Privacy Policy
Orbitt tracks your YouTube watch time locally, on your own device. This page explains exactly what that means: what's read, where it's kept, and what never happens to it.
What Orbitt collects
Only what's on screen while you watch YouTube
While a YouTube tab is open, Orbitt's content script reads a handful of details directly off the page: the video title, the channel name, the channel's avatar image URL, the video's thumbnail URL, and how many seconds the video was actually playing. That's the entire dataset. There's nothing else to collect.
Orbitt never reads your Google account, your subscriptions, comments, search history, or anything outside the YouTube tab itself.
Where it lives
Your device. Full stop.
Every session is written to chrome.storage.local, Chrome's on-device storage for extensions. It stays in your browser profile, the same way bookmarks or saved passwords do. Orbitt has no server, no database, and no account system to send it to even if it wanted to.
If you export a backup (Settings → Backup), that file is generated and saved entirely on your machine. Orbitt never uploads it anywhere.
What we never do
✓Stays on your device
- ✓Watch time per video and channel
- ✓Titles, channel names, thumbnails
- ✓Your theme and sort preferences
- ✓Backup files you choose to export
✕Never happens
- ✕No accounts, sign-in, or sync to a server
- ✕No selling or sharing data with anyone
- ✕No analytics, trackers, or ad SDKs
- ✕No reading tabs outside youtube.com
Permissions, plainly
Chrome shows these to you before you install. Here's what each one is actually for:
| Permission | What it's for |
|---|---|
storage |
Save watch sessions and your settings in chrome.storage.local, on your device. |
unlimitedStorage |
Watch history accumulates over months of use. This just lifts Chrome's default storage cap so it isn't silently truncated. |
youtube.com access |
Lets the content script read the video title, channel, and playback state on YouTube pages you visit. Orbitt has no access to any other site. |
Third parties
Video thumbnails and channel avatars are displayed by loading their image URLs directly from YouTube's own image servers (i.ytimg.com) and from the channel's avatar host, the same requests your browser already makes when you use YouTube normally. No image, title, or watch-time data is sent to Orbitt or anyone else in the process; the request goes straight from your browser to Google's CDN, exactly as it would if you'd opened the page yourself.
Your controls
Export your data anytime as Excel, CSV, or JSON from Settings. Import a JSON backup to merge it back in. Delete everything by removing the extension, or by clearing its storage from chrome://extensions. There's no server copy to ask us to delete, because none exists.
Children's privacy
Orbitt isn't directed at children and doesn't knowingly collect data from anyone. Since all data stays local to the device running the extension, there's no transmission to us to distinguish by age in the first place.
Changes to this policy
If what Orbitt collects or how it's handled ever changes, this page will be updated and the date at the top will change with it. Meaningful changes will also be noted in the extension's Chrome Web Store listing.
Contact
Questions about this policy or how Orbitt handles data: open an issue on the GitHub repository.