PRIVACY

This page covers Joustine on Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV). Other platforms: Amazon Fire · Android & Google TV · Roku

Joustine uses no private server and collects no user data.

Multiplayer experience is completely local. On Apple devices, game progress is stored on-device and in the user's iCloud account.

iPhone and iPad devices will prompt the user for permission to record the screen if a web-based client occupies a gameplay slot.

iPhone and iPad screen recording exists to facilitate video streaming to handheld clients when a shared screen experience is likely not available. It is assumed Mac and Apple TV host screens can be communal, and also requesting a screen recording of such screens will probably be perceived as a privacy violation. In the case iPhone or iPad records the display, that is restricted to Joustine app and never directed anywhere other than client devices on your LAN.

User accounts do not exist outside of Apple's App Store and iCloud infrastructure used to purchase subscriptions.

Sharing WiFi with guests

Every Apple version of Joustine — iOS (iPhone), iPadOS (iPad), tvOS (Apple TV) and macOS (Mac) — provides two optional fields for a network name (SSID) and a password. On iPhone, iPad and Apple TV these live in Settings ▸ Apps ▸ Joustine; on Mac they are under Hosting ▸ Share WiFi for Guests…. When they are filled in, a guest who scans the host's QR code can have the Joustine app request that their device join that network, so they are on the same WiFi as the host and gameplay is smooth.

These values are not read from the host device's network settings, and Joustine has no access to them. Joustine does not know, and cannot discover, the name or password of the network it is connected to. The two fields contain only what a person has deliberately typed into them, chosen for the purpose of making it faster and easier for guests to join a game.

When a guest scans the code, those values travel as parameters in the URL to joustine.com, and are handed straight back to a Joustine app launched from joustine.com/join/. They are not stored on joustine.com — not written to a database, not logged, not retained. They exist only for the moment it takes to pass them from the host's screen to the guest's app, and are completely ephemeral.

Both fields can be left empty, and that is the default. A host that shares nothing is still fully playable: Apple devices find each other and play together over MPC (Apple's own device-to-device networking) and over Bluetooth, neither of which needs your WiFi password. Only web-browser players need to be on your network at all, and having a guest install the Joustine app is the alternative to sharing it.