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hendrik kühnel
VisualEdit

what it records

Privacy

VisualEdit reads the page you are reviewing and writes what you say about it. This page is the whole of what that means: what is recorded, where it is kept, and how to delete it. Nothing is sent over the network, so there is no account, no server and nobody to ask for your data back.

Last updated .

the record

What is recorded

Each comment you save

In the browser's extension storage (chrome.storage.local), keyed by the page's origin and path.

  • The text you typed, and any CSS value correction you set: the property, the value before and the value after.
  • The page's URL, and the time you saved.
  • About the element: its tag, its role and its accessible name.
  • Its own visible text, and the visible text of everything inside it.
  • Its class names and its locators: test id, id, selectors.
  • The text of the elements beside it, and of the nearest heading.
  • Its position and size, and its computed styles.
  • Up to 500 characters of its markup.

Finishing a review

Written into a folder in your downloads directory, visualedit-<timestamp>/: one handoff.md, and one PNG for every comment that has an element.

  • A screenshot of each commented element: the visible tab, cropped to that element.
  • The page's URL and title, the size of the viewport, and the scroll position.

Sites you switch it off on

In the browser's extension storage, beside the comments.

  • The list of sites you turned VisualEdit off on with the x on its pill.

Which notices you have already seen

In the browser's extension storage, beside the comments. Two small records, and they exist only so a message does not repeat.

  • That you acknowledged the notice listing what VisualEdit records, and when.
  • The sites you have already been told that VisualEdit works one page load at a time on.

on your machine

Where it is kept

Two places, both of them yours: the browser's own extension storage, which only this extension can read, and the folder it writes into your downloads directory when you finish a review. There is no third copy, and no step at which anything is uploaded.

Nothing is sent over the network. No servers, no analytics, no third parties. The built bundles were searched for fetch, XMLHttpRequest, WebSocket, sendBeacon and EventSource, and the one match is a fetch of a data: URL, which is how the service worker decodes its own screenshot.

Those two origins are the only ones the extension ever asks for: http://localhost and http://127.0.0.1, on any port, where it keeps access across reloads. Everywhere else it acts only on the page where you clicked its toolbar icon — unless you grant it a site yourself from Chrome's own menu, which it honours and does not ask to extend.

Comments stay until you delete them in the review panel, or until you remove the extension, which clears its storage. A handoff folder is an ordinary folder in your downloads: deleting it is deleting the folder.

chrome web store

Limited use

The use of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

That statement is the one the Chrome Web Store's Limited Use policy asks every extension to post. In this extension's case there is little for it to cover: one permission, to manage your downloads, and site access asked separately, at first use. Nothing it records is transferred, sold or used for advertising, because nothing it records leaves the machine.

who to ask

Questions about this policy

Write to privacy@it-kuehnel.com. It is the same address the Chrome Web Store shows under this extension's contact information, and it reaches the person who wrote the extension.

This policy covers the VisualEdit extension and this site, which sets no cookie and loads no third-party script. It describes version 1.0.0 as it stood on 2026-09-16; a version that records something else says so here first.