The app, and this site
Privacy
What the app sees, where it goes, and what it never reads.
Idle Hands is an app that watches your screen. That deserves a plain answer about what it sees, where it goes, and what it never reads. This page covers the app and this website.
What the app looks at
- Which app is in front. The package and activity name of the window on top, from the accessibility service and from usage events. This is how it recognizes an ad network and how it notices the game is back.
- Screenshots, taken on the device. Frames of the screen, scaled down, matched against small pieces of button art to find a close control. They are kept in memory and discarded. Nothing about them leaves the phone.
- Gestures it sends. Back, Home, a relaunch of the game, and the occasional tap on an ad’s close button. Every tap is logged.
What it never reads
The accessibility service is used for window events and gestures only. It does not read text, form fields, passwords, messages, or the contents of any other app. It does not know your account name in any game. It does not type. It never asks for your PIN and never turns your screen lock off.
Where the data goes
The shipped app: nowhere. The whole loop runs on the phone. There is no account, no login, no analytics, no crash reporter, and no ad SDK inside Idle Hands itself. It makes no connection to any server we run.
Development builds can hand the loop to a computer on the same WiFi. In that mode, frames and window events travel over your own local network to your own PC, guarded by a token the app generates on the phone. Nothing leaves your network, and there is no version of this that reports to us.
The ledger of watched spots, which is how the app learns new close buttons, lives on the phone. Sharing any of it is a deliberate act by the person holding the phone, never automatic.
Permissions, and why each one
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Accessibility service | See which app is in front; take screenshots on the device; press Back and Home; tap a close button. |
| Usage data access | Notice when an ad closes and the game is uncovered. Android sends no window event for that. |
| Display over other apps | The floating status widget and its pause button. |
| Notifications | The ongoing notice that keeps the foreground service alive so the phone does not freeze it. |
| Query all packages | Relaunch the game by name after an ad. Newer Android hides other apps otherwise. |
| Wake lock | Keep the screen from timing out mid-ad. The system lock is never touched. |
This website
The site runs on WordPress on a server we operate. It sets no analytics tags and no advertising cookies. Comments are closed. The server keeps ordinary access logs (address, page, time) for a short period, as every web server does.
Fonts load from Google Fonts, which means Google’s servers see the request and your address when a page loads. If that changes, this page changes first.
Changes
The app is in development and this page will be revised as it changes. The date below is the last time it was.
Last revised September 4, 2026.