tabstack Privacy Policy

This policy covers tabstack, a tab switcher for Chrome and Firefox: what it does with what it sees.

What leaves your device#

Nothing. tabstack has no analytics, no servers, and no accounts, and it never sends your tabs, history, or settings anywhere.

The only network requests it makes are for favicons. It fetches each tab's icon from the address the page itself gives, the same file your browser loads for the tab bar. When that doesn't work in Chrome, it asks Chrome's built-in favicon service instead.

What it keeps#

Settings (your shortcuts and switches) are in the browser's sync storage. If you have sync turned on, your browser vendor syncs them along with your other settings. tabstack doesn't run any of that.
The tab stack, the order you last used your tabs in, is in session storage, along with thumbnails (small screenshots of the visible part of a tab, so the switcher can show you each one) and favicons. The browser clears session storage when it closes.
The last 100 thumbnails are also kept in local storage by page address, so tabs restored after a restart show the picture from their last visit. Thumbnails of incognito and private tabs are never saved there.

All of it stays in your browser. Uninstalling tabstack removes everything.

Permissions#

tabs: to see your open tabs' titles, addresses, and icons, and to switch to and close them.
storage: to keep the settings, stack, and thumbnails above.
scripting: to add the switcher to tabs that were already open when you installed tabstack. Chrome doesn't do that on its own.
favicon (Chrome only): to get icons from Chrome's built-in favicon service, for pages like chrome://settings whose icon can't be fetched.
sessions: to show recently closed tabs in search and reopen them. You can turn this off in settings.
alarms and idle: to refresh the current tab's thumbnail every 30 seconds, but only while you're at the computer.
Access to all sites (<all_urls>): tabstack draws its switcher inside the page you're on, so its script runs on every page. That script listens for tabstack's shortcuts and doesn't read the page. The same access lets tabstack take thumbnails: of the tab on screen in Chrome, and of background tabs too in Firefox.

The Firefox version declares in its manifest that it collects no data, which Firefox shows you before you install it.

Questions and changes#

If you have a question, get in touch. If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date at the top will reflect it.