Smol Cat — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 26 September 2026

By default, Smol Cat collects nothing and sends nothing anywhere.

The rest of this page explains what that means in practice, including the one thing the extension fetches. Every claim in it is one you can check for yourself from your own browser, without taking our word for anything.

What we collect

Nothing, by default. There is no account, no identifier and no profile.

What we send

Nothing. Every cat is drawn in code as SVG, every sound is synthesised in code with the Web Audio API, and there are no images, fonts, audio files, analytics scripts or third-party libraries loaded from anywhere. You can confirm this yourself: open DevTools, go to the Network tab, and use the extension for as long as you like.

There is one thing the extension fetches, and it sends nothing to do so. When you open the toolbar popup, it may download a short message file from smol-friends.com — at most once an hour — so we can post the occasional line at the bottom of the popup, such as a new video. The request carries no cookie, no identifier and nothing about you or what you browse. Like any web request it reaches the site's host, Cloudflare, from your IP address. The file is text and links, never code, and a link can only point to our own site or our own channels. It is never fetched on the pages you visit, and never in the background.

What we store, and where

Two things, both on your own computer:

• Your settings — which kinds of cat you chose, how many cats you keep, how often you want visits, quiet hours, blocked sites, size, colours, sound. These use Chrome's storage.sync, so they follow your own Chrome profile if you have Chrome sync switched on. That is between you and Google; it never passes through us.
• A record of the extension's own activity — how many visits you have had, how many times you have fed the cats and rung the bell, which kinds of visit happened, when the last visit and the last treat were, and the times of visits in the past hour, which is how the hourly limit is enforced. It also keeps the last few errors, so a fault can be diagnosed if you ever choose to report one: the message and the line numbers inside this extension, with any web address removed before it is written down. These use storage.local and never leave the device.
• The latest message file, the one described above, so the popup can show it straight away rather than waiting for the network. It uses storage.local.

None of that is sent anywhere by default. It is counted for you, on your own computer, and it is deleted with the extension.

Neither includes anything about which sites you visit, or anything about you.

Page access

The extension asks for access to the pages you visit so it can draw a cat on top of them. It uses that access for exactly two things: adding its own element to the page, and reading the size of the window to decide where the cat should stand.

It does not read the text of pages, does not touch form fields, does not look at what you type, and does not record which sites you visit.

One clarification, because it sounds worse than it is: while a page is open, the extension keeps a single number in memory — the time you last pressed a key. Not which key, not how many, just a timestamp. It exists so a cat never interrupts you mid-sentence. It is never written to storage, never leaves the page, and is discarded the moment the tab closes.

If you switch on sharing

Nothing is sent unless you turn it on under Settings → Help improve Smol Cat. It is off until then. You are asked once; if you say no, you are not asked again, and you can switch it on or off in Settings at any time.

Once a week, on a day chosen at random when you installed it, the extension would send: how many cats turned up, how many times you rang the bell or put out treats, which kinds of visit happened, whether a cat has ever appeared at all, which settings you changed away from their defaults, and how many sites you added to the blocklist — never which sites. Plus any errors: the message, the line numbers inside this extension, and the last few steps before it broke, with any web address stripped out first.

There is no account, no identifier and no cookie. Nothing ties one week to another, or to you. The only thing stored is which day of the week to report on, a number from one to seven, which identifies nobody. It goes to a small service we run ourselves on Cloudflare, which does not store your IP address; no analytics company is involved.

You can read the exact text that would be sent, from your own installation, under Settings → Help improve Smol Cat → See exactly what is sent.

Data sharing and sale

We do not sell or share any data with anyone. The optional weekly summary is used only to make Smol Cat better.

Children

The extension collects no personal information from anyone, of any age.

Changes

If this ever changes, the change will appear here and in the extension's listing before it ships. The commitment above is a design constraint, not a preference: only two files in the extension are able to make a network request at all. One reads the message file described above and sends nothing; the other sends a weekly summary only if you have switched sharing on. An automated check runs before every release and fails if a third file gains that ability, or if the message request starts carrying anything.

Other versions of Smol Cat

This policy covers the browser extension. The VS Code panel and the desktop app collect nothing and make no network requests at all.

Where this is published

This policy is served at https://smol-friends.com/privacy-policy and is generated from the copy in the extension's own source tree, so the two cannot disagree.

Contact

Questions or problems: hello@smol-friends.com.

Applies to Smol Cat 0.3.0.