Privacy

Sift's focus features run locally. Hosted AI is optional and transfers content only after you choose to use it.

What Sift handles

Sift reads YouTube page content on your device to show focused search results, a video brief, and transcripts provided by YouTube. It also measures feature use and observed playback in hourly totals.

What Sift stores

Settings, temporary pass state, and hourly usage totals stay in your browser's local or session storage. Sift does not store searches, URLs, titles, channel names, video IDs, transcripts, or adult-site activity.

Optional hosted AI

When you request a Sift Premium summary or chat answer, Sift sends the selected video's transcript, your question, and recent in-memory chat context to the Sift API and OpenRouter. Sift uses OpenRouter's zero-data-retention routing and denies providers that collect prompt data. Sift does not save transcript, question, chat, or answer content after the request finishes.

The Sift API stores an opaque installation ID, a keyed hash of the installation credential, subscription status, Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, signed webhook event identifiers, and monthly AI-request counts. These records provide access, prevent duplicate billing events, enforce the monthly allowance, and protect the service from abuse.

Payments

Stripe processes Sift Premium checkout details such as email, billing country, tax information, and payment method under Stripe's privacy policy. Sift receives customer and subscription identifiers but does not receive or store complete card details.

Sharing and sale

Sift shares hosted-AI content only with the Sift API, OpenRouter, and an eligible zero-data-retention model provider to return the answer you requested. Stripe receives payment and subscription data. Sift does not sell data, use data for advertising, or use data for lending or credit decisions.

Control and retention

Usage totals are retained for the period selected in Settings. You can export the totals or delete all Sift settings and measurements at any time. Uninstalling Sift also removes its browser storage.

Use Delete hosted account in Settings to cancel an active Sift Premium subscription immediately, delete the hosted installation and entitlement records, and clear the browser credential. Stripe and Sift may retain transaction records where law requires it.

Permissions

Sift runs only on youtube.com. It uses storage for local settings and totals, alarms to end temporary passes, and declarative network rules to redirect distracting YouTube feeds to its packaged search page.

Limited Use

Sift's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Changes and support

Material policy changes will be posted here with a new effective date. For privacy questions or support, open an issue on the Sift support page.

Effective 14 July 2026