TabcovePrivacy Policy
1. Who this policy is from
Tabcove is an independent Chrome extension published by ownCoder ("we", "us"). Questions about this policy can be raised on the project's issue tracker, which is the support channel for the extension.
2. What Tabcove handles
These nine categories are the exact list the Chrome Web Store asks developers to declare. Tabcove's answer is "no" to eight of them, and "yes" to one.
| Category | Tabcove |
|---|---|
| Web history | Yes — and only this one. Tabcove stores the web address, page title, and save time of tabs you explicitly choose to save. It is kept on your device and is never transmitted. See section 3. |
| Personally identifiable information | No — no name, address, e-mail, age, or ID number is ever asked for |
| Health information | No |
| Financial and payment information | No |
| Authentication information | No — no passwords, credentials, or PINs; there is no login |
| Personal communications | No |
| Location | No — and with no network requests, no IP-derived location either |
| User activity | No — no clicks, mouse position, scroll, or keystrokes are recorded |
| Website content | No — Tabcove has no content scripts and no access to any website, so the text, images, and media inside a page are unreachable to it |
What Tabcove does not see: it does not request the
history permission and cannot read your browsing history. It has no
content scripts, no host permissions, and no navigation access, so it cannot
observe where you go. It knows only about the tabs you asked it to save.
3. What Tabcove stores, and where
Tabcove's entire purpose is to save your tabs, so it necessarily stores information about them. That information never leaves your computer.
| What is stored | Where it is stored | Who can read it |
|---|---|---|
| Page titles and web addresses of tabs you choose to save | chrome.storage.local — your browser profile on your device |
Only you |
| Tab group names and colours, pinned state, and window arrangement of saved tabs | chrome.storage.local |
Only you |
| Collection names, tags, notes, and timestamps that you create | chrome.storage.local |
Only you |
| Restore points — automatic snapshots of your library, and deleted items in the undo bin | chrome.storage.local |
Only you |
| Your settings, and the date of your last export | chrome.storage.local |
Only you |
Nothing is stored on any server, because there is no server. Tabcove has no backend, no database, no hosting, and no company infrastructure of any kind. If you uninstall the extension, Chrome deletes this data with it — which is why Tabcove asks you to keep a backup, and gives you a one-click export in five formats to make that easy.
4. What Tabcove transmits
Nothing. This is not a policy statement about our intentions; it is a property of the code, and one that anyone can verify:
- The extension declares no host permissions and no content scripts, so it is technically incapable of reading or modifying any web page.
-
The source contains no
fetch, noXMLHttpRequest, noWebSocket, noEventSource, and nonavigator.sendBeacon. The build script fails if any of them ever appears. - There are no third-party scripts, no advertising SDKs, no analytics libraries, no crash reporters, no remote fonts, and no remotely-hosted images.
- Site icons are read from Chrome's own local favicon cache. Tabcove deliberately does not use a remote favicon service, because that would mean sending your saved addresses to somebody else's server.
You can confirm all of this yourself. The source code is public and is not minified or obfuscated — what you read is exactly what runs.
5. Permissions, and why each one exists
| Permission | Why Tabcove needs it |
|---|---|
tabs |
To read the title and address of your open tabs so they can be saved, and to close them when you ask. Without this, a saved tab would be a blank entry. |
tabGroups |
To read and re-create Chrome tab groups, so a restored collection keeps each group's name and colour. |
storage |
To keep your library on your device. |
unlimitedStorage |
To lift Chrome's 10 MB extension storage cap, so a large library keeps working rather than silently failing to save. |
contextMenus |
To add the right-click "Stow" actions. |
favicon |
To show site icons from Chrome's local cache. This permission exists specifically so that Tabcove never has to contact a remote favicon service. |
alarms |
To sweep expired items out of the undo bin and to check whether a backup is due. Chrome shuts extensions down when idle, so an ordinary timer would not survive. |
6. Third-party services
None. Tabcove uses no third-party services, libraries, SDKs, APIs, CDNs, or fonts at runtime. It has no runtime dependencies at all.
Two third parties are involved in distribution rather than in the running software, and their own policies apply to what they do:
- Google distributes the extension through the Chrome Web Store and provides its install counts, ratings, and reviews. Any data Google collects when you visit the store is covered by Google's privacy policy.
- GitHub hosts the source code, the issue tracker, and this page. Visiting them is covered by GitHub's privacy statement.
7. Data you export
Tabcove can export your library as JSON, HTML, Markdown, CSV, or plain text. The file is generated in your browser and saved through Chrome's normal download flow. It is not uploaded anywhere. Once it is on your disk, what happens to it is entirely up to you — please be aware that an export contains the titles and addresses of everything you have saved, so treat it as you would any personal document.
8. Children
Tabcove is a general-purpose productivity tool and is not directed at children under 13. Because it collects no data whatsoever, it collects no data from children either.
9. Your rights
Regulations such as the GDPR and the CCPA grant rights to access, correct, port, and delete personal data held about you. We hold none, so there is nothing for us to disclose, correct, or erase. In practical terms:
- Access and portability: export your library at any time, in five formats.
- Correction: edit or rename anything in the library at any time.
- Erasure: delete individual collections, empty the undo bin, use "Delete everything" in Settings, or uninstall the extension — which removes all of its data from your device.
No request to us is required for any of these, because your data was never sent to us in the first place.
10. Security
Your library is protected by your browser profile and your operating system's
account security. Tabcove adds no network attack surface because it makes no
network requests. It executes no remote code: its content security policy pins
scripts to the extension's own package, and it uses no eval. Data
from web pages — such as page titles — is only ever inserted into the interface as
text, never as markup.
Because everything is local, anyone with access to your computer and your browser profile can read your saved tabs. If that matters to you, protect your device with a password and use your operating system's disk encryption.
11. Future paid features
A future version may offer optional paid features, including encrypted cloud sync. If and when that happens:
- This policy will be updated before those features ship.
- Any feature that involves a network will be strictly opt-in, and any additional permission it needs will be requested at the moment you enable it — never added silently to the free version.
- Everything Tabcove does today will remain free, local, and account-free.
12. Changes to this policy
If this policy changes materially, the effective date at the top of this page will change and the previous version will remain visible in the page's public revision history. Continuing to use Tabcove after a change means you accept the updated policy.
13. Contact
Questions, corrections, or concerns: github.com/ownCoder/tabcove/issues. Please do not include personal information in a public issue.