Effective 11 September 2026. Applies to the CastHero app for Android TV, Google TV and Fire TV, distributed on Google Play and the Amazon Appstore.
CastHero for TV is a receiver: it plays the photos, videos and music you send to it from a phone or computer on your own home network. It has no account, no sign-in, no advertising, no analytics and no server of its own. This page states exactly what the app handles, what it stores on the television, and what it never does. The short version: nothing about you or what you cast leaves your TV.
None. The app does not collect, transmit or share personal information, device identifiers, usage data or crash reports with the developer or with any third party. It contains no advertising or analytics software development kits.
When you cast, the app receives from your phone or computer: a media address (URL), an optional title, artist and artwork address, album settings such as photo timing and transition, and playback commands such as pause, next or stop. It uses these only to fetch and play the media on the television. Media is downloaded by the TV directly from the address you sent; it is not routed through any CastHero service.
| What | Why | Your control |
|---|---|---|
| A recent list of up to thirty items you have cast (title and address). Only addresses on the public internet are kept; links served from a phone or computer on your network are deliberately not remembered. | So you can replay something from the TV's home screen. | Delete any entry or clear the list from the home screen; uninstalling the app removes it. |
| A random installation identifier created the first time the app runs. It is not derived from any hardware identifier and is not linked to you. | So a phone can recognise the same TV between sessions when it discovers CastHero on the network. | Reinstalling the app generates a new one. |
| A short diagnostic log, in memory only. | Troubleshooting from your own network. | Discarded when the app closes. |
All of this stays on the television. It is never uploaded.
To be found by your phone, the app runs a small server on the television and announces itself on your local network with the TV's name, its local address and the installation identifier above. This announcement does not leave your network. Any device on the same network can send media to the TV while the app is open on it, which is how casting receivers work; treat it the way you treat the rest of your home network. The server and the announcement exist only while the CastHero screen is on the television: leaving the app, or uninstalling it, stops both. Where the platform offers it (Google Cast on Android TV), casting may also arrive through the platform's own casting service.
Nothing. CastHero only receives while its screen is open on the television. The receiver starts when you open the app and stops when you leave it: pressing BACK on the home screen closes the app, and with it the server and the announcement on your network. There is no background service, nothing starts when the television boots or when the app updates, the app shows no notification, and it never draws over other apps or asks for permission to do so. A phone cannot wake a television whose CastHero screen is closed; you open CastHero on the TV first, and then cast.
The permissions it requests are network access (to fetch the media you cast and to be reachable on your local network), permission to keep receiving multicast discovery messages on Wi-Fi, and the ability to keep the screen awake while media plays. It does not request location, camera, microphone, contacts, storage of your personal files, or any advertising identifier.
The television downloads media directly from the address you send, in the same way a web browser would. The operator of that address, whether your own phone, a cloud storage service, a public website or a streaming playlist, may see the TV's network address and ordinary request information. That is governed by their privacy policy, not this one.
The app is suitable for all ages and does not knowingly collect information from anyone, including children under 13. It displays whatever media is sent to it, so an adult should decide what is cast to a screen a child is watching.
Google (Google Play, Android TV, Google TV, Google Cast) and Amazon (Amazon Appstore, Fire TV) operate the platforms this app runs on and may collect their own usage information under their own privacy policies. The developer of CastHero has no access to personal information from either.
If this policy changes, the new version is posted at this address with an updated effective date.
Questions about privacy: castheroapp@gmail.com.