Privacy

Your files never leave your device

Foretaste reads files inside your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored on a server, and nothing about what you open is recorded anywhere, including by us.

No analytics in the extension
No telemetry
Two network requests, both listed below
This website is measured, see below

The plain explanation comes first, because that is the part worth reading. The formal policy is at the bottom of the page. Last updated 5 September 2026.

What Foretaste can access, and when

When you install Foretaste your browser asks for access to all websites, once, and you grant it there. It is the permission that lets Foretaste fetch the file behind a link you clicked, and it is worth being precise about why it is that broad and what it is not.

It is one permission because a download is not one address. The file behind a link is routinely served from somewhere else entirely - an archive sends each file to whichever server holds it, a repository serves raw files from a separate host - so a per-site permission would mean being asked again on hostnames you have never seen and could not have allowed in advance. Foretaste asked per site until September 2026 and that is exactly how it failed: on a phone, where the only way to answer is four taps deep in a menu, it was a workflow nobody finished.

It buys the browser's permission to fetch, and nothing else. The bytes are read in a tab on your machine and stay there. No file, no file name and no page address is sent anywhere - not to us, and not to anyone else - and the checks below fail the build rather than warn if that stops being true. The part that marks file links is registered when Foretaste is switched on and unregistered when it is switched off, rather than declared in the manifest, so "off" means the code is not running.

You can narrow it whenever you like. Your browser's own extension settings are where site access is restricted or withdrawn - Chrome offers "on click" and "on specific sites" - and Foretaste handles being told no: it says so and offers to ask again. Inside Foretaste there is a per-site off switch in the panel, and a master switch that removes its right-click entries and unregisters its page code, so "off" means the code is not running.

What is stored, and where

In your browser's own extension storage, on your device:

Your settings. Whether Foretaste is on, whether link markers are shown, whether files open in a panel or a tab, your theme, and the size above which Foretaste asks before opening a file.
The list of files found on a page, so that the tab showing them can read it. This one is cleared when your browser session ends.
A licence key, if you buy Pro. It is stored as you pasted it and checked inside the extension; it is never sent anywhere.

That is the whole list. None of it is sent anywhere. There is no history of what you opened, because no such record is ever written. Removing the extension removes all of it.

What is sent over the network

This is the part that matters, so it is exhaustive.

When you open a file

Your browser requests that file from the website it is already hosted on, the same request it would make if you clicked the link normally, carrying the same cookies, so a file behind a login still works. For a ZIP archive, Foretaste asks for a small part of the file rather than all of it — how that works, and what it costs. Nothing goes to Foretaste, and nothing is proxied through anywhere.

Audio and video are the same story from the other direction: the player points at the original address, so your browser fetches only the part you actually play.

When a viewer uses an external service instead

Worth setting out, because "the file is read here" only means something next to the alternative, and the alternative is documented rather than a matter of opinion. Several extensions that preview a document do it by handing the document's address to a hosted viewer. Docs Online Viewer's privacy policy says that clicking on the inserted link will expose the URL to the external website, and names https://docs.google.com as that service — while also saying that inserting the link sends nothing by itself, and that the extension collects no personally identifiable information. XLS Editor's store description says the scanning is performed from our servers so your URL are reported to our system, alongside No personal data is collected and a checkbox that turns the scanning off, which it says leaves the feature very limited.

Neither of those is a file being uploaded, and neither is a judgement about those products. The difference is only where the reading happens. Foretaste fetches the file itself and parses it in your own tab, so no file and no address reaches a document-viewing service.

With one exception, and it is deliberate. When Foretaste cannot read a file at all, it offers Google's viewer as a way out — behind a warning saying the address goes to Google, and then a second press whose button says so again. It is a link you choose, it never happens on its own, and Foretaste fetches nothing from Google either way.

Both quotations checked on 5 September 2026, from Docs Online Viewer's privacy policy and the XLS Editor listing. Both can change, and this paragraph is rechecked or removed if they do.

When you use Pro

Activating sends your licence key, and nothing else. The key from your receipt goes to Foretaste once and comes back as a signed licence, which the extension checks on your own machine against a key built into the build. That one request carries the key alone: no email, no name, no identifier for you or your device, and nothing about any file you have ever opened.

A subscription is then checked once a day. That request contains your licence number and nothing else: no file name, no address, no page, no identifier for you, your device or your browser, and no cookies. It is the only request Foretaste makes that is not for a file you asked to see, and it exists because a renewal, a cancellation or a refund has to be able to reach your copy. The answer is a new licence key, which is checked the same way as the first one.

A lifetime key is never checked. Nothing about it can change, so nothing asks.

If that check cannot reach us, Pro keeps working. A key carries its own expiry date and keeps working for a further week past it, so neither a late renewal nor an outage of ours takes a feature away mid-file.

When you buy Pro

Payment happens on the payment provider's own pages, not in the extension and not on this site. They act as merchant of record: your card details go to them and are never seen or stored by Foretaste. What comes back to you is a licence key in a receipt.

When you send feedback

There is no feedback form in Foretaste any more. The Support link opens the support page on this website in an ordinary tab, and you write from your own mail program. Nothing about you or about any file you have opened is attached on the way.

When you ask for another OCR language

English ships inside the extension and recognising English makes no network request at all. Any other language is a pack of one or two megabytes, fetched once from the address the OCR engine publishes, from a button you press, and kept on your machine afterwards. The request carries the name of the language and nothing else — no picture, and nothing about the file the picture came from.

When you remove Foretaste

Your browser opens a page on this website, which asks why. If you press one of the six answers, that label reaches this site's analytics and nothing else does: no identifier of any kind is on that address, and there is no form on the page.

That is the complete list. Every other thing Foretaste fetches is a file you asked to see. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting and no advertising code anywhere in the extension. The website is a separate thing and is measured; the section on this website says exactly how, and none of it can see anything you open.

How that is enforced, rather than promised

A privacy claim that lives only in a policy is a claim about intentions. This one is checked by a script that runs on every release build and fails it, rather than warning, when any of the following appears in the built output:

Any network API other than fetch in Foretaste's own code: no beacons, no WebSockets, no XMLHttpRequest. Third-party libraries are held to a written baseline with a justification recorded for every entry.
A hard-coded web address outside a short allowlist of namespace identifiers.
Host access that is anything other than the single pattern described above - wider, narrower, or missing. It is declared on purpose, so the check now fails on a build that quietly loses it as well as on one that quietly widens it.
Any static page script, which would run on sites you never allowed.

Today there are exactly two places in Foretaste that make a network request: the one that fetches the file you asked for, and the one that verifies a licence key.

Permissions in full

Everything Foretaste asks your browser for, and the reason. Adding one is a deliberate decision here, not a convenience.

Permission	Why it is needed
contextMenus	To put "Open with Foretaste" on the right-click menu.
downloads	To save a file to disk. This needs no site access, which is why saving is never blocked, on any format.
storage	To keep your settings, your licence key and the page’s file list on your device.
scripting	To read the addresses of file links, and to put the link markers beside them. You choose whether those appear everywhere, everywhere except a list, or only on a list.
activeTab	To read the address of the tab the panel is open over, and nothing else on it.
host access (all sites)	To fetch the file behind the link you clicked. Your browser asks for this when you install Foretaste, and grants it there - a file is routinely served from a different address than the page it was linked on, so there is no smaller permission that works. The reading happens on your machine; nothing about the file is sent anywhere.

Two more things worth knowing. The panel Foretaste opens over a page is a frame onto the extension's own viewer, so the page you are reading never receives the file, the parser or any of the code. And anything that could carry a script of its own, such as a Word document's markup, rendered Markdown, an SVG or an EPUB chapter, is drawn in a frame with no privileges at all, so a script inside it has nothing to run in.

If any of this changes

This page changes first, and the date at the top changes with it. If a future version of Foretaste ever needs to send something it does not send today, it will be described here in the same detail before it ships.

The formal policy

Who is responsible

Foretaste is an independent software project. The contact point for anything on this page, including a request about data protection, is hello@foretaste.page.

What personal data is collected

Through the extension: none. Foretaste does not collect, receive or process any personal data through the extension. No account exists, and no identifier is generated for a user, a device or an installation.

If you buy Pro: the payment provider acts as merchant of record and collects the information it needs to take a payment and meet its tax obligations. Foretaste holds the billing record they pass on: a licence number, a customer reference, the plan, the subscription's state and its renewal date, and the email address the purchase was made with, so that a key can be reissued when it renews and re-sent to its owner when it is lost. That record is about a purchase: it has no field for a file, an address, a page or anything you opened, and the only thing the extension ever sends it is a licence number. The lawful basis is performance of the contract you entered into by buying a licence.

If you email us: we hold that email in order to answer it.

How long it is kept

Licence records are kept for as long as the licence exists, and afterwards only as long as tax and accounting law requires them to be. Correspondence is kept until it is no longer useful to either of us.

Who else sees it

Dodo Payments, as the payment processor, and Cloudflare, which hosts this website and the licence check. No data is sold, shared for advertising, or used to build a profile, because none of the kind is collected.

Your rights

If you are covered by the UK GDPR, the EU GDPR or a comparable law, you may ask for a copy of the personal data held about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, or object to its processing. Write to hello@foretaste.page and you will get an answer within 30 days. For a free installation there will usually be nothing to send you, which is the point.

This website, which is not the extension

Since 1 September 2026 foretaste.page uses Google Analytics 4. It was added for one reason: without it there is no way to tell a change to this site that helped somebody find Foretaste from one that did nothing, and guessing is how a small project spends months on the wrong page.

What it records is what an ordinary website measures about itself: which page was opened, roughly where in the world the browser was, which browser and device it was, which site or search engine sent you here, and which links you pressed. Three of those link presses are named events, because they are the ones we actually want to count: leaving for a store listing, pressing a Get Foretaste button, and landing on the page that says an address does not exist.

Google Analytics sets cookies to tell one visit from the next, so this site now does set cookies where it did not before. It does not set an advertising cookie, Google Signals is off, and no data is shared for advertising personalisation.

None of this can see a file. The website and the extension are separate programs. The analytics script runs on these pages only; it is not in the extension package, it never runs beside a file you open, and a build check fails the extension release if any beacon, socket or hardcoded address appears in it. That check is the reason the sentence above this one is a fact rather than a promise.

To opt out, any content blocker that blocks googletagmanager.com removes it, and this site is built to work normally without it: the script is loaded late, every handler in it is wrapped, and nothing on any page depends on it having arrived.

Effective 5 September 2026. If you want the shape of the thing rather than the policy, how the extension works describes it in three steps, and the format list says what it puts on the screen for each kind of file.