Aether Privacy Policy

Last updated: 6 November 2026

What Aether does

Aether discovers supported devices on your local network and helps you review connection checks, device groups and local history. It works on networks you own or are authorized to manage. It does not require an Aether account.

Information stored on your Mac

Aether keeps the following information locally:

• Discovered device addresses, available names and manufacturer information.
• Nicknames, notes, known-device choices and groups you create.
• Discovery events and identifiers used to separate network profiles.
• Connection-check results, timestamps, quality history and optional speed-test results.
• Your monitoring and notification preferences.

Aether does not send your saved device lists, notes, groups or quality history to the developer. The app has no developer analytics, advertising or tracking SDK.

Requests made by network features

Network activity starts after you enable discovery and connection checks on the welcome screen. Discovery sends standard Bonjour and echo requests on your network and reads macOS’s saved list of nearby network addresses. Device visibility depends on your network, its devices and macOS permissions.

Connection checks ask your system DNS resolver to resolve example.com, connect to one.one.one.one, and request Apple’s and Cloudflare’s HTTPS test endpoints. Those services receive the connection information needed to process requests, including your public IP address. Aether does not attach your saved device profiles, notes or groups to these requests.

Automatic checks run about once a minute while monitoring is enabled, Aether is running and your Mac is awake. If you choose the optional speed test, Apple’s networkQuality tool uploads and downloads data. The app explains that transfer before you start it.

External services may keep technical records under their own policies. See Apple’s privacy policy and Cloudflare’s privacy policy. Your DNS provider and network operator may also process connection requests.

Permissions and your choices

macOS may ask for Local Network access for discovery. Notifications are optional; you can choose alert types and sound in the Connection panel. You can revoke permissions in System Settings. The Store edition provides discovery and diagnostics without browsing-traffic inspection, an administrator helper or controls that pause other devices.

Choose Stop monitoring in Privacy to stop new measurements and discovery. Requests already in progress may take a short time to finish or cancel. The welcome screen’s sample network uses fictional devices and measurements; it does not scan your network.

Retention and deletion

Quality history is trimmed to the last seven days when loaded or updated, with limits of 12,000 quality samples and 500 speed-test results. Device events are limited to 1,000 per network. Cached friendly names stop being used after 30 days and are pruned during later cache updates. Saved profiles, notes and groups remain until you delete them or clear saved data.

Choose Clear saved Aether data in Privacy to remove the Store edition’s saved profiles, groups, events, name cache, preferences and quality history. The app asks you to confirm and stops monitoring. Backups made by macOS or another backup service are managed separately by that service.

Purchases and support

Mac App Store purchases, payment information and refund requests are handled by Apple under its terms and policies. Aether does not receive your payment-card details.

If you contact Techchahiye for support, the information you choose to send is used to respond to your request. Avoid sending private network details unless you intend to share them. Website visits and contact forms are covered separately by the Techchahiye website privacy policy.

Contact and policy changes

For privacy questions or support, use Techchahiye’s contact form and mention Aether. We will update this page when the app’s data practices change and show the updated date above.