Privacy Policy

Overview

Simple Transcript Capture is a browser extension that extracts existing transcripts from YouTube and other captioned pages, then saves them as text files 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 inside the extension.
• Transcripts are saved directly to your device.
• No transcript data is sent to our servers.

How Transcripts Are Extracted

The extension reads transcript content that already exists on the page you are viewing. It does not record audio, does not access your microphone, and does not perform speech recognition.

• YouTube videos. The extension fetches captions from YouTube’s public InnerTube endpoint, the same API that delivers captions to the player on youtube.com. The fetched caption text is parsed locally in the extension and saved to your Downloads folder.
• Other pages. The extension scans the DOM of the active tab for visible transcript blocks (lecture transcripts, podcast player captions, on-page captions, etc.) and extracts the text. The page DOM is read in your browser; no page content is sent to our servers.

Transcript extraction only occurs while the side panel or popup is open and you have explicitly clicked the copy or download button. The extension does not capture content in the background or without your action.

Permissions

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

• activeTab. To identify the tab the user is currently viewing so the extension can read transcript content from it.
• downloads. To save the extracted transcript file to your Downloads folder.
• storage. To remember your preferred export format and Pro license key (local storage). No personal data is stored.
• sidePanel. To open the extension’s side panel UI when you click the expand icon.
• scripting. To inject the transcript-extraction script into the active tab when you click the extension icon. The script reads visible transcript text from the page.
• host_permissions: <all_urls>. To run the transcript-extraction script on whatever page you are viewing. The script reads page content only when you click the extension; it does not run in the background.

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.

For free-tier users who do not activate a Pro license, the only network activity from the extension is the YouTube captions fetch when extracting a YouTube transcript.

Third-Party Services

Transcript parsing is performed locally using standard browser APIs. No third-party analytics, tracking, or advertising SDKs are included. The only external service interactions are: requests to YouTube’s public InnerTube endpoint to fetch captions for a YouTube video you are viewing, and 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.

Contact

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