Kea is a hardware button remapper for Android, published by TechiBoy Studios
(package com.techiboystudios.kea). This policy explains what the app does with your
information. It is short because Kea collects almost nothing: nothing at all unless
you buy Kea Pro, and then only what is needed to confirm the purchase is genuine.
Nothing about you. Kea does not collect, sell or share any personal information, usage data, advertising identifiers, contacts, location, or analytics of any kind. There is no account and no sign-in. The one thing Kea sends is a check that a Kea Pro purchase is real, described under "Kea Pro purchases" below; without Pro it sends nothing.
Kea requests the INTERNET permission for one purpose only: the Kea Pro purchase check
below. It makes no other network request.
Kea contains no analytics SDK, no crash-reporting SDK, no advertising SDK and no tracking libraries. The third-party code in the app is: Google's AndroidX libraries, the Kotlin standard library, the Google Play Billing Library (for Kea Pro, below), the Glyph Developer Kit (used only on phones with Glyph lights), and the optional Shizuku client described below.
Kea uses an AccessibilityService. Android provides no other way for an app to notice
hardware button presses while it is not on screen, and that is its main job.
What the service does, and when:
What Kea reads is used immediately, on your device, and then discarded. It is never saved, never logged and never sent anywhere.
The service is declared isAccessibilityTool="false" because Kea is a general utility
rather than an assistive tool for users with disabilities.
Kea Pro is an optional one-time purchase made through Google Play. Google handles the payment and your payment details under Google's own privacy policy; Kea never sees them. Kea keeps the purchase receipt Google Play signs on your device.
Once you own Kea Pro, Kea checks the purchase with Kea's own server (Google Firebase, in India) when you buy or restore it, and then about once a day while you are online. The request contains only:
No name, email, Google account, phone model, settings or usage are sent. The server asks Google Play whether that token is a genuine, unrefunded Kea Pro purchase and answers yes or no. It stores only one-way hashes of the token and of the phone identifier, with the time each phone was last checked, to limit one purchase to five phones in use, and never the originals. Reinstalling Kea on the same phone counts once. A record not checked for 60 days is deleted automatically. Google's standard Cloud request logs may briefly record the connecting IP address. If you never buy Kea Pro, Kea never contacts the server. Uninstalling Kea deletes the identifier; to have the stored hashes removed, email us.
The Google Play Billing Library and its components are Google's code and, with internet access available, may communicate with Google under Google's privacy policy. The purchase itself is carried out by the Play Store app.
Your settings, which are: the action bound to each gesture and key, your App Sidebar items and layout, your Action Lab combos, your timing, appearance, overlay, sound and haptic preferences, your overlay position, whether Kea Pro is unlocked, and the hardware fingerprint of the button you taught Kea.
These live in Kea's private app storage. They never leave your phone unless you choose Backup & restore → Export settings, which writes a file to a location you pick and then control. Uninstalling Kea deletes this data.
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Accessibility service | Detect presses of your hardware button, and run the actions described above |
| Display over other apps | Draw the on-screen confirmation and the App Sidebar |
| Modify system settings | Only for the rotation lock and auto-brightness actions |
| Do Not Disturb access | Only for the Do Not Disturb and ringer actions |
| Answer phone calls | Only for the End call action |
| Microphone | Only if you turn on microphone audio for screen recordings. Off by default |
| Music and audio | Only for the Recordings screen, which lists and plays the voice and call recordings already on your phone |
| Set alarm | Only for the Set a timer action |
| Vibrate | Haptic confirmation on a press |
| Wake lock | Only for the Wake screen action. Held for a moment, then released |
| Foreground service, media projection | Only for the Screen recording action |
| Notifications | The ongoing notification Android requires while a recording runs |
| Glyph lights | Only for the Glyph torch and Glyph timer actions, on phones that have them |
| Shizuku | Only for the optional features described below |
| Google Play billing, network state | Only to buy Kea Pro through Google Play |
| Internet | Only for the Kea Pro purchase check |
Kea does not request location, contacts, camera, photos, phone state, or any other permission not listed here.
Screen recordings are written to your device's own media storage through Android's MediaProjection API, after the system consent dialog. Recording only starts when you trigger it. Microphone capture is off by default and used only inside a recording you started.
Voice and call recording are made by your phone's own recorder app; Kea only starts it. Those recordings are stored by that app, under its own policy.
Kea never uploads recordings or audio anywhere.
The About screen can open Google Play (to rate or share Kea), your email app, and TechiBoy Studios' social media pages. These open in their own apps or your browser, and whatever you do there is covered by those services' own policies. Kea itself sends nothing.
Some optional features can use Shizuku, a separate app you would install yourself: the camera shutter action, and switching off your phone's own action on the button.
When used, Kea asks Shizuku to run a single shell command on the device. No data is sent, and nothing leaves your phone. If Shizuku is not installed, these features are simply unavailable and everything else works normally.
Kea is not directed at children and collects no data from anyone, of any age.
Uninstalling Kea removes its settings from your device. Any backup file you exported yourself remains wherever you saved it, under your control.
If you own Kea Pro, our server holds only the hashed purchase token and hashed phone identifiers described under "Kea Pro purchases". They are one-way hashes, so we cannot tell which record belongs to whom and cannot find yours from an email. Instead, a record is deleted automatically 30 days after a phone last checked in: uninstall Kea, or stop using Kea Pro, and it is gone within 30 days.
If this policy changes, the updated version will be published at this address and the date at the top will be updated.
Questions about this policy or the app: techiboystudios@gmail.com