Privacy Policy
Summary
- No personal data is collected.
- No data is transmitted to the developer or to any third party.
- No analytics, no trackers, no advertising, no cookies set by this extension.
- Nothing is sold, rented, or shared. Ever.
- Everything the extension produces stays in your own browser, and you can delete it at any time.
This policy explains exactly how the Music Player Mode for YouTube browser extension (the "Extension") handles information. It is written to be read in full — it is short on purpose.
1. Information the developer collects
None. The Extension has no server, no backend, no database, and no account system. The developer does not receive, see, store, or have any means of accessing your data, your browsing activity, your playlists, or what you listen to.
| Data category | Collected? |
|---|---|
| Personally identifiable information (name, address, email, age, ID numbers) | No |
| Health information | No |
| Financial or payment information | No |
| Authentication information (passwords, credentials, tokens) | No |
| Personal communications (email, messages) | No |
| Location data | No |
| Web browsing history | No |
| User activity (clicks, keystrokes, mouse movement, analytics) | No |
| Website content | Not collected by the developer — see section 2 |
2. Information stored on your own device
To do its job, the Extension saves data locally, inside your browser. This information never leaves your device and is not visible to the developer or anyone else.
| What is stored | Where | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your playlists — the tracks you have collected, with titles, links, durations, channel names and thumbnail URLs | chrome.storage.local |
So your playlists are still there the next time you open the browser |
| Playback state — which playlist and track you were on, your position in it, and your volume, shuffle and repeat settings | chrome.storage.local |
So playback can resume where you left off |
| Preferences — whether the floating mini player is on, where you dragged it, and the collection size limit | chrome.storage.local |
So the Extension behaves the way you set it up |
| Your light/dark theme preference | localStorage |
So the interface opens in the theme you chose |
| A single flag marking one browser tab as the player window | sessionStorage |
YouTube rewrites the page URL and removes the marker the Extension puts there, so the flag is what keeps the music-player interface applied if you reload that window. It is cleared when the window closes |
This stored content consists of publicly visible video listing information from pages you chose to collect from. It contains no personal information about you.
Deleting your data
- Delete a single track: click ✕ next to it in the queue on the Player tab.
- Delete a whole playlist: open the Playlists tab and click 🗑️ on that playlist.
- Delete absolutely everything: uninstall the Extension. Chrome removes all of its local storage automatically.
3. How the Extension works
Building a playlist
The Extension also adds an “Add to playlist” button next to the Subscribe button on YouTube watch pages. It reads only the title, channel name and length of the video already on screen, and only when you click it. It adds nothing else to the page, removes nothing, and sends nothing anywhere — the video is saved to a playlist in your own local storage.
When you click Detect & Add, the Extension reads the video list that is already publicly visible on the YouTube page you have open, and requests the remaining pages of that same list from YouTube — the same requests your browser makes when you scroll down the page manually. Those requests go to YouTube and nowhere else. The resulting titles and links are saved to your local storage as a playlist.
Playing a playlist
To play a playlist, the Extension opens its own popup player window and navigates it to each video in turn on youtube.com/watch — the ordinary YouTube watch page. Playback is performed entirely by YouTube's own player on that page. Inside that window the Extension applies its own stylesheet to hide YouTube's video, header, sidebar and comments, and draws a music player interface over them. Its controller script only issues ordinary play, pause, seek and volume commands to the page's video element, and reads back the playback position to draw the progress bar and the audio visualizer.
That window is why music can continue after you close the side panel: the audio does not live in the panel, so destroying the panel does not destroy the audio. It is also a separate window from the one you browse in, so navigating or closing your own tabs does not interrupt playback. The Extension never hides, minimizes or closes that window on its own — closing it is entirely up to you, and doing so pauses the music. Its position and size are remembered locally so it reopens where you left it.
The hiding stylesheet and the player interface are applied only in this window — the Extension marks the URLs it opens itself, and every style rule is conditional on that marker. Your own YouTube tabs are never modified in any way.
Why a real YouTube page is used
Playing with nothing visible at all would require YouTube's embedded player, hosted in a hidden extension page. That was implemented and tested: the embedded player loads and communicates normally, then refuses to play any video from inside an extension page, returning player error 153. It is not specific to particular videos and cannot be worked around, so a real YouTube page is the only place playback works — which is why the Extension uses a real window you can see, move and close.
The Extension does not: download, extract, save or re-host video, audio or subtitle files; remove, block, skip or fast-forward advertising; access private, unlisted or age-restricted content; bypass any login, paywall or access restriction; automate accounts, views, likes or comments; or read the content of pages on any other website.
Adverts play exactly as they normally would and are simply waited out. If a video is private, deleted, region-blocked, or its owner has disabled outside playback, the Extension does not attempt to work around that — it marks the track and moves on to the next one.
4. Third parties
The Extension sends no data to any third party. There are no analytics services, no error-reporting services, no advertising networks, and no external APIs.
Three things are worth stating plainly, in the interest of being complete:
- YouTube. The Extension requests list pages from YouTube while collecting, and opens ordinary YouTube watch pages while playing. YouTube receives those requests exactly as it does when you browse and watch videos yourself, and its own privacy policy applies to them. If you are signed in to YouTube in the same browser, YouTube may associate this playback with your account and add it to your watch history, just as watching those videos manually would. The Extension sends YouTube nothing beyond a normal page request.
- Thumbnail images. Thumbnail previews load from YouTube's image servers (
i.ytimg.com). As with any image on any web page, that server can see your IP address and browser user-agent. No identifying information is attached by the Extension. - Video titles. When you add a single video by pasting its link, the Extension asks YouTube's public oEmbed endpoint for that video's title. This is a request to YouTube for one public video, and nothing about you is included. The “Add to playlist” button reads the title from the page you are already on and makes no request at all.
5. Permissions and why they are needed
The Extension requests the minimum permissions required to function. Notably, it does not request the tabs permission, so it cannot read your browsing history.
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
storage | Saves your playlists, playback position and preferences on your device |
unlimitedStorage | Lets a large playlist library be stored locally without being truncated. Still entirely on your device |
scripting | Loads the Extension's reader script into the YouTube tab when you click Add, loads the playback controller into the Extension's own player window, and registers the floating mini player if you enable it |
sidePanel | Displays the interface in Chrome's side panel |
https://www.youtube.com/* | Reads the publicly visible video list on YouTube pages you choose, and controls playback in the Extension's player window |
The optional all-sites permission
The floating mini player is an optional feature. It draws a small draggable play/pause/next control on whatever page you are currently viewing, so you can control the music without reopening the side panel. Because it has to appear on any site you happen to be on, it requires access to all websites.
That access is not requested when you install the Extension. Chrome asks for it only at the moment you switch the feature on, and you can decline. It is used for exactly one thing — drawing those playback controls. The mini player script reads no page content, collects nothing about the sites you visit, and sends nothing anywhere. Turning the feature off unregisters the script, and you can revoke the permission at any time from chrome://extensions.
6. Remote code
All code is contained in the installed extension package and reviewed by the Chrome Web Store. The Extension does not download, fetch, or execute any code at runtime. It contains no eval(), no dynamically constructed functions, and no remotely hosted scripts.
Playback happens on youtube.com itself. YouTube's player code runs in that tab as YouTube's own first-party page code, exactly as it does when you open a video yourself — it is not loaded into, bundled with, or executed by the Extension.
7. Children's privacy
The Extension is a general-purpose media tool. It is not directed at children, and because it collects no data at all, it does not knowingly or unknowingly collect information from anyone, including children under 13.
8. Your rights
Data protection laws such as the GDPR and CCPA grant rights of access, correction, deletion, and portability over personal data held about you. Because the developer holds no data about you, there is nothing to request, correct, or delete on the developer's side. All data created by the Extension is already in your sole possession and under your direct control, and can be removed as described in section 2.
The developer does not sell or share personal information, as those terms are defined under the CCPA.
9. Responsible use
The Extension organises publicly visible information into playlists for your own personal listening, and plays them through YouTube's official player. You are responsible for how you use it. Please respect the YouTube Terms of Service, applicable copyright law, and the rights of content owners.
10. Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the revised version will be published at this address with an updated effective date. Material changes affecting how data is handled will also be noted in the extension's Chrome Web Store listing. Continued use after an update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
11. Contact
Questions, concerns, or privacy requests regarding this Extension: