalised advertising for every app at once in Android Settings → Privacy → Ads.

Zap uses no advertising network other than Google AdMob, no analytics provider other than Firebase, and no cloud storage.

7. Changes to this policy

Advertising has arrived, and this page was updated before it did. Earlier versions of Zap showed no ads and this page said so. The free version now shows ads from Google AdMob, described in section 3.2, and the three commitments made at the time are kept: this page names the ad network and what it receives, the app's Data safety declaration on Google Play describes it, and in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland no ad is requested unless and until consent has been obtained through Google's User Messaging Platform.

The same commitments apply to anything a future version adds. What has not changed, and will not: the names and network addresses of your televisions, what you type, what you say, and the files you cast are shared with nobody — and they were not handed to the ad network either.

Roku support is also planned and is not part of the app today. Adding it changes nothing in this policy — a Roku television is reached over your local network exactly as the others are.

8. Your rights

8.1 All users

• Delete your data: uninstall Zap. Android removes everything it stored, including your saved televisions and their pairing keys. Nothing is retained anywhere else.
• Contact us: hieu.dtvt10@gmail.com. We aim to reply within 7 business days.

8.2 GDPR (European Union and UK users)

Where the General Data Protection Regulation applies to you, you have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict, object to, and port your personal data. Zap stores no directly identifying data about you: it has no account system and no server. The only data that leaves your device is anonymous Firebase analytics, crash and performance data, and Google's Advertising ID that accompanies it — which you can reset or delete in Android Settings.

• Lawful basis: consent for advertising and the identifiers it uses — asked before the first ad is requested, through Google's User Messaging Platform, and withdrawable as described in section 6; contract performance for processing your Pro purchase through Google Play Billing; and legitimate interest for basic app functionality and the anonymous statistics used to fix faults and improve the app.
• If you refuse consent, Zap still works in full, and you will still see ads — but non-personalised ones, chosen without building a profile from your Advertising ID. That is how Google's consent framework works: refusing withdraws permission to personalise, not permission to show an ad. To see no ads at all, buy Pro.
• Lodging a complaint: you may complain to your local Data Protection Authority; see the EDPB list of member authorities.

8.3 CCPA (California users)

The California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the CPRA, gives California residents specific rights over personal information. Zap does not sell your personal information for money — ever. But we will not hide behind that wording: in the free version, Google AdMob may use your device's Advertising ID to show you personalised ads, and under California law that counts as "sharing" for cross-context behavioural advertising. It stops in two ways, both entirely in your hands: buy Pro, or switch off ads personalisation in Android Settings.

• Right to know: Zap stores no personal information about you. The data leaving your device is anonymous Firebase analytics, crash and performance data, and — in the free version — the ad request described in section 3.2.
• Right to delete: uninstalling Zap deletes everything it stored.
• Right to opt out of sharing: open Android Settings → Privacy → Ads and delete your Advertising ID or turn off ads personalisation; Zap and AdMob both honour that setting. Buying Pro removes ads entirely, and with them the sharing — on a Pro device the ad SDK is never started.
• Right to non-discrimination: Zap will not treat you differently for exercising any of these rights.