Privacy policy

Effective 2026-09-27.

chat-aggregator is a program that runs on your own computer. It has no servers, no user accounts and no analytics. The developers never receive any of your data. This page describes what the program does with data on your computer.

YouTube API Services

chat-aggregator uses YouTube API Services. By connecting YouTube you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service. Google’s handling of data is described in the Google Privacy Policy.

You connect YouTube with your own Google Cloud project and log in with Google. chat-aggregator asks only for the permission “View your YouTube account” (youtube.readonly), which is read-only: it can’t post, delete or change anything on your channel.

What data is accessed

From YouTube, with your permission:

• your channel’s name, to confirm which account you logged in with;
• your live broadcasts (their ids, status and scheduled start time), to find the stream to follow;
• the live chat of your broadcasts, or of a video whose id you enter: messages, and for each message the author’s public display name, channel id, profile picture link and badges, plus the details of Super Chats, Super Stickers, memberships and gifts.

From Twitch: the public chat of the channels you enter, read anonymously without any login.

What is stored, where, and for how long

• Your YouTube login (a refresh token) is stored in your operating system’s credential store (Keychain on macOS, Credential Manager on Windows, Secret Service on Linux). If none is available, it’s stored in a file in chat-aggregator’s settings folder that only your user account can read. It stays there until you log out or revoke access (see below).
• Your settings (for example your Google project’s client id and secret, an optional API key, channel names, overlay theme, a copy of your custom emoji list) are stored in chat-aggregator’s settings folder on your computer.
• A log file (chat-aggregator.log, and the one from the previous start as chat-aggregator.old.log) in the settings folder records what the program did: which sources started, connection problems, errors. It can include the channel names and video ids you entered, but no chat messages, passwords or login tokens. It’s replaced each time the program starts and never sent anywhere; you can attach it to a bug report if you choose.
• Chat messages are not saved. They’re kept in memory while the program runs (the most recent ones, 20 by default, so a reloaded overlay isn’t empty) and are gone when you close it.

What is shared, and with whom

• Nothing is sent to the developers or any third party.
• chat-aggregator shows the chat in an overlay served on your own computer (127.0.0.1); other computers can’t reach it. Programs running on your computer can read the same chat through its local API, if you switch it on (it’s off by default), and so can pages served from your own computer and OBS browser sources. A web site (e.g. a browser game) can only after you allowed it: chat-aggregator asks you the first time one connects, and remembers the sites you allowed in its settings (you can remove them under ⚙ Settings → Connection). That chat can include members-only and unlisted YouTube broadcasts, if you read those, and a site you allow can tell from it which channel is yours.
• The program connects only to the platforms themselves: Google/YouTube (for login and chat) and Twitch (for chat). Emote and profile images in the overlay are loaded from Twitch’s and YouTube’s image servers by your streaming software.
• Your YouTube API usage is recorded by Google in your own Google Cloud project.

Removing access and data

• Log out in chat-aggregator (Log out in the app’s YouTube section, --youtube-logout in the command-line version): this deletes the stored login from your computer.
• Revoke chat-aggregator’s access at any time in your Google Account, under third-party connections: myaccount.google.com/connections.
• To remove everything, delete chat-aggregator’s settings folder (for example ~/.config/chat-aggregator on Linux, %APPDATA%\chat-aggregator on Windows).

This website

This website is hosted on GitHub Pages and sets no cookies of its own. GitHub may log visits as described in the GitHub Privacy Statement.

Changes and contact

Changes to this policy are published on this page; its full history is visible in the source repository. Questions: open an issue at github.com/iSneeze/chat-aggregator/issues.