Last updated 13 September 2026
Alcove Privacy Policy
Alcove has no server. There is no account, no analytics, no telemetry and no backend belonging to the developer - so there is nowhere for your data to be sent, and none of it is collected, stored or seen by us.
What Alcove is
Alcove replaces Chrome's new tab page with a customisable start page: a wallpaper, clock, search box, shortcuts, widgets and a set of small utilities. This policy covers the Alcove browser extension only.
What is stored on your device
All of this lives in your browser's own storage and never leaves your computer unless a row below says otherwise.
| What | Where | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Settings | Chrome sync storage | Layout, wallpaper choice, widgets, quick links, display name, weather location, chosen search engine. |
| Music playlists | Chrome sync storage | The YouTube playlist links you add. Which one is currently selected stays on this device. |
| Wallpapers | IndexedDB, this device only | The images you upload. They are never transmitted anywhere. |
| Site icons | IndexedDB, this device only | Cached shortcut icons, so each is fetched at most once. |
| Notepad and To-Do List | Local storage, this device only | The note you type and the items on your list. Never transmitted. |
| Reminders and timer | Local storage, this device only | So they still fire after the browser restarts. |
| News topics | Chrome sync storage | The sections and keywords you chose to follow. |
| Cached headlines | Local storage, this device only | So a new tab paints without waiting on the network. Cleared when you remove your last topic. |
| Weather and rate caches | Local storage, this device only | Avoiding repeat requests for data that changes slowly. |
About Chrome sync. The three rows marked sync storage are handled by Chrome's own sync, which means that if you have Chrome Sync switched on they travel through your Google account to your other signed-in devices, under Google's privacy policy rather than ours. That includes the quick links you save, your display name, your weather location and the news topics you follow. Your wallpapers, notes and cached data are stored locally precisely so they never do this.
What leaves your device, and to whom
Alcove talks directly to the services below from your browser. Each request goes to that third party, never through us, and each happens only when you use the feature it belongs to. Your data in each case is governed by that service's own privacy policy.
| Service | What is sent | When |
|---|---|---|
| Open-Meteo | The coordinates of the location you chose, and the text you type when searching for a city. No key or account. | When a weather widget is on screen. |
| er-api.com | Nothing identifying - a request for current exchange rates. | When you open the currency converter. |
| Google and DuckDuckGo icon services | The origin of a site in your quick links - never the page path or query. A fresh install ships with five links already in the rail, so this happens for those too, before you have added any of your own. | Once per hostname, then cached. Can be switched off in Settings. |
| YouTube including the playback relay page | The playlist and video IDs from playlists you added, to read public track titles and load cover art and the player. | When you use the music panel. |
| Google News | The name of a section you picked, or a keyword you typed, as a request for that feed. No account, no identifier, and nothing about you. | Only if you add a news topic, and at most once every 20 minutes per topic. |
| ipwho.is and ipify used by the My IP tool | Nothing but the request itself. Your public IP address is what those services read from the connection and report back to you, along with the city and provider it maps to. No account, no key. | Only while the My IP tool is open. |
| Your default search engine | The text you type in the search box. | When you search. Alcove hands the query to your browser, which navigates as it would from the address bar. |
News
The news feature is off until you pick a topic, and the access it needs to reach Google News is requested at that moment rather than at install. Remove your last topic and Alcove hands the access back and deletes the cached headlines.
What is sent is the topic itself and nothing else: "Technology", or whatever keyword you typed. Google sees that request the way it would see anyone loading a public feed. Reading a headline is a normal visit to the publisher, under their own policy.
Images
The image tools and the editor run entirely in your browser. A photo you convert, resize or edit is read from disk into memory and never uploaded, to us or to anyone else. There is no request to send it in: the conversion is done by your own browser's canvas.
Nothing is kept afterwards either. Close the tab and the image is gone from memory; only the file you chose to save remains, wherever you saved it.
Browsing history
The shortcut row under the search box can show your recently visited or most visited pages. That feature is off by default, and the permission it needs is requested only at the moment you switch it on - not at install.
When it is on, Alcove reads those page titles and addresses from Chrome and draws them on the new tab. They are read on your device and displayed; they are never transmitted anywhere. Switching the row off stops the reading, and you can revoke the permission in Chrome at any time.
What Alcove never does
- No data is sold or transferred to third parties, other than to the services listed above to perform the feature you asked for.
- No data is used or transferred for any purpose unrelated to Alcove's single purpose.
- No data is used or transferred to determine creditworthiness or for lending purposes.
- No advertising, no tracking, no fingerprinting, no profiling, no third-party analytics.
- Alcove does not read, collect or transmit the content of the web pages you visit.
Deleting your data
Removing Alcove from Chrome deletes everything it stored on your device, including wallpapers, notes and cached headlines. Individual items can be cleared sooner: Settings has a reset, and each tool clears its own data. Anything already synced through your Google account is cleared by removing the extension while signed in, or through Google's own controls.
Children
Alcove is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect anything from them. Since it collects nothing from anyone, there is nothing held to remove.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and a material change will accompany a new version of the extension. The current version always lives at this address.
Contact
Questions about this policy or about Alcove's handling of data: akshaypjoshi@gmail.com.