Terms - ColdByte

Last updated: 4 October 2026.

1. Who you are dealing with

ColdByte is one independent developer, not a company. Using this site or the apps means you accept these terms. If you do not, please do not use them — no hard feelings.

2. Your licence to use the apps

Free apps. Use them on as many of your own machines as you like, for as long as you like, for personal or work purposes. You may share the original, unmodified installer with anyone.

Paid apps. Each paid app's page states its price and licence terms before you buy. The licence is personal and perpetual: pay once and use it forever, with no subscription. It works on one PC at a time: to use it on another PC, enter your key there and it moves over (up to 3 moves every 30 days; if you need more, ask me). A 14-day free trial starts automatically on first launch, once per PC. The app checks its licence with coldbyte.dev when it is online and keeps working offline in between.

In both cases, please do not: resell the apps, publish licence keys, pull them apart to make a competing product, or remove the notices that say who wrote them.

My promise if ColdByte ever stops

If ColdByte ever stops, for any reason, I will publish a signed "safe shutdown" notice. Every copy of a paid app that can no longer reach coldbyte.dev then unlocks for good: on any PC, with no key, no internet and no licence server. Copies of the installers are also kept on GitHub.

What "perpetual" means. You can use the version you bought forever. Updates are free for as long as the app is being developed; I cannot promise new versions or support forever, but I will never take away what you already have.

When a licence can be stopped. Only for fraud, a chargeback, or after a refund — never to make you pay again.

3. What I promise, and what I do not

I promise the apps do what their pages say they do, that they contain no advertising, bundled junk or hidden data collection, and that if something is broken I will try to fix it.

I cannot promise software that never fails. These are tools written by one person; they are supplied as they are. Please keep backups of anything important before pointing any tool at it — that is sensible with any software, including mine.

To the extent the law where you live allows it, I am not liable for indirect losses — lost time, lost profits, lost data — arising from using the apps. Where something is genuinely my fault, my liability is limited to refunding what you paid. None of this removes any consumer rights you have by law, which always take priority over this page.

4. Using the apps responsibly

Do not use anything from ColdByte to break the law, to get into systems or accounts that are not yours, to cheat in online games, or to interfere with other people's use of a service. Some of the tools here control hardware, network access and other software; you are responsible for having the right to do so on the machine and network you are using. If you let other people stream from your PC, you decide what they are allowed to do — that is exactly what Apolo cPanel's permissions are for.

5. Other people's software

Some apps work alongside software by other people — for example Apollo, Sunshine, Moonlight and Artemis. Those are separate products with their own licences and their own authors. ColdByte is not affiliated with them, does not speak for them, and does not support them. Names and trademarks mentioned on this site belong to their respective owners and are used only to say what the apps work with.

The Apolo cPanel setup can install Apollo for you. It uses the official, unmodified Apollo installer, and Apollo remains under its own licence, the GNU General Public License v3 — not these terms. Its source code is available from the Apollo project.

6. ColdSub, AI services and your API keys

AI translation in ColdSub goes through a service you choose (Google Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic Claude or OpenRouter), using an API key from your own account with that provider. Because of that:

ColdSub's price does not include AI usage. The provider you pick bills you directly, at its own prices, for what you use; none of it comes to me. The cost the app shows before translating is an estimate; the real amount is whatever the provider charges.
Your account and key are your responsibility: creating the account, accepting the provider's terms, paying its charges, and keeping the key secret. I recommend turning off auto top-up and setting a monthly spending limit.
ColdByte is not a party to your agreement with those providers. It is not responsible for their prices or charges, their outages, changes to their models, or what they do with the text they receive. They are independent companies; I am not affiliated with them and do not speak for them, and their names and trademarks belong to them.
Machine translation can be wrong. Review it before you publish it or rely on it for anything important.
Only translate material you have the right to use. You are responsible for the files you process and for respecting their owners' rights.
Creating subtitles from video with Whisper "On this PC" and converting picture subtitles (.sup) need no key and send your files nowhere. The "OpenAI cloud" option sends the video's audio to OpenAI with your key, on your account.
The parts ColdSub downloads when needed (FFmpeg, Whisper engines and speech models) are open-source software by their own authors, fetched from their official distribution sites, each under its own licence.

A refund of ColdSub (see the refund policy) covers what you paid me only, not what you paid AI services.

7. Requested work

Sending a request through the request form is a question, not a contract. It creates no obligation on either side.

If a request becomes paid work, we agree in writing beforehand what will be built, what it will not include, what it costs and roughly when. Until that is agreed, no work starts and nothing is payable. Unless we write down something different, I keep ownership of the code and you get a permanent licence to use the result for the purpose we discussed. I will not build anything illegal, anything designed to break security or licensing, or anything I do not believe I can finish properly — the full list is on the request page.

8. Buying and refunds

Prices are shown on each app's page before purchase. Refunds have their own short page: refund policy.

9. The mailing list

The list is for app news only. Every email carries a working unsubscribe link, and being on it is never a condition of using anything here.

10. This site

I try to keep every page accurate, including prices and app descriptions. Mistakes happen; if you find one, tell me and I will correct it. If the Arabic and English versions of a page ever disagree, tell me that too — the more generous reading applies to you until it is fixed.

11. Changes to these terms

These terms may be updated as the apps change. The date at the top will change with them. A new version applies to what you do after it is published, not backwards to a download or purchase you already made.

12. Disagreements

If something goes wrong, write to me first. Almost everything can be sorted out between two people who are talking. I would much rather refund you and part on good terms than win an argument.

Something here unclear or unfair? Say so.