Privacy policy

Kate does not collect any personally identifiable information from you, and data about the cartridges you play never leaves your device. That said, there are a few things that may be a cause for concern, depending on your personal privacy context.

The web-based emulator

When using the web emulator through the public instance, at https://kate.qteati.me, the server at the end of that address will receive your computer’s IP address (since it has to know where to send a reply back to—this happens for any website). An IP address may provide to the server a rough estimate of your physical location (e.g.: the country you’re accessing the website from). The browser also sends some information about your device to the server which may disclose your operating system, browser version, and other technical details.

The public instance does not have any tracking code, however access information is logged for debugging and security purposes. This data is kept for the duration necessary to debug issues and protect the server itself from malicious traffic.

More troubling, however, is that all data stored locally in Kate’s database is available for any code loaded from https://kate.qteati.me/. This means that if the server, domain, or your connection are compromised, you may receive back malicious code that would have access to all data in your Kate’s database (but not other data in your device!).

Barring major crisis, Kate’s public instance has a solid maintenance plan until 2028. For archival purposes you should rather consider Running your own Kate instance or using the Native application.

Running Kate offline

If you install the Kate web application from the public instance, but run it without any network access, then no data leaves your computer as the files are all loaded from your device’s local cache. Do note that if you run it with a network connection, then your browser may make a network connection to https://kate.qteati.me to check for updates.

Locally collected data

All data collected by Kate is stored locally on your device, and the Kate emulator never sends it anywhere without your explicit consent. You can control some of the data Kate collects from the Settings screen.

Information stored locally includes:

The Kate settings

Things like connected gamepads, keyboard configuration, and accessibility options are stored under settings. You can remove all this data by going to Settings -> Diagnostics & Recovery and using the Restore default settings button.

Cartridges and save data

This includes cartridges you install and any data they store in your device. You can remove this data by going to Settings -> Storage and using one of the cartridge data management options.

Play habits

This includes things like when you last ran a cartridge and for how long you’ve played them. You can choose to not have this data collected under Settings -> Play habits. You can also delete any previously collected data (all of it, or for specific cartridges) from the same screen.

Audit log

This includes things like what cartridges were installed, what permissions were granted, and similar changes to Kate’s database. Logs are subject to the retention you specify in Settings -> Audit log.

Developer profiles

If you’ve created a developer profile in the console to publish your own Kate cartridges, then the developer data is stored only locally in your device. You can manage it in Settings -> For developers.

Public and private keys

Kate stores public keys of developers whose cartridges you’ve trusted before, and it can store your own public and private keys if you’ve created a developer profile. Private keys are always stored encrypted with your store’s password and never leave your device. You can manage your keys in Settings -> Secure key store.

You can erase all data Kate has stored locally and reset the console by going to Settings -> Diagnostics & Recovery and using the Delete all data button.

When running the web version of Kate you can also remove all data using your browser’s “Clear cookies and site data” feature. You should make sure to clear all data used by Kate if using this, as otherwise the browser will leave Kate in an inconsistent state and the emulator will not be able to start again afterwards.