Privacy policy

The product

GamepadOS is two pieces of software: an Android app that turns your phone into a game controller, and a Windows server that receives its input and presents it to games as a standard Xbox 360 controller. Both work entirely on your local network — they need no internet connection to function.

What stays on your device

• Controller input (sticks, buttons, gyro) travels directly from your phone to your PC over your local network (Wi-Fi/UDP) or over the USB cable in wired mode. It is never uploaded anywhere.
• Layouts and settings are stored locally on your phone. If you sign in and leave backup on, your layouts are also copied to your account — see Accounts.
• The pairing key is stored locally on your PC and phone so you don't have to re-scan the QR every time.

The apps contain no analytics SDKs. Signing in is optional and changes nothing about how controller input travels. Without an account, your play time — the 30 free minutes every install gets once, plus any time earned from ads — is counted on your phone only.

Accounts (optional)

You can use GamepadOS without an account: every controller feature — touch layouts, gyro steering, the custom editor, wired and wireless play — works signed out, within your play time. An account lets the layouts you build survive losing, wiping or replacing your phone, and is needed to buy or use a plan.

If you choose to create one, we store:

• Your email address — to identify the account, confirm it with a 6-digit code, and let you reset your password.
• Your password, hashed — stored as a scrypt hash with a per-password random salt. We cannot read it, and it is never stored or logged in plain text.
• A display name — whatever you choose to type; it does not need to be your real name.
• A session token — a random value held on your phone so you stay signed in. Signing out deletes it; changing your password invalidates every one.
• Your controller layouts, if backup is on — the widget positions, labels, colours and names you created. Nothing about your gameplay, and no controller input, is ever included.
• Play time — when you play signed in, the app tells our server when a play session starts, keeps running and ends, so your play time and plan work across devices. We store session start and end times, seconds played per day, your time zone and a random ID the app creates to tell your devices apart. When you earn time from an ad while signed in, we also store the reward: Google's transaction ID, the ad unit, the minutes added and when. We never record which games you play or any controller input.
• Your plan — which plan you have, when it starts and ends, and how you got it (a purchase, a promo code, or a grant from us). Payment records are described under Plans and payments.

Backup can be switched off at any time in Account → Backup, and you can run it manually instead. We do not sell or share this data, use it for advertising, or send you marketing email — account email is limited to confirmation and password-reset codes.

Deleting your account: in the app, go to Account → Danger zone → Delete account and confirm with your password. The account, its sessions, every layout backed up to it, and its plan, payment and play-time records are erased immediately and permanently — we keep no copy. Layouts already saved on your phone stay on your phone, and the app carries on working without an account. If you can no longer sign in, email support@gamepad.space from the address you signed up with and we will do it for you.

Plans and payments

Plans are optional. Payments are handled by payment providers — we never see or store your full card number, CVV, UPI PIN or bank password.

• On this website and in the website version of the app, payments go through Razorpay. Razorpay sends us a record of each payment, which we keep: the amount, currency and status, the payment method used (for example card, UPI or wallet, and the UPI ID if you paid by UPI), and the email address and phone number entered at checkout. The Razorpay checkout may collect information about your device for payment security, under Razorpay's privacy policy.
• The Google Play version sells nothing. More play time there comes only from rewarded ads.

We use payment records only to give you your plan, to handle refunds and support requests, and to prevent fraud. See also our refund policy.

Who can use GamepadOS

Anyone. GamepadOS is a controller for your PC with no content of its own, and the apps show an ad only when you tap to watch one. Every controller feature works without signing in, and used that way we collect nothing about you: no email, no name, nothing. Buying a plan needs an account and a payment method.

An account is optional and exists only to back up your layouts. If you or a family member want an account and its data removed, do it in the app under Account → Danger zone, or email support@gamepad.space and we will remove it for you.

What the website sees

Our hosting providers keep standard web server logs (IP address, requested page, timestamp), as virtually all hosting does. We run no analytics scripts of our own.

• Ads — the home and support pages show Google ads, which use cookies. See Advertising on this website.
• Fonts — pages load their fonts from Google Fonts, so your browser contacts Google's servers.
• Signing in — if you sign in on the account page, your browser stores a session token so you stay signed in. The app can also sign you in to the website with a one-time code that expires after one minute.
• Download counts — to count unique downloads, we store a one-way hash of your IP address for that day, never the address itself.

Support tickets

If you contact us, we store what you submit — your name, email address, subject and message — so we can answer you. That data is used only to handle your request. Ask us to delete it at any time and we will. In-app feedback and star ratings arrive the same way, and include your app version, phone model and Android version so we can reproduce problems, plus a random ID created on your phone so ratings from different people are not mixed up.

Downloads

The Android APK and the Windows server are served from our backend; downloads may appear in ordinary server logs. The PC server installs the ViGEmBus driver locally on your machine. Neither app updates itself silently or sends us any personal data. Both do a lightweight update check: on launch (and when you tap "Check for updates") they fetch a small version file from our backend and compare it to your installed version — if a newer one exists, you're shown a Download button. That request reaches our backend like any web request (and may appear in ordinary server logs), but carries no account, device, or usage information, and nothing is installed without your action.

Where your data lives

Accounts, backed-up layouts, plans, payment records, play time and support tickets are stored in our Postgres database (hosted on Supabase, in the AWS Asia Pacific — Mumbai region). Our backend runs on Railway, the website on Vercel, and transactional email goes through Brevo. Payments are processed by Razorpay, ads on this website are served by Google AdSense, and rewarded ads in the app by Google AdMob. Layouts shared by code are stored without any link to an account.

Advertising on this website

The home and support pages of gamepad.space show ads from Google AdSense. The account, payment, refund and contact pages and this policy show no ads.

• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites.
• Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
• You can opt out of personalised advertising in Google's Ads Settings, or opt out of some third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising at aboutads.info.
• Visitors in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland are asked for their consent before personalised ads are shown.

Learn more about how Google uses information from sites that use its services.

Ads in the app

Most versions of the app include Google AdMob so you can choose to watch a short rewarded video for 30 more minutes of play time. An ad is shown only when you tap Watch an ad — never on its own, never over the controller — and the button appears only while you have less than an hour of play time left. Lifetime players never see it.

• The Google Mobile Ads SDK collects information such as your device's advertising ID, IP address and app interaction data to show and measure ads, under Google's privacy policy. See how Google uses information from apps that use its services.
• Where the law requires it (for example in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland), the app asks for your consent first, and Ad privacy choices under the ad button lets you change your answer.
• If you are signed in, Google tells our server when you finish an ad so the minutes are added to your account; that message carries your account ID and a transaction ID, nothing else about you. Signed out, the minutes are added on your phone only.
• You can reset or delete your advertising ID in your phone's settings under Google → Ads.

No selling, no profiling

The GamepadOS apps contain no analytics SDKs, and ads appear only when you ask for one. We never sell your data, and we do not profile you or build audience segments. Account, play-time and payment data is used only to run your account and your plan, and whatever you send us through the contact form is used only to answer you.

Changes

If this policy changes, we'll update this page and the date at the top. Significant changes will also be noted on the homepage.

Contact

Privacy questions? Use the contact form (pick "Business inquiry" or "Something else") or email support@gamepad.space.

Attributions

GamepadOS stands on excellent open-source work:

• ViGEmBus virtual gamepad driver — Nefarius Software Solutions (BSD-3-Clause)
• GSAP animation platform — Webflow
• Vite build tooling
• Inter and Inter Tight typefaces — Google Fonts
• Express, Prisma and the wider open-source Node.js ecosystem powering the support backend