SOUNDSAVO / PRIVACY

Privacy note

You can list audio tabs by number with no tab-title permission.

Website privacy

The marketing website is static and does not connect to analytics or advertising trackers.

What SoundSavo processes

When you explicitly enable SoundSavo on a tab, Chrome supplies that tab's audio stream to the extension. Processing and the speech-band energy estimate happen in a local Web Audio graph; only the processed result is sent to your audio output.

Optional neural speech cleanup

When both Live Restore and AI Speech Cleanup are enabled, an optional locally packaged RNNoise WebAssembly model can process captured speech samples in memory. This model never receives the page title, history, microphone audio or remote server requests; there is no background audio recording. Music is excluded from this speech model. If the model is missing or not ready, normal local sound processing remains active. The default developer archive does not contain the third-party model; model preparation is an explicit build-time action.

Optional Movie Guard

Movie Guard is off by default. When you enable it, Chrome asks for website and notification access. A local content script reads the playing video's duration plus limited media metadata such as the current title, structured media type and genre. Classification happens inside the page's isolated extension context. Page titles, paths and media names are not stored or sent to a server; the service worker receives only the bounded classification result needed to decide whether to show a reminder.

Optional Quiet Ads

Quiet Ads is off by default. When you grant website access, a local script checks explicit player ad markers and may quiet or mute a buffered ad before playback. It normally restores the former volume after the ad, unless you explicitly adjust a compatible player volume control. Unmarked ads may pass through unchanged. SoundSavo does not record audio, track viewed advertisements, store movie titles or contact a server.

For embedded video, Quiet Ads checks only the parent site's hostname to respect local exclusions and avoids changing audio if it cannot check.

Quiet Ads permissions are opt-in and revocable.

RUTUBE first-party video-ad signalling.

Restore Studio alpha — locally opened files

Ephemeral RUTUBE iframe signalling within the extension.

Optional Restore Studio noise reduction runs in a dedicated worker within the same browser origin. A copy of the decoded audio samples and the chosen 0.6-second noise-only reference position are processed in temporary memory; there is no server transfer. Noise reduction is off by default. Large files have stricter local processing limits.

Only after you choose an audio file in Restore Studio does Chrome decode it in this page. A temporary waveform and optional processed version exist in the page's memory. Local audio playback uses browser-managed Blob URLs, which are released when a different file is selected or the page closes. No audio or filenames are uploaded or written to SoundSavo's persistent preferences. A processed WAV is saved only if you explicitly click Download; the original is not modified. Chrome may apply its own standard browser caching/decoding behavior.

For optional neural speech cleanup, the extension checks whether locally bundled WASM and AudioWorklet hashes match their package manifest and whether the worklet keeps processing audio frames. Only transient readiness and heartbeat times are used in memory to switch back to standard DSP on failure; these diagnostics do not contain speech, audio samples, video titles, or browsing history and are not sent to a server.

What the preview stores

The default mode, balancing strength, output level, Movie Guard and Quiet Ads preferences are stored in Chrome local storage. A site profile contains only a normalized hostname, audio preferences and local update time. A separate opt-out list contains only hostnames where film reminders are muted; no media inspection occurs there while the site is muted. It does not contain the page path, title, media name, detected energy values or listening history. A tab-scoped reminder timestamp is kept in session storage to prevent repeated notifications and is removed when the tab closes.

What the preview does not do

• It does not request microphone access.
• It does not record or upload tab audio.
• It does not use analytics, advertising SDKs or a user account.
• It does not request browsing-history permission.

Permissions

activeTab selects the tab after your click; tabCapture obtains its audio; offscreen hosts the audio graph; storage keeps local preferences; scripting manages optional Movie Guard and Quiet Ads content scripts. Notifications are optional and needed only for Movie Guard. Website access is optional and shared by both features; it is removed when both are disabled.

Settings files

Export is created only after your click and stays under your control. Import accepts a bounded JSON file and replaces the local SoundSavo preferences. No settings file is sent to SoundSavo.