Thank you for using Fluent New Tab. Your privacy is and always will be critically important. This policy explains what data the extension handles and why, ensuring you have full transparency and control.
1. The Golden Rule: No Personal Data Collection
Fluent New Tab does not collect, store, transmit, or sell your personal data. Period.
We do not use any tracking scripts, analytics, or telemetry. We have no way of knowing who you are, how you use the extension, or what you search for.
2. Your Data Stays On Your Device
All your settings—including preferences, custom shortcuts, and
uploaded wallpapers—are stored locally on your computer using the
browser's built-in storage (localStorage and
IndexedDB). This data is yours and yours alone; we have
no access to it.
3. Third-Party Services & Proxy Infrastructure
To provide features like weather forecasts and daily wallpapers, the extension communicates with external services. Most requests happen directly between your browser and the provider. However, certain wallpaper APIs require authentication keys; to protect these keys and prevent rate-limit exhaustion, those specific requests are routed through a secure proxy infrastructure managed by us.
No personal data, IP addresses, or tracking identifiers are ever logged or stored on our proxy servers.
Below is a breakdown of all external services and endpoints used:
- Search Suggestions: When you type in the search bar, queries are sent directly to your chosen search engine (e.g., Google) to provide auto-completion suggestions.
-
Weather Information: If you enable the weather
widget, your location coordinates are sent directly to
Open-Meteoto fetch weather forecasts. -
Direct Dynamic Wallpapers: Fetched directly from
public providers:
- Bing Wallpaper:
peapix.com -
NASA Picture of the Day:
api.nasa.gov -
Wikimedia Picture of the Day:
commons.wikimedia.org
- Bing Wallpaper:
-
Proxied Wallpapers (Cloudflare Workers): To
securely authenticate requests without exposing developer keys, the
following sources are routed through our intermediate server
endpoints (
snw-mint.workers.dev):- Unsplash (Abstract Wallpapers): Serves a globally cached daily background.
- Pexels (Aesthetic Wallpapers): Serves a globally cached curated background.
4. Permissions Explained
To ensure full transparency, below is the exact
manifest.json file currently running in production,
loaded dynamically in real-time from our official GitHub repository:
Loading official manifest.json directly from repository...
General Permissions
-
storage: Essential for saving your personal settings, theme preferences, custom shortcuts, and widget configurations locally on your device. -
unlimitedStorage: Allows the extension to store larger files locally, such as high-resolution wallpapers uploaded from your computer, preventing the browser from evicting them. -
search: Enables the "System default" search engine option by utilizing the browser's native search API, complying with Chrome Web Store policies. -
alarms: Optional permission requested strictly when "Weather Alerts" are enabled, used to schedule background background updates.
Optional Host Permissions
To give you maximum control, all external host permissions are optional by default. You are not required to approve these hosts during installation. Instead, the browser will prompt you individually only when you activate a specific feature.
-
Search Suggestions (e.g.,
google.com): Used for search auto-completion. -
Direct Wallpapers (
peapix.com,nasa.gov,wikimedia.org): Used to fetch daily backgrounds. -
Proxied Wallpapers
(
snw-mint.workers.dev): Used to securely fetch Unsplash and Pexels daily images via our Cloudflare Worker cache. -
Weather Widget (
open-meteo.com): Used to fetch forecast data.
5. You Are in Control
Because all data is stored locally, you maintain complete ownership. You can delete your data at any time by:
- Using the "Reset to Defaults" option in the extension settings.
- Clearing your browser's local storage and cache for the extension.
- Uninstalling the extension, which instantly purges all associated local data.
6. Open Source and Verifiable
Fluent New Tab is 100% open-source. We invite you to inspect our source code on GitHub to verify that the extension operates exactly as outlined in this document.
7. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect feature additions or infrastructure improvements. Any modifications will be reflected here with an updated "Last Updated" date.
8. Contact
If you have any questions or concerns regarding this policy or data handling practices, please reach out via email at snowmint.dev@gmail.com.