Chameleon has no accounts, no analytics and no advertising. Your settings never leave your phone.
What actually leaves your device
Three things, and only in the situations below.
- Your device id and a short link token, sent when you ask for a key. The Worker needs both to hand back a key that matches the phone it was made for. The token expires after 30 minutes.
- A check-in, at most once every six hours. It carries a salted hash of your device id so the stats page can count installs. The raw id is never sent or stored.
- A GitHub API request when you tap check for updates, to read the newest release.
Nothing else is transmitted. No contacts, no browsing history, no keystrokes, no advertising identifier, because the app never asks for one.
What the server keeps
Only the counters behind the stats page: how many devices have checked in, how many keys were issued, and how many downloads GitHub recorded. The device id is never written down in a readable form. Key material is never stored at all, which is why a key cannot be recovered or revoked from our side.
What stays on your phone
- Your key, and when it was activated
- Any extensions you have added to its lifetime
- Whether you have visited the channel and come back
- The names and icons you have applied to shortcuts
- Your backup file, if you export one
All of it sits in private app storage. Uninstalling Chameleon deletes every bit of it, and because your key is derived from the device id rather than stored on a server, the next install needs a fresh one.
Permissions, and what each is for
Every permission below is for something visible on screen. None of them is used for anything else.
- Query all packages — lists your apps so you can pick which to rename.
- Write settings — the sliders write real system values. You grant this yourself from Settings.
- Set wallpaper — the wallpaper button opens the system picker.
- Request install packages — so an update can hand off to the installer.
- Post notifications — the key-expiry reminder and update alerts. You can switch these off and the app still works.
- Internet and network state — key requests and update checks.
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth state — read-only, so the device panel can show what is switched on.
Third parties
- Cloudflare — hosts this site and runs the key Worker.
- GitHub — hosts the releases and serves the update check.
- YouTube — only if you decide to subscribe. There is no integration, no API call, and no access to your account.
The honest gap
We cannot verify that you subscribed. YouTube publishes no way to check that, and finding out would mean asking for access to your Google account, which we do not do. So the app checks one real thing, that you left for the channel and came back, and claims nothing beyond it.