Auto Refresh collects no data. It does not transmit, sell or share anything. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no tracking, no remote code and no server — the extension makes no network requests of its own.
Every claim below is verifiable in the source at github.com/AndrewKaranja/AutoRefresh.
All of it stays in your browser, in Chrome's own extension storage.
| What | Where | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tabs currently being refreshed, and their settings | storage.session |
Held in memory only. Never written to disk. Cleared when Chrome closes. |
| Your site rules and preferences | storage.sync |
Synced through your own Google account if you have Chrome sync enabled. It does not pass through any server operated by us. |
| Lifetime reload and change counts | storage.local |
Two integers. |
| A hash and text snapshot of a watched page region | storage.local |
Only for pages where you explicitly turned on change monitoring. Capped at 200 entries, oldest evicted. Keyed by a hash of the URL rather than the URL itself. |
When you enable change monitoring, the extension reads the visible text of the region you selected in order to tell whether it changed since the last reload. That text is hashed locally and compared locally. It is never transmitted anywhere. The most recent snapshot is kept on your device solely so the notification can tell you what changed.
If you do not enable monitoring, the extension never reads page content at all.
Auto Refresh installs with no host permissions. Basic refreshing needs none — reloading a tab does not require permission to read it.
Access to a specific site is requested at the moment you enable a feature that must read the
page: intervals shorter than 30 seconds, scroll-position memory, or change monitoring. Each
request covers one site. You may decline, in which case the extension runs in basic mode, and
you can revoke access at any time from chrome://extensions.
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
storage | Saves your settings and the current refresh state on this device. |
alarms | Schedules reloads of 30 seconds or longer. Manifest V3 service workers are shut down when idle, making this the only reliable timer available. |
tabs | Reads the URL and title of tabs you chose to refresh, so the correct tab is reloaded. |
scripting | Injects the refresh agent into pages you explicitly enabled. |
activeTab | Lets you select a region of the current page to watch. |
notifications | Shows a desktop alert when a watched page changes. Opt-in. |
offscreen | Plays the alert sound; Manifest V3 service workers cannot play audio directly. |
| Optional host access | Requested per site, at runtime, only for features that must read the page. |
Auto Refresh is a general-purpose utility, is not directed at children, and collects no personal information from anyone.
Any change will be published here and noted in the changelog. Because the extension collects nothing, a change here would mean a change in what the extension does — and that would be announced in the release notes, not made quietly.
Open an issue at github.com/AndrewKaranja/AutoRefresh/issues.