PRIVACY POLICY & PERMISSION DISCLOSURE
Music Identifier - Song Finder & Recognition
Last Updated: October 2026
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1. INTRODUCTION & CORE PRINCIPLE
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Music Identifier ("we", "our", or "extension") is built with a strict privacy-first philosophy. Our primary objective is to allow you to easily identify music playing in your browser tabs without compromising your privacy, personal information, or device security.
We believe in radical data minimization: we do not collect, do not store on external servers, and will never sell or monetize your personal information or browsing activities.
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2. DATA COLLECTION & USAGE
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• No Personal Information Collected:
The extension does not require user registration, email addresses, names, IP addresses, or payment details.
• Tab Audio Processing:
When you click the "Identify Music" button, the extension records a brief 4-second audio sample solely from the active browser tab. This audio snippet is processed in transient volatile memory (RAM) strictly to compute acoustic frequency features for music matching. The audio recording is never stored permanently on your disk or uploaded to any third-party tracking server. Once the track is identified (or if identification fails), the audio buffer is immediately released from memory.
• Song History & Settings:
When a track is recognized, its metadata (song title, artist, album name, release year, streaming links, and timestamp) is saved solely within your browser's local storage (`chrome.storage.local`). This data never leaves your computer and can be cleared by you at any time with a single click on "Clear History".
• Third-Party Music APIs (Optional):
If you choose to provide your personal API token (e.g., AudD API) in settings, the token is saved locally on your device and is only transmitted over secure HTTPS directly to the music recognition API provider to retrieve song metadata.
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3. DETAILED PERMISSIONS BREAKDOWN
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You might ask: "Are all these permissions really necessary?"
YES. This extension requests the absolute minimum set of permissions required by Google Chrome Manifest V3 architecture to capture and identify tab audio:
1. "tabCapture"
• Why it is required:
To recognize music playing inside a browser tab (such as YouTube, Twitch, or SoundCloud), the browser must allow the extension to read the tab's audio output stream.
• Privacy guarantee:
This permission is activated strictly when you trigger identification. It operates solely on the active tab and cannot record anything outside of the browser tab. It does NOT listen to your physical microphone.
2. "offscreen"
• Why it is required:
Under Chrome Manifest V3, background service workers run in an isolated environment without access to DOM elements, the Web Audio API (`AudioContext`), or `MediaStream` objects. Google requires extensions processing live audio to create a sandboxed "offscreen" document.
• Privacy guarantee:
The offscreen document is used exclusively to connect the audio stream to a frequency analyzer and keep tab audio routed to your speakers so that identifying a song does not mute the tab.
3. "storage"
• Why it is required:
Allows the extension to store your local song history and your custom settings (such as an optional API key) on your browser.
• Privacy guarantee:
This storage is 100% local to your machine. We do not operate external sync servers and have no access to your stored history.
4. "activeTab"
• Why it is required:
Provides temporary, user-initiated permission to the current tab only when you interact with the extension popup. It provides the tab ID needed by `tabCapture`.
• Privacy guarantee:
Unlike broad host permissions (e.g., `<all_urls>`), `activeTab` only activates on the specific tab you are currently viewing and only when you click the extension. It automatically revokes when the popup closes.
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4. WHAT PERMISSIONS WE DELIBERATELY DO NOT USE
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To prove our commitment to minimal permissions, please note that we DO NOT request:
• NO `<all_urls>` or `*://*/*` (we never monitor your general web traffic)
• NO `cookies` permission
• NO `history` permission
• NO `webNavigation` or `webRequest` permission
• NO microphone or camera hardware permissions
• NO background tracking scripts or advertising SDKs
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5. DATA SHARING & THIRD PARTIES
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We do not sell, rent, trade, or transfer any user data to third parties. We do not partner with data brokers or ad networks. When you click external streaming links (such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Deezer, or Genius), you are taken to their respective public websites, which operate under their own independent privacy policies.
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6. USER CONTROL & DELETION
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You have complete control over your data:
• You can clear your entire song identification history at any time inside the extension popup under the History tab by clicking "Clear".
• Uninstalling the extension from Chrome immediately removes all local storage data from your device.
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7. CONTACT
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If you have any questions or feedback regarding this Privacy Policy or permission usage, please open an issue or reach out through the Chrome Web Store support section.