Browser extension

PreFeed privacy policy

PreFeed has no server and keeps everything it stores in your browser. It talks to YouTube for you, and sends something anywhere else only when you send a report yourself.

What it does

PreFeed replaces YouTube's home feed with a page built from your own lists. To do that it reads, with your existing YouTube login, your Watch Later, your watch history, your playlists, your Priority playlists, your subscriptions and the recommendations YouTube shows you. It changes your playlists only when you ask it to: adding, removing or reordering a video, making a playlist, and removing videos with Tidy up. It runs only on www.youtube.com.

What is stored, and where

• A copy of those lists (video ids, titles, channel names, lengths, how far you watched), so the page shows at once.
• Your own history copy: every video you watched, with how far you got and when, from YouTube's history and from what you watch in this browser. Deleting on YouTube does not delete it here; PreFeed's settings page does, one video at a time or all of it.
• The day each video first showed up in Watch Later or Priority, the videos you hid or marked in Continue watching, the videos you told Tidy up to keep, which playlists you put on the page, the videos and channels you marked "Not for me", what you filed each channel's last video into, and removals not yet confirmed by YouTube.
• Your settings and the order of the boxes.

All of it stays in your browser's extension storage, kept apart per YouTube account; switching account shows nothing of another account's lists. It is not synced between devices. Uninstalling the extension deletes all of it.

What is sent, and to whom

• YouTube: only the requests YouTube's own page makes to read and change your lists, signed with your existing login. Video pictures load from i.ytimg.com, YouTube's picture server, the way YouTube's own pages load them.
• Nobody else, unless you send a report (below): no analytics, no error reports, no ads, no tracking, no selling or sharing of data. PreFeed loads no code from anywhere; everything it runs ships with the extension.

Reports

On PreFeed's settings page, under Feedback, you can report a problem or suggest an idea. Nothing is sent until you press Send. A report contains what you type (the kind of report, your message and, if you give it, your email address), PreFeed's version, and your browser's language and name. Nothing about your lists or your history goes with it.

It is sent to a Google Form and stored in the developer's Google Sheet. Google processes it for the developer, and Google's privacy policy applies to that step; Google may see your IP address as with any request to it. Reports are used only to fix and improve PreFeed and to answer you if you gave an email address, and are deleted once they are no longer needed for that.

The legal basis is your consent, given by sending the report (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). To have a report deleted, or to ask what it contained, write to the address below.

Backup file

If you switch on the backup, PreFeed saves a file of your history copy to Downloads / PreFeed on your computer, every day, week or month. It asks for the browser's permission to save files when you switch it on, and not before. The file stays on your computer.

Contact

Vincent Schweiger, vs@mesoph.de. Full contact details are in the legal notice.