Privacy Policy

1. The short version

highl8te makes zero network requests. There is no server, no API, and no endpoint behind it. Nothing you select, read, or look up ever leaves your computer, because there is nowhere for it to go.

That is the whole story. The rest of this page just explains how that works.

2. How highl8te works

You select text on a page and press the shortcut, or right-click it. highl8te shows you a popup with a definition and a plain-language explanation. Two things produce that answer, and both of them live on your own device.

Definitions come from Open English WordNet 2025. That dictionary is bundled inside the extension package as local JSON files. Looking up a word opens a file that is already on your disk. No request is made over the network.

Explanations come from Gemini Nano, Chrome's built-in AI model, through the Chrome Prompt API. The model runs on your device, inside your own browser. Your selected text is passed to that local model. It is not sent to Google. It is not sent to Tailsgate. It is not sent to anyone.

Chrome downloads the Gemini Nano model once, on its own, as a browser feature. That download is handled by Chrome, not by highl8te. highl8te only asks the browser whether the model is available and then uses it.

3. What is stored, and where

Your settings. highl8te stores two preferences: your explanation mode (technical or ELI5), and whether the popup appears automatically. These are saved with chrome.storage.sync. That means Chrome itself may sync those two values across the Chrome profiles you are signed into. To be precise: this is Chrome's sync feature, not ours. It carries only those two preference values. It never carries selected text, definitions, explanations, or anything about the pages you visit.

PDF selections, briefly. When you right-click a selection inside a PDF, highl8te writes that selected text to chrome.storage.session so the side panel can pick it up and show you the answer. chrome.storage.session lives in memory only and is wiped when the browser closes. It is never written to disk and never transmitted.

That is everything highl8te stores.

4. What is not collected

No analytics. No telemetry. No crash reporting. No cookies. No advertising. No fingerprinting. No accounts, no sign-up, no email address. highl8te does not know who you are and has no way to find out.

5. Permissions, and why each one exists

• storage:

  To remember your two settings between sessions.

• activeTab and scripting:

  To inject the popup into the page you are actively using at the moment you press the shortcut. Without this, there is nowhere to display the answer.

• contextMenus:

  To add the right-click menu item.

• sidePanel:

  To show answers for PDFs, where a normal in-page popup cannot be drawn.

• Content script matching <all_urls>:

  The popup has to be able to appear on any page you read. There is no way to know in advance which sites you will use highl8te on, so the extension has to be able to run on all of them.

Broad host access sounds alarming, so here is what it is actually for: reading the text you deliberately select on whatever page you are currently on. highl8te reads your selection, plus the sentence or paragraph around it, which is used to work out which sense of a word you meant — "bank" as in river or "bank" as in money. It does not read, collect, log, or transmit any other page content. And even the text it does read stays on your device, because the extension has no network connection to send it over.

6. The tip jar

highl8te is free. There is no paid tier, no trial, and no payment processing of any kind anywhere in the extension.

There is one optional link to a tip jar at https://buymemomo.com/aarohan. If you click it, you leave for BuyMeMomo, a third-party site with its own privacy policy and terms. Nothing in highl8te is locked behind it, and you never have to pay for anything. Tailsgate receives no personal information from the extension about who clicked that link or whether anyone did.

7. GDPR, CCPA, and similar laws

These laws govern how companies process personal data. highl8te processes none. There is no database, no server, and no record of you anywhere, so there is nothing to request a copy of, nothing to export, and nothing for us to delete.

Your two saved settings are the only data that exists, and they live on your own machine. To remove them, uninstall highl8te or remove it from chrome://extensions.

8. Children's privacy

highl8te collects no data from anyone, including children under 13. There is nothing to collect, so there is nothing that could be collected from a child.

9. Changes to this policy

If highl8te changes in a way that affects this policy, we will update this page and change the "Last updated" date at the top. If a future change ever introduced data collection — which is not planned — we would say so clearly and prominently rather than burying it here.

10. Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent to us, or reach us through tailsgate.com: