Privacy Policy

Last updated: March 2026

Overview

Simple Transcript Capture is a browser extension that transcribes speech from your active browser tab and saves it as a text file to your computer. It is designed with privacy as a core principle.

Data Collection

Simple Transcript Capture does not collect, store, transmit, or share any personal data.

No personal information is collected.
No analytics or tracking of any kind.
Transcripts are saved directly to your device.
No transcript data is sent to our servers.

Tab Audio Capture & Speech Recognition

The extension uses Chrome’s tabCapture API to access audio from the currently active browser tab when you explicitly click the “Start Transcribing” button. This audio is:

Processed through Chrome’s built-in Web Speech API for real-time speech-to-text conversion.
The resulting transcript is saved as a file to your local Downloads folder when you click “Stop & Save.”
Audio is processed in real time and not stored. Only the text output is saved.

Transcription only occurs while you are actively transcribing. The extension cannot and does not capture audio in the background or without your explicit action. Note: Chrome’s Web Speech API sends audio data to Google’s speech recognition servers for processing. This is a built-in Chrome feature, not controlled by this extension.

Permissions

The extension requests the following permissions, each used solely for its core recording functionality:

tabCapture — To access the audio stream from the active tab for speech recognition.
activeTab — To identify which tab to capture audio from.
offscreen — To create a background document for audio processing and speech recognition (required by Chrome’s Manifest V3 architecture).
downloads — To save the transcript file to your Downloads folder.
storage — To remember whether transcription is in progress and your preferred export format. No personal data is stored.

Pro License Activation

If you purchase the optional Pro upgrade, the following user-initiated network requests are made:

Clicking “Upgrade to Pro” opens a Stripe checkout page in a new browser tab (outside the extension). Payment data is handled entirely by Stripe and never passes through the extension.
Entering a license key sends it to simple-transcript-capture.com for one-time validation. Only the license key string is transmitted — no other data.
The “Lost your key?” feature opens the Simple Transcript Capture website in a new tab where you can look up your key by email. This happens on the website, not within the extension.

No requests to our servers are made during transcription. The only network activity during transcription is Chrome’s built-in speech recognition service.

Third-Party Services

Speech recognition is performed by Chrome’s built-in Web Speech API, which sends audio to Google’s speech servers. No additional third-party libraries, analytics, tracking, or advertising SDKs are included. The only other external service interaction is the optional Pro license validation described above.

Changes to This Policy

If this privacy policy is updated, the changes will be reflected on this page with an updated date.

Contact

If you have questions about this privacy policy, please visit simple-transcript-capture.com.