What is Ampchor?

Nothing. Your media files stay in your own folders and never leave your computer. Your library and watch history live in a plain file on your own disk, we never see it. Streams go straight between your devices and nothing passes through a data center, so no one in the middle can see them, not even us. There is no account, no sign-up, no email and no ad networks. The one exception: an anonymized crash report if the app ever crashes, stripped of anything personal, with an off switch in Settings → Privacy.

There are no accounts and no passwords. To connect a new device you type a short code shown on your computer’s screen or scan it, so no one can connect without physically seeing your screen. Each device then creates its own secret key and locks it in the device’s built-in safe, the same protected place your passwords already live. That key never leaves your device: not to Apple, not to Google, not to us. Every request your phone makes proves it really came from that phone, your computer checks the proof before answering and any device you haven’t paired gets nothing, locked out by default.

No. When a device can play a file as-is, which is most of the time at home, it gets the original byte for byte, so true 4K plays exactly as it sits on your disk. If a device can’t play a file, your computer converts it on the fly with its graphics chip, fast and free, where other apps charge extra. Music plays lossless in FLAC, ALAC, WAV and dozens more. Away from home the stream adapts to your connection so playback stays smooth.

Two simple reasons. First, there’s nothing to steal: the big services keep millions of people’s information in one giant database, so a single hack can expose everyone at once, Ampchor keeps none of it, so there’s no vault to break into. It can’t leak information it never collected. Second, there are no accounts and no passwords, the very thing that gets phished, reused and leaked everywhere else simply doesn’t exist here. Your files stay on your own machine, and away from home your connection is scrambled the whole way so no one in the middle can see it, not even us.

Practically everything: movies, shows, music, audiobooks, ebooks, comics, photos and retro games, in just about any format your files come in. See every format below.

Yes, and it treats them like the rest of your library. Point Ampchor at your ROMs and it identifies each one by fingerprint, gives it cover art and details, then plays it with real emulator cores built into the app, not a browser. It plays 21 classic consoles today and organizes the newer ones it can’t emulate yet, ready for when they land. Your computer does the work and streams the game to your phone, so you can play with a controller from anywhere in the house. One app for your movies, your music and your games, with no separate game manager to run alongside it.

Almost nothing. Your files and your library never leave. Your computer fetches posters and artwork from public databases and anonymized crash reports are the only thing sent to us, one switch turns them off. The full table is below.

A regular computer, Mac, Windows or Linux, with your files on it or on an external hard drive plugged into it. That computer is your home base: leave it on and your whole library is ready on your phone, tablet and TV, at home and away. No special hardware, no server in a closet, no tech degree.

Not today and we’re open about why: staying closed lets an independent studio protect its original work, fund development and avoid handing a finished blueprint to the trillion-dollar companies we exist to be an alternative to. But everything that matters to you is open: it runs without an account, your media stays in plain files in your own folders, the library index is a plain file you can open yourself and nothing ever phones home. And credit where it’s due: Ampchor proudly stands on great open-source projects like FFmpeg, mpv, libretro and SQLite, with full license notices inside the app. We’d rather earn trust by showing exactly how your data is handled than ask you to take it on faith.