Privacy Policy

Loadout browser extension · last updated 7 October 2026

Loadout is a browser extension for organising links into pages and boards. It works without an account, and by default everything stays on your device. From version 0.15.0 you may optionally sign in with Google to sync your pages across your own devices. This policy explains what happens in both cases.

In short

• Signed out — nothing leaves your device. No account, no server, no analytics.
• Signed in — your pages, boards and saved links are stored in our Firebase project so your other devices can read them. Nothing is shared with anyone else, and nothing is sold.

What Loadout stores on your device

Your pages, boards, links, notes and settings are saved using Chrome's local extension storage. Signed out, that is the only copy that exists.

What syncs when you sign in

Signing in is entirely optional, and Loadout never asks twice. While you are signed in, these are copied to your account:

• Your pages and boards — their names, colours and notes.
• Your saved links — the address, title, your note, and when it was added.
• Your settings, and a record of which pages you deleted, so a deletion made on one device does not come back from another. Those records are discarded after 30 days.
• From your Google account: your account identifier, email address, name and profile picture. Loadout asks Google for nothing else — it cannot read your Gmail, Drive, contacts or calendar.

These never leave your device, signed in or not:

• Your background picture.
• Your theme and sidebar preferences, which belong to the machine rather than to you.
• Your browsing. Loadout only ever sees the links you choose to save.

Where it is stored, and who can see it

Synced data is held in Google Firebase (Cloud Firestore), in a project operated by CodeSphere Studio. It is sent over an encrypted connection and stored encrypted on Google's servers.

Being plain about the limits of that: this is not end-to-end encryption. Access is restricted by security rules so that a signed-in person can read and write only their own data, and no other user can reach it — but we, as the project's operator, and Google, as the hosting provider, are technically able to access what is stored. We do not look at it, we do not sell or share it, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not use it to train anything. Google acts only as our hosting provider and does not use it for its own purposes.

What we do not do

There is no analytics, no crash reporting and no tracking of any kind, signed in or signed out. We do not know how often you use Loadout. We collect no health, financial or location data, no communications, and nothing about how you use your browser.

Network requests

• Signed in — Loadout contacts Google's identity services (identitytoolkit.googleapis.com, securetoken.googleapis.com) to sign you in and keep you signed in, and Cloud Firestore (firestore.googleapis.com) to sync your pages.
• Adding a link by hand — Loadout can fetch that one page to read its title. The request goes to the site you are adding and nowhere else, only if you grant the optional site-access permission, and not at all if the page is already open in a tab. Decline it and the feature still works, using the address as the title.
• Site icons come from Chrome's local icon cache, so no request is made to the site.
• Fonts are bundled inside the extension, so no font service is ever contacted.

Signed out, the title lookup above is the only request Loadout can make.

Permissions, and why

• storage — keeps your pages and links on this device.
• tabs — reads the URL and title of open tabs so you can save the current tab, capture a window, and reopen a saved page.
• bookmarks — read-only, and only when you choose to import. Loadout never changes or deletes your bookmarks.
• contextMenus — the right-click options for saving a page or link.
• activeTab and scripting — shows a brief confirmation on the page after you press a save shortcut. It reads nothing from the page.
• favicon — shows site icons using Chrome's local icon cache, which avoids contacting the site.
• identity — lets you sign in with the Google account already in your Chrome profile. Used only when you choose to sign in.
• Access to identitytoolkit, securetoken and firestore.googleapis.com — the three Google addresses sync talks to. Nothing else is contacted, and nothing at all while you are signed out.
• Site access (optional) — only for reading a page title, as described above.

Your data is yours

• Export writes a file straight to your computer, at any time.
• Signing out stops syncing and leaves your pages on the device. It deletes nothing from your account.
• Deleting a page while signed in removes it from your account and from your other devices.
• Deleting everything — email us and we will delete your account and all synced data, and confirm when it is done. Uninstalling the extension removes the copy on that device, but not the copy in your account.

Synced data is kept for as long as your account exists. We do not delete inactive accounts automatically, and we will not without telling you first.

Children

Loadout is a general-purpose tool and is not directed at children.

Changes

If a future version changes what Loadout does with your data, this policy will be updated before that version is published, and the change will be described in the store listing. Sharing pages with other people is not supported today; if it is ever added, it will be opt-in and this policy will say so first.