You control every recording and submission
Kifu captures the selected game window and your keyboard and mouse while the game is focused. It does not capture audio, webcam footage, clipboard contents, the screen of any other app, or inputs after you switch away from the game. Accepted recordings are licensed to AI companies as training data. This page spells out exactly what that involves.
What a recording contains
What a session records
- The game window's pixels, that window only, even if you move or overlap other windows
- Your keyboard and mouse, only while the game window is focused. That includes text you type inside the game, such as multiplayer chat or a character name
- The game's window title and install path, so sessions can be matched to the right game. Titles occasionally contain save or character names, which are treated as sensitive and never published. Install paths on Windows usually contain your account name
- System facts: OS build, CPU, GPU, RAM, monitor layout, keyboard layout and locale, so the capture can be trusted and reproduced downstream. Together these are a fairly stable fingerprint of your machine
- The names of apps you tab away to during a session: the executable name only, for roughly the first 64 switches, so we can diagnose why input capture stopped. Never anything inside those apps
- For a few configured games, declared metadata files such as mod lists or keybinding configs. Named files only, never a scan of your disk
What it never records
- Audio: no microphone, no system sound
- Webcam footage
- Clipboard contents
- Pixels from any other window, monitor, or app. The capture is locked to the game window. We do log the name of an app you tab to, never what is in it
- Anything you type after tabbing away. Input capture pauses the instant the game loses focus, and resumes only when it's focused again, so what you type in a browser, password manager, or chat app is never recorded
Recording never starts by itself
A session starts only when you press your record hotkey. An on-screen indicator flashes when recording starts and stops, and the tray icon shows the live state the whole time. Recording ends when you press the hotkey again, or automatically when the game closes. There is no background capture, no scheduled capture, and no remote way to start a recording on your machine.
Private to you, and licensed as training data
Recordings upload to private storage tied to your account. They are never published or posted anywhere. What they are used for is the point of Kifu: accepted sessions and the annotations made from them are processed into datasets we license to AI companies as training data, under the perpetual license in the contributor terms you accept before your first recording is sent. If that is not something you want, please do not contribute. It matters more than anything else on this page.
You choose when uploads happen, from the recorder's Upload menu: as you play (the default, so a crash or power cut cannot destroy a session), only once you've stopped playing, ask every time, or never automatically. When the recorder asks, declining keeps that session on your machine and out of every upload path.
You stay in control after the fact. You can have any recording deleted from our servers at any time — during this alpha just ask us, since the self-serve contributor portal is still being built. Deleting removes the raw files, not just the listing. One honest limit: if a session was already exported into a dataset a buyer received, deletion stops all future use but cannot recall the copy they hold. Full detail in the privacy policy.
The recorder reports app health, never session contents
The app sends health telemetry so we can find and fix problems on machines we've never seen: crash reports, performance timings, update status, and app events like recording start and stop, including which game was recorded (its process name), the encoder used, and upload sizes. Telemetry never includes your video, your inputs, or the contents of any session, and you can read exactly what was sent in the app's local telemetry log.
Terms before the first recording
Contributors must be 18 or older. The recorder will not record anything until you have read and accepted the contributor terms, which cover exactly how recordings may be used and what deletion does and does not undo, and the server refuses uploads from anyone who has not. No fine print arrives after the fact. The privacy policy covers what we collect, who receives it, and how long we keep it.