Skip to content

Privacy Policy — Digital Wellbeing

Last updated: August 2, 2026

Digital Wellbeing ("the extension") is a Chrome extension that helps you understand and manage how you spend time in your browser — tracking screen time, setting website limits, running Focus Mode, and keeping your open tabs organized. This policy explains what data the extension accesses, where it goes, and what control you have over it.

Summary

  • We do not operate any servers. There is nowhere for your data to go except your own browser and, only if you choose to enable them, an AI provider you personally configure or the favicon lookups described below.
  • We do not collect, sell, or transmit your browsing data to the developer or to any third party for advertising, analytics, or any other purpose.
  • No account, sign-up, or login is required to use the extension.

What data the extension accesses

To do its job, the extension reads and stores the following, all through Chrome's own extension APIs:

  • Open tab information — title, URL, favicon, and window each tab belongs to. Used to display, search, group, categorize, and let you close, focus, or reorder tabs, and to detect duplicate/inactive/large tabs for the Tab Cleanup feature.
  • Time spent per website — for each domain you visit, the extension keeps a running total of seconds spent per day, per hour-of-day, and a bounded log of recent browsing sessions (domain, start time, end time). This is the data behind the dashboard's charts, the popup's daily summary, and your wellbeing score.
  • Categories and settings you create — built-in and custom categories, per-URL category assignments, theme choice, default grouping mode, and duplicate-match strictness.
  • Website time limits and Focus Mode configuration — the limits you set (per domain or category, daily/weekend minutes, warn-or-block mode) and your Focus Mode allowlist/blocklist and schedule, plus bookkeeping for which domains are currently blocked as a result.
  • Goals and streaks — any daily goals you create (e.g. "keep YouTube under 30 min/day") and your current/longest streaks toward them.
  • A per-URL summary cache — if you use AI features, a cached summary of a page so it isn't reprocessed every time you revisit it.
  • A short history of recently closed tabs — so you can recover a tab you closed by mistake.

Where this data is stored

All of the data above is stored using Chrome's built-in chrome.storage API, inside your own browser profile:

  • Categories and general settings sync across your signed-in Chrome devices via chrome.storage.sync (Google's own sync infrastructure — the same one Chrome uses for your bookmarks and settings — not something the developer has access to).
  • Time-tracking history, the per-URL category/summary cache, recently-closed history, and blocked-site bookkeeping stay device-local via chrome.storage.local, since this data can grow large and doesn't need to sync.
  • The currently-in-progress browsing session is held briefly in chrome.storage.session, which is cleared automatically when you close the browser.

None of this data is sent to the developer. There is no backend server for this extension — it is a static, client-side extension.

Favicon images

The dashboard and popup display each website's favicon next to its name (e.g. in "Top Sites"). These small icons are fetched from Google's public favicon service (https://www.google.com/s2/favicons), which receives the domain name being looked up (e.g. github.com) — the same information already visible in your browser's address bar. No other data (usage time, tab titles, categories, etc.) is sent as part of this request. Google's handling of this request is governed by Google's own privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Optional AI features

Digital Wellbeing can optionally use an AI provider to help categorize or summarize tabs. This feature is off by default and only activates if you go into Settings → AI Provider and:

  1. Choose a provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Grok, or a local Ollama/LM Studio instance), and
  2. Supply your own API key (for cloud providers) or endpoint URL (for local providers).

If — and only if — you do this, the title and URL of a tab you ask to categorize or summarize is sent directly from your browser to the provider you selected, using your own API key. The developer never sees this data; it does not pass through any server we control. You can review or revoke this at any time by clearing the provider in Settings, and Chrome will show you a permission prompt the first time the extension requests access to a new provider's domain.

Each provider's own privacy policy governs how they handle data you send them:

  • OpenAI: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy
  • Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy
  • Google (Gemini): https://policies.google.com/privacy
  • xAI (Grok): https://x.ai/legal/privacy-policy
  • Ollama / LM Studio (local): data never leaves your machine — these run on localhost.

Website blocking

If you set a website time limit in block mode, or enable Focus Mode, the extension uses Chrome's declarativeNetRequest API to redirect matching sites to an in-extension "blocked" page, or to restrict browsing to an allowlist you define. This all happens locally, based on rules the extension itself installs in your browser — no external service is consulted to decide what gets blocked.

Notifications, alarms, and idle detection

The extension uses Chrome's alarms API to periodically record your active browsing time and check your limits/schedules, the notifications API to show you break reminders and limit-reached alerts, and the idle API to detect when you've stepped away so idle time isn't counted as active browsing. None of this involves sending data anywhere — it's all local scheduling and on-device notifications.

Downloads permission

The extension requests the downloads permission solely to let you save a file you explicitly asked for — an exported tab list (Markdown/HTML) or a JSON backup of your categories and settings — to your own device. This only happens when you click "Export" or "Back up now"; there are no background or automatic downloads.

What we don't do

  • We don't run ads or ad networks.
  • We don't use analytics or telemetry of any kind.
  • We don't sell or share your data with third parties.
  • We don't send your browsing history or time-tracking data anywhere except: the favicon lookups and optional AI features described above, both of which you can see happening and the AI one you must explicitly opt into.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date at the top will be revised, and material changes will be reflected here before they take effect.

Contact

Questions about this policy or the extension's data handling: connecttovelmurugan@gmail.com