Kayt for Chrome — Privacy Policy

Effective date: 29 September 2026. This describes version 1.3 of the extension.

What Kayt stores, and where

Everything Kayt keeps is stored only in this browser, on this computer:

• Your notes — their text, the video they belong to, the moment in the video, and the chapter name if the video has chapters — and each video's title, channel name and thumbnail address, in the extension's own storage (chrome.storage.local).
• Your settings, such as look-back times, Snip length, speech language, where you placed the Kayt button, and your Obsidian vault and folder names, in the same storage.
• Recordings of your voice notes, only if "Keep a recording of my voice notes" is turned on in Settings, in this browser's local database (IndexedDB).
• Which tab Kayt is listening to, while it is listening, in memory only (chrome.storage.session). It is gone when Chrome closes.

Nothing is uploaded to any server. Kayt has no account system and no cloud sync, and does not sync with any other device.

What Kayt reads on YouTube

Kayt only runs on youtube.com and m.youtube.com. Its toolbar icon opens your notes on any site, but it does not read those sites.

On YouTube, it reads only what it needs for your notes, and only when you use it:

• When you add a note, it reads the video's ID (from the page address), the current playback position, and the current chapter's name if the video has chapters.
• While a range or a Snip is in progress, it reads the playback position about once a second, to count the time and notice if you move to another video.
• While the side panel shows the notes of the video you are watching, it reads the playback position about once a second, to highlight the note you have reached.

It does not read anything else on the page, does not read other tabs, and does not read your browsing history. It only changes the player when you ask: clicking a note's time jumps the video there, and a voice note pauses the video while you speak and plays it again afterwards (this can be turned off in Settings).

Voice notes, Snip and listening to a video

Kayt can turn speech into text in three ways, each only when you ask for it:

• Voice notes use your microphone while you speak a note. The microphone is on only from the moment you start a voice note until it is saved, stopped or cancelled. The first time, Chrome asks for permission in a small Kayt window; Kayt never asks for the microphone inside YouTube's page, so YouTube itself never gets access to it.
• Listen to video hears the sound of the one YouTube tab you turn it on for, so Kayt can turn what the video says into text. A bar on the page and Chrome's own indicator show the whole time it is on. It stops when you turn it off, leave YouTube or close the tab.
• Snip saves what the video said around the moment you press it — the number of seconds before and after that you choose in Settings — as the text of a note. A range likewise saves the words said between its start and its end. If Kayt isn't already listening, a Snip or range turns listening on for itself only, shows it on its own bar, and turns it off again when it is done. Kayt cannot hear anything from before listening was on.

In all three cases the speech is recognised on this computer by Chrome's built-in on-device speech recognition. Kayt requires on-device mode and refuses to run if Chrome cannot guarantee it, so your voice and the video's sound are never sent to Google or anyone else for recognition.

The video's sound is never recorded or saved. While Kayt listens to a video, it keeps only the recognised words, in memory: the last two minutes or so (longer while a range or Snip is waiting for them). They are wiped when listening stops or when you move to another video. Only the words of a Snip or range you save become part of a note.

Recordings of your own voice. If "Keep a recording of my voice notes" is turned on in Settings (it is on by default), Kayt keeps the microphone recording of each voice note with that note, so you can play it back in the notes panel or download it. Recordings are stored only in this browser and are never uploaded. A recording is deleted when its note is deleted (after a few seconds, so Undo can bring it back) or when you use "Clear all data". You can turn this off in Settings at any time; voice notes are then saved as text only.

The first time you use a language, Chrome downloads its speech pack from Google. That download is made by Chrome, contains no audio and no notes, and happens once per language.

What Kayt fetches from the internet

The only network requests Kayt makes are to YouTube itself:

• A lookup to YouTube's public oEmbed service to get a video's title and channel name, the first time you add a note to that video. This sends only the video's ID to YouTube.
• Thumbnail images for videos in your notes list, loaded directly from YouTube's image servers (i.ytimg.com) when the notes panel is shown.

Everything else the extension shows — its code, its icons and the two typefaces it is set in — is included in the extension itself, so no fonts or other files are fetched from Google or anyone else while you use it. No other data is sent anywhere.

Copying, exporting and Obsidian

Your notes only leave Kayt when you move them yourself:

• Copy puts a note, or a video's notes, on your clipboard.
• Export saves your notes as a Markdown file in your downloads. Voice recordings are not included in the export; you can download one from its note.
• Send to Obsidian puts a video's notes on your clipboard and asks the Obsidian app on this computer to create a note from them. This goes directly from Chrome to the app, with no network request; the notes stay on your clipboard afterwards.

What happens to notes after that is up to you and the app you move them into.

No tracking

No analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, and no third-party tracking of any kind. Manifest V3 (the platform this extension is built on) also forbids extensions from downloading and running remote code — every script you're running shipped inside the extension package you installed.

Notes are not encrypted

Desktop browsers offer no secure storage that an extension could use to encrypt data with a key hidden from other users of the computer. So notes and voice recordings are saved as plain data in your browser's profile, not encrypted. Anyone with access to this computer's browser profile — for example another person using the same user account — could potentially read them.

Permissions this extension asks for

• Storage — to save your notes and settings in this browser.
• Side panel — to show your notes in Chrome's side panel.
• Tab capture — to hear the sound of a YouTube tab when you turn on "Listen to video", use Snip, or start a range, so Kayt can turn what was said into text. Only that tab, only while listening is on. The sound is never recorded.
• Offscreen document — a hidden Kayt page that does the speech recognition, because the background part of an extension cannot use a microphone or a tab's sound itself.
• Microphone — asked by Chrome the first time you take a voice note, not at install. Used only for voice notes and, if you keep them, their recordings.
• Access to youtube.com and m.youtube.com — to read the current video's ID and playback position when you use Kayt, show the Kayt button and note box on the page, and look up video titles.

Kayt does not request access to your other tabs, your browsing history, your downloads, or any site other than YouTube.

Your control

You can edit or delete any note, and deleting a note deletes its recording too. You can export every note at any time. "Clear all data" in Settings permanently deletes all notes and recordings from this browser. Uninstalling the extension also removes all of its data.

No sale or sharing of data

Kayt does not sell, rent, or share your notes or any other data with anyone, because it never leaves your browser in the first place — aside from the video ID sent to YouTube's oEmbed service described above, and anything you copy, export or send to Obsidian yourself.

Changes to this policy

If a future version of Kayt changes what it stores or sends, this page will be updated and its effective date changed before that version is published.

Contact

Questions about this policy or the extension: hashoum25@gmail.com.