Grayjay

Grayjay is a video app from FUTO. Its FAQ: “Grayjay is a cutting-edge mobile app that serves as a video player and source aggregator.” And: “we are an aggregator to facilitate other streaming platforms. We do not host any content or distribute any content from servers.” You subscribe to channels from different platforms in one list, and, in FUTO’s words, “Your watch history does not leave your device unless you configure it that way”.

Plugins

Each platform is a plugin, a script that talks to that site. FUTO signs the plugins it publishes, and the app warns about unsigned ones: “This plugin does not have a signature. This makes updating the plugin less safe as it makes it easier for a malicious actor besides the developer to update a malicious version.” The plugins contact each platform directly from your phone. Grayjay’s FAQ: “Grayjay does not track you out of the box. For this reason, platforms do not know what content to show you. If you want more personalized content you will need to login to the platforms.”

Videos and whole playlists can be downloaded “for local, offline playback”, as the README puts it. What you may download is up to each platform’s terms and the creators’ rights.

What goes online

From the code of version 396:

• The platforms you enable, through their plugins.
• Telemetry on every start, sent to FUTO’s log server, as described in the questions below. FUTO’s own “Source First” principles say: “Any software that contains telemetry must have a mechanism for opting into said telemetry.” This version has none.
• Update checks on every start and about every 12 hours in the background, with the new version downloaded in the background, plus checks for plugin updates. The periodic task only waits for a network connection. You can set the app-version check to Never.
• FUTO’s announcements, loaded at startup.
• Subscription Exchange, an experimental feature that is on by default. When an automatic subscription refresh has more than ten channels whose videos are not all cached, Grayjay sends their addresses to FUTO’s exchange server and may upload the video lists the server asks for. Turn off Subscription Exchange in settings to stop this sharing.
• Harbor, the renamed Polycentric v2 identity, ratings and comment network, is on by default. Opening a non-local video queries Harbor for ratings by the video address. Version 396 also asks FUTO’s migration server about an existing Polycentric identity; only a device that holds the identity’s rotation key can change its Harbor servers. Separate synchronisation between your Grayjay devices, through FUTO’s relay server, is off until you set it up. Logs are sent only when you choose Submit logs or report a crash.

The licence

Grayjay’s source code is published, but under FUTO’s Source First License 1.1, which isn’t an open-source licence. It lets you use, copy and share the app, with limits: “You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes”, “you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software related to payment to the Licensor”, and “You must ensure that anyone who gets a copy of any part of the software from you also gets a copy of these terms.” The full terms are in the project’s LICENSE.md, and we keep a copy of that file, word for word, linked right under the download button. We compared the 396 terms with both the 391 tag and our local copy: all three have the same SHA-256, 4d8522558ced82190b4b7e2d86d0955e4dc910d0fbb8eb2f01eed7cacd4f94ef. We host the app unchanged and free of charge.

Version 396 also bundles the Twemoji font under CC BY 4.0; its licence notice is included in the app’s assets.

About this file

• This is FUTO’s 64-bit ARM build of version 396, tagged on 29 October 2026 and downloaded from FUTO’s release server at its fixed address for that version. Its published changelog lists the Harbor migration, seek thumbnails and a larger seek-bar touch area. FUTO also offers a universal build for all processor types through its own F-Droid repository; we host the smaller one. grayjay.app publishes no checksum. The file is signed with FUTO’s key, the same one FUTO’s signed F-Droid repository lists for Grayjay, and we require it for every update.
• The Google Play version is a different app, com.futo.platformplayer.playstore, which comes without the bundled plugins; it and this file don’t update each other.
• The 225.8 MB file runs on Android 9 and later and declares 19 permissions: internet and network state, notifications, media and storage for downloads, the camera for scanning plugin QR codes, the services that keep playback and downloads running, installing its own updates, alarms, and changing system settings.
• The app is partly translated into Portuguese, as generic Portuguese rather than Brazilian.
• The screenshots are FUTO’s own, from its F-Droid repository; they show an older version.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017).