Mellowtel

Monetize your desktop app.
Open-Source, Consensual, Transparent.

Website · GitHub · Discord · Documentation

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Introduction ℹ️

With Mellowtel's Open-Source library, your users can decide if they want to support you by sharing a fraction of their unused internet bandwidth. Trusted partners (from startups to non-profits) access the internet to retrieve publicly available data, and you get paid for it.

Mellowtel for Windows brings the same model to desktop applications built on .NET.

How?

Companies need to retrieve publicly available data from the web. You get a share of the revenue they pay for providing access to the web thanks to users that want to support you and share their unused bandwidth.

Key Features 🎯

• Easy to use: Earn from your desktop app with a few lines of C# code.
• Open-source: The code is open-source and available for everyone to see.
• Consensual & Opt-out by default: Users are opted out by default. If they want to support you they have to explicitly opt-in. They can opt-out and manage their settings at any time.
• Non-intrusive & Private: Unlike ad networks, we do not collect, share, or sell personal information (not even anonymized data). The whole business model relies on the fact we don't need to collect or sell data but on using a small portion of unused bandwidth.
• Good user experience: The SDK runs in the background and only uses a small share of idle bandwidth. To guarantee a good user experience, it only operates when the connection is stable and there is high bandwidth available.
• Rate limited by default: Built-in daily rate limiting keeps resource usage predictable.

Why❓

We believe that desktop app developers should be able to earn from their hard work without compromising their users' privacy or experience. Most desktop apps provide a lot of value to users, but users are not always willing to pay for them.

Mellowtel gives your users a way to support your app without having to directly pay for it. They can instead choose to share a fraction of their unused internet bandwidth. It's a win-win situation for everyone: users pay with a resource they aren't using, and you get paid for your work.

Hopefully this will lead to fewer apps being shut down or discontinued due to inability to monetize, less personal data being collected and sold, and more transparency in the desktop app ecosystem.

Getting started 🚀

Full docs: docs.mellowtel.com/desktop-app/windows.

Install

Mellowtel for Windows is published on NuGet as Mellowtel.Win.

dotnet add package Mellowtel.Win

Or add to your .csproj:

<PackageReference Include="Mellowtel.Win" Version="1.0.0" />

Requirements: .NET 10 SDK, Windows 10 / 11.

Quickstart

using MellowtelWin;

var sdk = new Mellowtel("your_publishable_key", new MellowtelOptions
{
    PluginId = "your-app-id"
});

// Resume silently if the user previously opted in
await sdk.StartIfOptedInAsync();

// Show your own consent UI, then:
sdk.OptIn();
await sdk.StartAsync();

// On app shutdown
await sdk.StopAsync();
sdk.Dispose();

Get your publishable key at mellowtel.com. A detailed integration guide lives at docs.mellowtel.com/desktop-app/windows.

Example app

A real WPF app integrating the SDK end-to-end (consent dialog, settings toggle, background lifecycle) lives at mellowtel-inc/mellowtel-pomodoro-windows — useful as a reference when wiring this into your own app.

Local smoke test

This repo ships two in-tree samples under samples/ for SDK development:

• samples/ConsoleHarness/ — minimal console app, targets net10.0, runs on any OS. Fastest way to smoke-test SDK changes.
• samples/WpfSample/ — minimal WPF app, Windows-only. Exercises the consent flow.

# Console harness (any OS)
dotnet run --project samples/ConsoleHarness -- <your_publishable_key>

# WPF sample (Windows only)
dotnet run --project samples/WpfSample

Neither sample is published — they exist purely for contributors.

Contributing 🫶

Mellowtel is an open-source project, and contributions are welcome. If you want to contribute, you can create new features, fix bugs, or improve the infrastructure. Please refer to the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the repository for more information on how to contribute.

To see how to contribute, visit Contribution guidelines

Support

You can reach out to us on Discord if you have any questions or need help.

License 📜

GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0

License