Privacy Policy for Astro Novel Reader

Last updated: March 19, 2026

Astro Novel Reader (“the Extension”) is committed to protecting your privacy. This policy explains how the Extension handles information.

1. Information Collection and Usage

No Personal Data Collection

The Extension does not collect, store, or transmit any personal information, browsing history, or user data to the developer or any third-party servers.

Local Processing

  • Web Speech API (Standard Browser): Uses the built-in speech synthesis engine of your browser.
  • Kokoro (Offline): All text-to-speech synthesis is performed locally on your device using WebAssembly and WebGPU (if enabled). No text is sent over the network.
  • Google Translate (Cloud): If you explicitly choose the “Google Translate (Cloud)” engine, the selected text will be sent to Google’s servers (https://translate.google.com) for synthesis. Please refer to Google’s Privacy Policy for how they handle this data.
  • User Dictionary: Your custom word mappings are stored locally in your browser’s chrome.storage or IndexedDB and never leave your device.

Network Usage

The Extension only uses network connections for the following purposes:

  • Kokoro (Offline) Model Downloads: When first using the Kokoro engine, the Extension downloads the necessary voice models from Hugging Face (https://huggingface.co). These models are cached locally.
  • Google Translate (Cloud): If you explicitly choose the “Google Translate (Cloud)” engine, the selected text will be sent to Google’s servers (https://translate.google.com) for synthesis. Please refer to Google’s Privacy Policy for how they handle this data.

2. Permissions

The Extension requires the following permissions to function:

  • storage: To save your preferences and user dictionary.
  • offscreen: To perform audio synthesis and background processing.
  • activeTab: To extract text from the current page for reading.
  • unlimitedStorage: To store large TTS models locally.

3. Changes to This Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page.

4. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, you can contact us via our Support & Feedback form.