Skip to content
STELLARR

Privacy & Telemetry

Stellarr respects your privacy. Crash reporting is off by default and only activates when you explicitly opt in.

Opt-in Crash Reporting

When enabled, Stellarr sends anonymous crash reports to help us find and fix bugs proactively. This uses Sentry, an open-source error tracking platform.

How to enable or disable

  1. Go to the System tab.
  2. Under Privacy, toggle Send crash reports.
  3. The setting takes effect immediately for native crash reporting, and on the next app launch for UI error reporting.

What is collected

When a crash or error occurs, the following is sent:

  • Stack trace — The sequence of function calls that led to the crash. This tells us where in the code the problem happened.
  • Error message — A description of what went wrong (e.g., “null pointer access”).
  • App version — Which version of Stellarr you are running.
  • Operating system — macOS version (e.g., “macOS 15.3”).
  • Device architecture — CPU type (e.g., “arm64”).
  • Anonymous event ID — A random identifier for the crash event itself, not linked to your identity.

What is never collected

  • Your name, email, IP address, or any account information
  • Plugin names or identifiers (what plugins you use is your business)
  • Preset file names or content
  • Audio or MIDI data
  • File system paths
  • Usage patterns, analytics, or behavioural data

Where data is stored

Crash reports are sent to a Sentry project hosted by Sentry.io. Data is retained according to Sentry’s data retention policy and is used solely for debugging Stellarr.

When data is sent

Data is only sent at the moment a crash or unhandled error occurs. Stellarr does not send any data during normal operation, even when telemetry is enabled.

If you do not enable crash reporting:

  • No crash data is sent to Sentry or any other external service
  • No data leaves your machine beyond the unavoidable update-check traffic described below

Software Update Checks

Stellarr checks stellarr.org/appcast.xml on launch and once a day while running to see whether a newer version is available. See Software Updates for the user-facing controls.

What the update check sends

Each check is a plain HTTP GET to the appcast URL. The server (stellarr.org, hosted on GitHub Pages) can see the minimum any web server sees:

  • Your IP address — standard for any HTTP request.
  • A Sparkle user-agent string — identifies the update framework version.
  • The current Stellarr app version — sent in the user-agent, so the server could serve version-targeted responses. Stellarr today serves the same appcast to everyone.

The same is true of the DMG download itself, which is fetched from the GitHub Releases CDN when you click Install update.

What the update check does NOT send

Stellarr deliberately disables Sparkle’s optional “system profile” feature. We never send:

  • CPU type, model identifier, or hardware information
  • Operating system version (beyond what any browser UA would reveal)
  • Preferred language
  • Plugin counts, preset usage, or any in-app state
  • Any information about what you do with the app

This is enforced both in the app’s Info.plist (no SUSendProfileInfo key) and at runtime — the update driver hard-codes sendSystemProfile: NO when Sparkle asks.

Turning checks off

Checks happen automatically but nothing is downloaded or installed without you pressing a button. If you want to disable the check itself, quit Stellarr and run:

defaults write com.stellarr.stellarr SUEnableAutomaticChecks -bool NO

(Use com.stellarr.stellarr.dev for a dev build.) You can still use Check for updates in Settings to check manually.

Website Analytics

The Stellarr website (stellarr.org and its docs) uses GoatCounter for basic visitor counting.

What GoatCounter does:

  • Counts page views and referrers
  • No cookies, no fingerprinting, no personal data
  • GDPR-compliant without requiring a consent banner
  • Retains a hashed, salted proxy of the IP for 8 hours (for deduplication), never the raw IP

What it does not do: track you across sessions, build a profile, share with third parties, or sell data.

The app itself never talks to GoatCounter — this is purely website analytics.

Open Source

Stellarr is open source. You can inspect the telemetry implementation yourself in the source code to verify these claims.