LegalPrivacy

Privacy policy

Last updated: 1 November 2026

This page says what Motion keeps about you, why, who else sees it, and what you can do about it. It covers Motion's apps (for Windows, Linux, Android and Wear OS, and Motion Studio), Motion Hub (hub.motionlive.io), its sensor relay, Motion's forum, and this site.

The controller of your data is Motionlive. Privacy questions and requests go to [email protected].

The short version

• Motion sells nothing about you, shows no adverts, and has no advertising, analytics or tracking code: not on this site, not on Motion Hub, not in the apps.
• Our host, Fly.io, works out roughly where visitors are (their country or region) from their IP addresses, and we look at those totals to see where people come from. We don't keep IP addresses for it.
• Motion Hub keeps what it needs to run your account, your purchases and what you publish.
• Sensor readings are encrypted on your device by default. Motion Hub and its relay pass them on but can't read them.
• Crash reports, bug reports and diagnostics are anonymous, and go only when you say so.
• You can download everything Motion Hub keeps about you, and delete your account, from your account page.

Your Motion Hub account

When you make an account, Motion Hub keeps:

• Your name, which is public, and your email, which nobody else sees. The email is for signing in, confirming it's you, resetting your password, and the emails you choose to get.
• Your password, if you set one, only as a scrypt hash, which can't be turned back into the password.
• Sign-in with Discord, Google or Steam, if you use it: the provider's id for your account. From Discord it reads your id, name and email; from Google your id, name and email; from Steam your Steam id and, to suggest a name, your Steam name. A provider's email is kept only if the provider says it's verified. Motion Hub uses these only to sign you in, and for Steam, to check whether you own Motion there.
• Two-step sign-in, if you turn it on: its secret, encrypted, and your recovery codes as hashes.
• Your profile, if you fill it in: a display name, a short bio, links and a picture, all public.
• What you see: your choice of which content ratings Motion Hub shows you (only scenes for everyone, Mature too but blurred, or Explicit too), so it can show you only those, here and in the apps.
• Your age confirmation, if you turn on Explicit scenes: that you confirmed you're 18 or over, and when. If you give your date of birth instead, Motion Hub keeps it, to tell whether you're 18 or over. Motion Hub keeps these to show Explicit scenes only to adults, and to show that it asked. They're never public, and go when you delete your account.
• Your language, if you choose one: the language Motion Hub's pages and Motion's apps show you.
• Learn: the tutorials you've finished, and the tutorials and comments you write there.

If you buy Motion Full on Google Play without signing in, Motion Hub makes an account for the purchase, with a made-up name and no email or password, so your phone can prove it owns Motion.

Signing in, sessions and cookies

Each browser you're signed in on has a session, kept with when it started, when it was last used, its browser's name (its user agent) and the IP address it signed in from, so you can see your sessions on your account page and sign them out. A session lasts 30 days if you choose to stay signed in, and otherwise a day at most, ending when you close the browser. Expired sessions are deleted within the hour.

Each app you sign in (Motion Player, Motion Studio, Motion for Android) gets a token, kept as a hash with the name the app gives (such as "Motion on" your computer's name or phone model) and when it was made and last used. A token unused for 90 days, or a year old, is deleted.

Motion Hub sets only cookies it needs to work, all of them first-party, and all but hub_lang (below) unreadable by scripts:

• __Host-hub_session, to keep you signed in;
• __Host-hub_step, for 10 minutes while you type a two-step code;
• __Host-hub_oauth, for 10 minutes while you sign in with Discord, Google or Steam;
• __Host-hub_known, for a year, to recognise a browser you've signed in on before, so a stranger's wrong passwords don't lock you out;
• __Host-hub_standing, for a day, if your account was closed and you open its page from the link we emailed you;
• motion_wal, for a minute after you change something, so the next page shows your change.

If you're not signed in and choose what you see, hub_view, kept for a year, remembers that choice in your browser, and nothing else.

hub_lang, kept for a year, holds the language Motion Hub's pages are shown in (a short code such as de), so the scene titles Motion Hub sends are in the same language. Motion Hub's own pages set it, so their scripts can read it, and it holds nothing else.

There are no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies. Your choice of light or dark look, and of a language when you're signed out, is kept in your own browser's storage, not sent to us. This site and Motion Hub load their fonts, scripts and pictures from Motion's own servers. Buying Motion direct takes you to Stripe's own checkout page (checkout.stripe.com), run for Link (below), which sets Stripe's cookies under Stripe's privacy policy; Motion Hub's pages load nothing of Stripe's.

IP addresses and where visitors are from

Motion Hub uses IP addresses to keep accounts safe and to stop floods of requests:

• with each session, as above, until the session ends;
• in counts of sign-in attempts, sign-ups, password resets and wrong passwords or codes, for at most a day;
• in general rate limits, for at most 2 hours;
• to count a download from someone who isn't signed in only once, as a keyed hash of the address that's different each day, deleted after a day;
• with sensor tokens, as under Sensors.

Motion Hub and its relay don't log the address of every request.

The companies in front of Motion Hub and this site (Fly.io and Cloudflare, below) see the address of each connection, as any host does. Fly.io also works out from it roughly where each visitor is (a country or region, never a street or town), and shows us totals in its metrics dashboards (Grafana). We use them only to see, in aggregate, where Motion's visitors come from. We never get or keep the addresses for this, and Fly.io keeps the totals for as long as its metrics are kept.

Buying Motion

• Direct: direct orders are sold through Stripe's Managed Payments, with Sold through Link, LLC ("Link"), a Stripe company, as the merchant of record. On the checkout page you give Stripe and Link your card (or other payment) details, your email, and your name and billing address, which the sales tax or VAT you pay depends on; if you use a Link account to pay, Link has what that account holds too. Motion never sees your card number. Motion Hub sends Stripe your account's id and email (so the purchase comes back to you, and the email is filled in), and keeps the order's id (Stripe's payment id) and whether it's paid, refunded or disputed. Stripe and Link use what you give them to sell you the order, take the payment, work out, collect and pay the tax, send your receipt and invoice, run Link's order pages and support, handle refunds and disputes, prevent fraud and meet their own legal duties, on their own account (as controllers) under Stripe's privacy policy. From Stripe we see what each order was: your email and name as you gave them, your billing country and address, what you paid and the tax on it, and the last four digits and brand of your card, which we use for refunds, disputes, support and our records. If you ask Link to delete your data for an order, Stripe deletes it from that order's records in its systems, those on Motion's Stripe account included, and tells us; your Motion Hub account and what Motion Hub keeps (below) go only when you ask us.
• Steam: Motion Hub asks Steam whether your linked Steam account owns Motion, when you sign in with or link Steam and now and then after, and keeps your Steam id with the answer. The Steam version of Motion also asks the Steam client on your computer whether you own it.
• Google Play: Motion for Android sends the Play purchase to Motion Hub, which checks it with Google and keeps its purchase token. Google Play Integrity checks that the request comes from Motion on a real device.

Support links and Patreon

• Support links: the usernames and links a creator gives are public on their profile. A report about them is kept as other reports are.
• Patreon: if you link Patreon, Motion Hub keeps your Patreon user id, your Patreon campaign's id if you link as a creator, and, if you link as a patron, which campaigns you're a member of and whether your membership is active, asked again about once a day with a token Patreon gives (kept sealed, with a key that isn't in the database). No name, email or pledge amount is kept. Unlinking deletes all of it. Patreon handles your Patreon account under its privacy policy.

Devices and licences

For each computer or phone that uses your copy of Motion, Motion Hub keeps a random device id, the device's name (your computer's name, or your phone's model), its system (Windows, Linux or Android), when it was first and last seen, and whether you removed it. That's how the five-device limit works, and how you can see and remove devices on your account page. Licence tickets, signed by Motion Hub, name your account and its name, the device and its system, how you own Motion (direct, Steam or Google Play), and when the ticket was made and runs out.

While signed in, Motion Player and Motion for Android also keep each device's sensor keys up to date with Motion Hub (at start and every 20 minutes): only public keys and keys wrapped so that only your own devices can open them.

When you show or add a scene from Motion Hub, Motion fetches the list of taken-down scenes (at most once an hour), so it can mark them.

What you publish and do on Motion Hub

• Scenes you publish, their versions and files, descriptions, and their licence are public while they're published. Motion Hub's own servers make preview pictures and clips of them, with no network access.
• Comments are public, and so are collections you make public (an unlisted one is seen by whoever has its link, a private one only by you).
• Likes and follows show to everyone as counts. Someone you follow, or whose scene you like or collection you follow, can be told it was you in their notifications, and a maker sees their followers on their dashboard.
• Your library (what you've downloaded) is yours alone.
• Ratings: a scene's rating, and whether it has fast flashes or was made with AI, are public with the scene.
• Reports you make are seen only by moderators, and the maker isn't told who reported them. If you report without an account, Motion Hub keeps the email you give until it has told you what was decided, then deletes it. Moderation decisions, appeals and the reasons for them are kept, so decisions can be checked later. Pictures sent with an appeal are deleted a year after it's decided, or when your account is. People who downloaded a scene that was taken down see the rule it was taken down under, not what was written to its maker.
• Copyright notices and counter-notices are the exception: a notice, with the name and contact details of the person who sent it, is sent to the scene's maker, and a counter-notice, with the maker's, to the person who sent the notice, as the law expects. They're kept as records and may be shared with the courts.
• Child safety: content that exploits a minor (rule 2), and the details of the account that published it, are preserved and reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children or the authority the law names, as the Terms say.
• Notifications about replies, mentions, comments and the like are kept for you on Motion Hub.
• Co-authors and groups: who's a co-author of a scene, and who's in a group and in what role, are public, as are a group's name, description and picture. An invitation is seen only by the person invited and the people who sent it.
• Challenges and jams: the scenes you enter are public. Your votes in a jam are seen only as each entry's average, never as yours, and Motion Hub keeps which entries it gave you to vote on.
• Badges you earn (your first scene, a learning path finished, and the like) are public on your profile, and copied to your forum account as forum badges.

Mutes, blocks and trust. Whom you mute or block is kept for you, and they aren't told; it's in your copy of your data, and who muted or blocked you isn't. Motion Hub works out a trust level for each account from its age, its published scenes and whether a moderator has acted on it recently, and uses it to decide, for example, when you can put links in what you write. For people who report things, it also keeps a tally of how many of their reports a moderator upheld or found nothing wrong with; moderators see it as a weight beside their reports, and it's never shown to anyone else.

Docs and Learn. Reading Motion's docs signed in, Motion Hub keeps what you do there for you: whether a page helped you (and what you wrote about why, which the editors see without your name), the pages you've kept or marked done, the page you read last and the pages you've opened (so you can carry on where you left off, and so a learning path knows you read its pages), the questions in a learning path you got right, and how many you got wrong today. Notes you send for a reference page are seen by the editors, and shown under it if they choose. If you suggest a change to a page, or edit the docs, what you write, your comments on pages, and which page you have open in the editor (for a minute at a time) are kept in the docs' own database, with your account. When a search of the docs finds nothing, Motion Hub keeps the words searched for, and when an address of the docs leads nowhere, the address, so the editors can fix them; neither is kept with who it was. Page views are counted by page and day, never by who.

Numbers for makers. A scene's maker sees numbers about their own scenes on their dashboard: downloads and opens in Motion by day, where downloads came from (Discover, search, a collection, an embedded page, a link from another site, or straight to it: one word the website sends with the download, never the address of a page), which system they were for, how many of the people who first downloaded a scene while signed in had Motion fetch it again 7 and 30 days later (worked out from your library as it is, not from anything new kept about you), and how opens and "it works for me" changed with each version. Motion Hub keeps these only as counts by scene and day, never who did what; a maker never sees anything about one person, and no number is shown for fewer than 10 people.

The forum

Motion's forum (forum.motionlive.io) runs on XenForo, which Motion runs itself on its own servers at Fly.io. You sign in to it only through Motion Hub, which tells it your account's id, name, display name, picture, confirmed email, and whether you're a moderator or one of the Hub's admins. The forum keeps what you post there, which is public, and, as XenForo does, the IP addresses and browsers you use it from, to keep it safe from spam and abuse. It sets its own cookies to keep you signed in. Your Motion Hub badges are shown on your forum profile too.

When your account is closed, the forum bans you until it's opened again; when you delete your account, your forum account is anonymised, or deleted with its posts if you chose to remove your scenes.

Email

Motion Hub sends email through Resend (resend.com), only to send it: confirming your address, password and sign-in changes, two-step alerts, notices about your content and moderation decisions, and the notifications you get by email: replies, comments on your scenes, tokens about to end, challenges, and co-author and group invitations come by email unless you turn them off under Notifications, and the rest only if you turn them on. Resend receives the address, the subject and the body. Motion Hub keeps a copy of each email for 30 days, then deletes it. The forum sends its own notifications through Resend too.

Sensors

You can have your phone, your watch or another device send readings (such as heart rate, steps, movement, battery, or values of your own) through Motion Hub's relay to wallpapers you choose. Motion for Wear OS sends heart rate, steps, the watch's movement and battery, and only after you've pressed Start sending, until you press Stop.

• Encrypted by default. Readings are encrypted and signed on the device that sends them, with keys made by Motion Player or Motion for Android on your own devices and kept there. Motion Hub keeps only a hash of each token's secret, never the keys, so neither Motion Hub nor the relay can read, change or forge a reading. You can turn encryption off for a token; then the relay passes its readings as they are.
• What the relay sees: which token a connection uses, its IP address and user agent while it's connected, which sensor a reading is of, and how often, how big and when readings come. It keeps only the latest reading for each sensor, for wallpapers that connect later.
• What Motion Hub keeps for a token: its name, what it may read or write, when it ends, the addresses it may be used from if you set them, the first 50 different IP addresses it was used from, a log of its last 500 events (made, changed, shared, connected from a new address, with the address; the log is cut back to 500 with each new event), and counts of its use by the minute for 2 days. When you delete the token, its list of addresses goes and the addresses are taken out of its log; the rest goes when you delete your account.
• Sharing sensors with someone gives Motion Hub only public keys and the keys for the share wrapped so that only the other person's Motion can open them.
• If you let the Hub read a token (the Let the Hub read this token's readings setting, or a token made before encryption), Motion Hub can see its readings: it keeps the latest values, the relay keeps a day of history (one reading every 10 seconds) if you turn history on, and webhooks you set up are sent.

Sensor readings go only to the devices and webhooks you chose. They aren't used for anything else.

Crash reports, bug reports and diagnostics

The apps can send three kinds of report to Motion Hub, and nowhere else. None says who you are: no account, Steam or Hub identity, licence, IP address or lasting id. User names, computer names, folders and scene names are taken out first.

Motion Hub keeps reports for 90 days, then deletes them. It uses your IP address only as a scrambled hash, in memory for 10 minutes, to stop floods. Crash reports, bug reports and diagnostics shows exactly what's in each.

Weather and the web

• Weather: scenes that show the weather ask Open-Meteo (open-meteo.com), at most every half hour and only while such a scene is showing. It gets the place you picked, to about 10 km, and, like any website, your IP address. When you look a place up by name, the name you type goes to Open-Meteo too.
• Websites in scenes: a scene's web pages and scripts can reach only the websites you allow, and those sites see your IP address as any site does. On Windows, web pages in scenes are shown by Microsoft Edge WebView2, which may send Microsoft its own diagnostic data under your Windows settings.

On your own devices

Motion keeps your scenes, settings and caches on your device: in %LOCALAPPDATA%\motion and %APPDATA%\motion on Windows, in ~/.local/share/motion, ~/.config/motion and ~/.cache/motion on Linux, and in the app's own storage on Android. On Windows and Linux, uninstalling Motion leaves those folders where they are, so you don't lose your scenes; they also hold your sign-in, licence and sensor keys, so delete the folders yourself if you want them gone. On Android, uninstalling deletes the app's storage.

Motion for Android:

• uses audio only to make scenes move to what's playing on the phone, never the microphone, and calendar only for scenes that show your next events, never sending either anywhere;
• can read what's playing from notifications, if you allow it, for scenes that show the song;
• doesn't use your location: the weather uses the place you pick;
• talks to Motion for Wear OS through Google Play services on the phone and the watch;
• lets Android back up your settings and scenes to your Google account if you have backup on, except its sign-in, licence and sensor keys, which never leave the phone.

Motion for Wear OS asks for the body sensors and activity permissions only to send what you choose, and isn't backed up. Motion Studio for Android lets Android back up its folders, including its Motion Hub sign-in and licence, if you have backup on.

The apps don't check for updates themselves and contain no advertising or analytics code. Motion for Android buys and checks Motion Full through Google's Play Billing and Play Integrity libraries. Play Billing also sends Google its own diagnostics, on how its calls to Google Play went; Google handles those under its privacy policy.

Who else handles your data

Motion uses these companies to run, and only for that:

• Fly.io: runs Motion Hub, its relay, its database and the forum, in the United States (Ashburn, Virginia), and shows us the approximate locations of visitors, as above.
• Cloudflare: sits in front of Motion Hub and this site, and stores files (scenes, pictures, clips) in Cloudflare R2.
• Stripe, with Sold through Link, LLC (Link, a Stripe company): the merchant of record for Motion bought direct (Stripe Managed Payments). They take the payment, work out, collect and pay the sales tax and VAT, send the receipts and invoices, and handle refunds, disputes and support for the payment, in the United States and elsewhere, as controllers of what you give them.
• Patreon: when you link it, to see who supports whom.
• Resend: sends Motion Hub's and the forum's email.
• Discord, Google and Steam: when you sign in with them.
• Valve (Steam) and Google (Google Play): to check purchases made with them.
• Open-Meteo: the weather, for scenes that show it.

Some of them are outside your country. Where the law asks for it, transfers are covered by the safeguards those companies provide, such as standard contractual clauses.

How long things are kept

• Your account and what you publish: until you delete them or your account. An account closed for breaking the rules may be deleted by us, once no appeal is open or still possible.
• Sessions: until they end. App tokens: until unused for 90 days, or a year. Known browsers: a year.
• Sign-in attempt counts: a day. Rate-limit counts: 2 hours. Anonymous download counts: a day. Wrong answers in a learning path: the day they're given, deleted within the hour after it ends.
• Searches of the docs that found nothing, and addresses that led nowhere: until no one has asked for them for 90 days, and only the 5,000 asked for most.
• Emails: 30 days.
• Reports from the apps: 90 days.
• Records of purchases, refunds and chargebacks (the order id, Steam id or Play purchase token): kept after an account is deleted, without your account, because tax and payment records must be. Stripe and Link keep their own records of direct orders (who paid, the billing address, the tax) for as long as tax and payment law asks of them, under Stripe's privacy policy.
• Moderation decisions, reports, appeals and copyright notices: kept without your account if you delete it. Appeal pictures: a year after the appeal is decided.
• Your content setting and age confirmation: until you change them or delete your account.
• A taken-down scene's file: until no appeal or counter-notice is open or possible (at least 30 days for copyright), unless the law says to keep it longer.
• Backups: Motion Hub's database is kept on a disk our host, Fly.io, takes a snapshot of every day, keeping each snapshot for 5 days, so something deleted can stay in them that long. The forum's backups are kept for about two weeks.

Deleting your account and getting your data

On your account page you can:

• download your data: everything Motion Hub keeps about you, as a JSON file, without secrets such as password hashes or the token Patreon gave it, including your jam votes, and what you wrote in the docs' own database;
• change your email or name, remove a sign-in provider, and sign out other browsers and apps;
• delete your account.

Deleting your account removes it, its sessions, tokens, devices, library, comments, notifications and Learn progress, and your scenes and tutorials, unless you choose to leave your published scenes up credited to "a former member". Taken-down scenes stay on record that way. Your forum account is anonymised or deleted, as above. If your account is closed for breaking the rules, you can still reach hub.motionlive.io/appeals from a link we email you, to appeal, download your data and delete your account, until we delete it once no appeal is open or still possible; that deletes the same things, and keeps the same records. Your name can't be taken by anyone else for 182 days. Purchase records stay, without your account, as above.

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct, export or delete your data, and object to how it's used, and asking never counts against you. You can also complain to your data protection authority. Motion doesn't sell or share personal information for advertising. Where the law where you live gives you more rights than these, they apply too.

Most of this you can do yourself on your account page. For anything else, write to [email protected]. We'll answer within a month.

The legal bases Motion relies on are: running the service you signed up for (your account, purchases, what you publish, sensors, the forum, your content setting, the weather), keeping it safe (sessions, IP addresses, rate limits, moderation), our legitimate interest in knowing roughly where visitors come from (approximate locations, in aggregate), legal duties (purchase records, age confirmation, copyright notices, child-safety reports), and your consent (crash reports, diagnostics, sign-in with other providers, optional emails), which you can withdraw at any time.

Children

Motion Hub isn't for children under 13, or under the age of digital consent where they live. We don't knowingly keep data about them. If you think a child has made an account, write to [email protected] and we'll delete it.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version goes up here with its date. If a change matters to you, we tell you on Motion Hub or by email first.

Contact

[email protected]. See also the Terms and Contact.