Zero Telemetry, By Design

Donut Browser collects no telemetry at all: no usage tracking, no analytics endpoints, no phone-home requests. Nothing about how you use the app leaves your machine, and because the app is open source, you can verify that yourself.

Most software collects some form of telemetry: usage metrics, feature engagement data, behavioral analytics. Even privacy-focused tools often justify collecting “anonymous” data to improve the product. Donut Browser leaves all of it out on purpose.

Why doesn’t Donut Browser collect any telemetry?

Donut Browser exists to give you control over what you share online. The entire product is built around the idea that websites should not be able to track you across profiles, link your identities, or collect data without your meaningful consent. A privacy tool that secretly sends your usage patterns back to a server, even “anonymized,” would undermine the very thing it promises to protect.

Some anti-detect browsers go further. Dolphin Anty, another anti-detect browser, generates a unique machine ID for every installation and uses it to track users even after they reinstall the app. That practice treats users as products, and it is at odds with what privacy software should be.

Donut Browser was built to make privacy accessible to everyone, not just technically inclined users. That means the tool itself has to respect the same principles it enforces for the websites you visit.

How can you verify there is no telemetry in Donut Browser?

The Donut Browser app is open source under AGPL-3.0, and its code is on GitHub for anyone to inspect. To verify that there is no telemetry, read the source code yourself.

Open source also gives users a direct channel for bug reports and feature requests. If something breaks, users report it as a GitHub issue, and any reported issue is worth looking into. The report comes with steps to reproduce, system details, and often a conversation that leads to the root cause. A telemetry event that says “button clicked 47 times” tells you almost nothing useful by comparison.

How does Donut Browser catch bugs without usage data?

Quality comes from two safety nets, one before release and one after:

• Hundreds of unit and integration tests run on every change. Every commit goes through automated testing to verify that core functionality works before it reaches users.
• An open issue tracker catches what slips through, with reports from users who care enough to file an issue and context that analytics can never provide.

Tests are a more reliable safety net than telemetry. Usage analytics might tell you that a feature is rarely used, but not whether it works. Tests tell you that, and they do it before the code ships.

Do in-app analytics actually help build better software?

Rarely. I have worked in large enterprises where in-app analytics were treated as gospel, and in my experience the vast majority of product decisions that matter come from user interviews and direct feedback, not from dashboards that count button clicks.

Analytics tools are good at telling you what happened. They are bad at telling you why. Knowing that 30% of users dropped off at step 3 of a flow is interesting, but it does not tell you whether the flow is confusing, slow, or simply unnecessary. A five-minute conversation with a user will.

For a project like Donut Browser, direct feedback through issues and conversations with users gives more useful insight than any analytics dashboard. The features that matter most are the ones users ask for, not the ones suggested by a funnel chart.

Why should zero data collection be the default for software?

The web has normalized data collection to the point where most people assume every application is tracking them in some way. Donut Browser tries to fix that for browsing, and to set an example for other software.

If a privacy tool can work without telemetry, so can most software. Collecting no data says that user trust matters more than vanity metrics, and that good software can be built without surveillance.

The free browser tools on this site follow the same rule. The fingerprint, canvas, WebGL, and leak checks all run entirely in your browser, and nothing they read about your device is stored or sent anywhere it does not need to go.

Donut Browser will continue to ship with zero telemetry. If you have feedback, open an issue or send an email to [email protected].

Frequently asked questions

Does Donut Browser collect any telemetry or usage data?

No. Donut Browser ships with zero telemetry: no usage tracking, no analytics endpoints, and no phone-home requests. Nothing about how you use the app leaves your machine.

How can you verify that Donut Browser has no telemetry?

The Donut Browser app is open source under AGPL-3.0. Its full source code is on GitHub, so you can read the source code yourself and confirm there is no tracking.

How does Donut Browser find bugs without telemetry?

Hundreds of unit and integration tests run on every change, and users report problems directly as GitHub issues. Tests catch problems before release, and issue reports arrive with reproduction steps and system details that telemetry never provides.

Do other anti-detect browsers collect telemetry?

Many do. Dolphin Anty, for example, generates a unique machine ID for every installation and uses it to track users even after they reinstall the app.

Will Donut Browser ever add telemetry?

No. Donut Browser will continue to ship with zero telemetry. Feedback comes through GitHub issues and email instead.