Privacy: what Pocket Cloud stores

On your device

• ROM files you choose to remember, kept in your browser's storage so you only pick a game once. You can remove a game from there at any time.
• Your saves, your controls and other preferences, and the app itself for offline play.
• Clearing your browser's site data removes these. Saves that were backed up to an account survive.

If you continue without signing in

• Your saves are kept in that browser.
• Anonymous player key: with cloud backup on (the default), saves are also backed up under a random key generated and stored in that browser. It is not tied to your email or name, and it stops working as an identity if you clear the browser's site data. Signing in ties your saves to your email so they follow you across devices.

If you sign in with email

• Email and sign-in: we send you a one-time code from login@pocketcloud.app using Cloudflare Email Service; only a hash of your email address is kept. The server keeps only a hash of the pending code, which expires after 10 minutes, and the account record is keyed by a hash of your email address. Your signed-in session is a cookie that is HttpOnly, Secure and lasts 30 days, and you can sign out everywhere.
• Saves: your game saves (battery memory), the game's title, play time, a few earlier versions of each save with a small screenshot of the game, and account settings such as your key bindings.
• Games, only if you opt in: ROM files you choose to keep in your account are stored privately for you and are not shared with other accounts. Nothing is uploaded until you say yes.
• Cover images: cover images you pick for your games are kept in your account.
• Friends and leaderboards: if you use them, a display name you choose, a friend code, your friend list, and best scores for supported games.
• Online status: while you're signed in with a display name and the app is open, your friends can see that you're online and the name of the game you're playing, including a name you gave the game yourself. Only accepted friends see it, not people with a pending friend request. It is kept only in the server's memory and goes when you close the app or after 90 seconds without a check-in.

Link cable play

To link, each player's game is loaded from their own copy in their account, together with the save they plug in with, onto a link server that runs both games. Each player's ROM is used only for their own side of the link, and saves are returned when the link ends. Before two games are linked, the server reads the game code from the header of each player's copy to check that the games can link; the other player only learns whether they can. A request to link (who asked whom, and the name of the asker's game) is kept only in the server's memory, for at most about two minutes.

Box art

Game box art is fetched by Pocket Cloud's server from the public libretro thumbnails service, so your browser does not contact that service directly. The request includes the game's name.

Usage statistics

To see how the service is used, Pocket Cloud's server keeps counts of activity on the server side: for each player (by their random player id, never an email), when it was first and last active, whether it is signed in or anonymous, and how many saves it has synced and link sessions it has started; daily totals of active players, sign-ups, sign-ins, saves synced, games added to accounts and link sessions; and which games saves are synced for (the game's name) and how many players play each. Which players were active on which day is kept for 90 days. Only the people who run Pocket Cloud can see these statistics. There are no tracking cookies and no third-party analytics.

Questions

See How Pocket Cloud works and the FAQ, or Open-source licenses for the software used.