Reading Pencil: Privacy Policy
Last updated: 7 October 2026
Reading Pencil is a browser extension that draws a small pencil under the line you are reading. This policy says exactly what it does with your data. The short version: nothing leaves your computer.
What Reading Pencil collects
Nothing is collected, sent or shared. Reading Pencil makes no network requests of any kind. It has no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, no accounts and no servers.
What it stores on your device
Reading Pencil keeps a small amount of information in your browser’s own
extension storage (chrome.storage.local), on your computer only:
- Your settings: your reading pace, Pencil or Line, which hand, colour, highlight strength, and whether to keep to the article.
- Where you left off: for each long page you have started reading with
the pencil (at most 50; the oldest are removed first):
- the page’s address (and, if the site changed its address while you
read, up to three other addresses of the same article), with tracking
parameters (such as
utm_source) and parameters that carry secrets (such as tokens, passwords, signatures, session IDs or email addresses) removed; very long addresses are not kept at all; - the first 80 characters of the paragraph you were on, used only to find that paragraph again when you come back;
- how far into that paragraph you were, and when.
- the page’s address (and, if the site changed its address while you
read, up to three other addresses of the same article), with tracking
parameters (such as
- Whether you have seen the short how-to hint (a count, so it stops after a few times).
Nothing is stored for pages you read in an Incognito window.
This information is never transmitted anywhere, and websites cannot read it from the extension’s storage. It is used only to draw the pencil and to put it back where you left off. While the pencil is drawn on a page, that page’s own scripts can see it there (its position and colour, and the “continue” card when one is shown), as they can see anything else on their page.
How to remove it
- Open the toolbar popup → Where you left off to forget one page or all of them.
- Uninstalling Reading Pencil removes everything it stored.
Permissions, and why
- Read and change data on websites (content script and host access for
httpandhttpspages): when you start the pencil on a page, to find the text of the article and draw the pencil over it. Page content is read in your browser to measure lines; it is never stored (apart from the 80-character excerpt above) or sent anywhere. - storage: to keep your settings and places on your device.
- activeTab and scripting: to place the pencil on a tab where it isn’t running yet, when you ask for it there; and once, when the extension is installed, updated or switched back on, to give the web pages already open its script, so that “Start reading here” works in them without a reload. Until you start the pencil, that script only notes where you right-click, and, when you open the toolbar popup, counts the lines it could read there. Nothing leaves your browser.
- contextMenus: the “Start reading here” item in the right-click menu.
Children
Reading Pencil collects no data from anyone, including children.
Changes
If this policy ever changes, the new version will be published here with a new date. Reading Pencil will never begin collecting or transmitting data without a new version of the extension and of this policy.
Contact
Questions: message @threatner_ on X.