This isn't a legal fig leaf. It's a technical fact. FocusLens has no servers to send data to — and this page explains exactly what that means for you.
Most privacy policies say "we take your privacy seriously" then spend 40 paragraphs explaining what they collect and who they sell it to. This one is different. We don't have a backend. We don't have analytics. We don't have a way to tell you're even using the extension.
FocusLens is a free Chrome extension that helps people understand where their browser time goes. It's a client-side tool — which is a technical way of saying: all the logic and all your data live inside your browser on your device.
There is no company server processing your activity. There is no cloud dashboard logging your visits. Everything you see in the extension's popup is computed locally, from data stored locally, on hardware you own.
Nothing. We don't have a way to collect anything from you — our extension literally never sends an HTTP request to any server we control, because we don't operate any.
What the extension stores locally on your device (which you can see and delete anytime) is:
github.com — 42 minutes, hour 14. We don't store full URLs, page content, search queries, or form data.Your data lives in chrome.storage.local, a sandboxed area of Chrome that is physically on your device and never synced to a Google account by default.
Your data is stored in Chrome's local storage API, specifically chrome.storage.local. This is the same mechanism Chrome itself uses for bookmarks, history, and your own extension preferences. It's on your disk, in your Chrome profile folder.
Two consequences:
We don't share your data with anyone — because we don't have your data in the first place. Specifically:
The only network request FocusLens makes is to fetch website favicons (the little icons next to domain names) from Google's public favicon service. Favicon requests go from your browser to Google — not through us — and follow Google's own privacy policy.
Chrome requires extensions to declare which APIs they use. Here's exactly what FocusLens asks for and why:
tabs — to know which tab is active and compute time-on-domain. Nothing about tab content is read.storage — to save your tracking data and settings locally.idle — to detect when you've stepped away, so tracking pauses accurately.alarms — to periodically flush accumulated time data to local storage.notifications — to show "goal reached" notifications (only if you enable them).host_permissions: <all_urls> — required by Chrome to read tab URLs across all sites. We only extract the domain (e.g. github.com), never the full URL or page contents.Most privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA, etc.) give you rights like "the right to delete" or "the right to access your data." Since you're the only one who has your data, those rights are built in:
FocusLens is a general-purpose productivity tool and is safe for users of any age. Since we don't collect any data, we don't collect data from children either. If a young person installs FocusLens, their tracking data stays on their device just like anyone else's.
We comply with COPPA (USA) and equivalent legislation in other regions by design, because there is no data pipeline that could accidentally collect information from minors.
If we ever materially change how FocusLens works — for example, if we add an optional sync feature that requires user-initiated cloud storage — we'll update this page and note the change in the extension's release notes. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page is the source of truth.
We'll never quietly start collecting data. Any change that affects your privacy would be opt-in, announced, and documented here.
Questions, concerns, or spotted something we should clarify? We want to hear from you.
We aim to respond to all privacy enquiries within 3 business days.
We read every message. Reach out any time — no chatbot, no ticket number, just a human on the other side.