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
No telemetry
No cookies on this site
Two network requests, both listed 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 24 August 2026.

What Foretaste can access, and when

When you install Foretaste it has access to no websites at all, and it does not ask for any. There is no permission screen to skim past, because there is nothing on it.

To use it on a site, you allow that one site, from a button inside the extension. Foretaste can then read the addresses of file links on that site's pages and fetch a file you ask it to open. On every other site its code is not running — the part that marks file links is registered at the moment you grant a site and unregistered when you withdraw it, rather than loading everywhere and declining to act.

You can withdraw a site at any time, from your browser's extension settings or from Foretaste's own options page. There is also a master switch: turning Foretaste off 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. 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 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

Nothing is transmitted by Foretaste. It composes a message and hands it to your own mail program, so you can read and edit every word before you send it. Only the version number is filled in for you.

That is the complete list. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting and no advertising code anywhere in Foretaste.

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 — not warns — 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.
A declared host permission. A build tool once added one automatically; the check exists because that happened.
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 on the sites you allowed.
optional host access	Requested one site at a time, from a click. None is declared in advance, so there is none to grant when you install it.

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 — a Word document's markup, rendered Markdown, an SVG, 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.

Cookies

This website sets no cookies and runs no third-party scripts. It loads no fonts from another host. That is why there is no consent banner: there is nothing to consent to.

Effective 24 August 2026.