Smol Cat — Privacy Policy
Last updated: 27 September 2026
Smol Cat collects no personal information.
The rest of this page explains what that means in practice, including the one thing the extension fetches. Every claim in it is one you can check for yourself from your own browser, without taking our word for anything.
What we collect
No personal information. There is no account, no identifier and no profile. The only thing sent about how the extension is used is an anonymous weekly summary, described below, which you can switch off.
What we send
Only the anonymous weekly usage summary described below, which you can switch off. Nothing else about you or your browsing is sent. Every cat is drawn in code as SVG, every sound is synthesised in code with the Web Audio API, and there are no images, fonts, audio files, analytics scripts or third-party libraries loaded from anywhere. You can confirm this yourself in your browser's Network tab: apart from the two requests described on this page, the extension makes none.
There is one thing the extension fetches, and it sends nothing to do so. When you open the toolbar popup, it may download a short message file from smol-friends.com — at most once an hour — so we can post the occasional line at the bottom of the popup, such as a new video. The request carries no cookie, no identifier and nothing about you or what you browse. Like any web request it reaches the site's host, Cloudflare, from your IP address. The file is text and links, never code, and a link can only point to our own site or our own channels. It is never fetched on the pages you visit, and never in the background.
What we store, and where
Three things, all on your own computer:
- Your settings — which kinds of cat you chose, how many cats you keep, how often you want visits, quiet hours, blocked sites, size, colours, sound. These use your browser's synced storage, so they follow your own browser profile if you have sync switched on. That is between you and your browser's maker; it never passes through us.
- A record of the extension's own activity — how many visits you have had, how many times you have fed the cats and rung the bell, which kinds of visit happened, when the last visit and the last treat were, and the times of visits in the past hour, which is how the hourly limit is enforced. It also keeps the last few errors, so a fault can be diagnosed if you ever choose to report one: the message and the line numbers inside this extension, with any web address removed before it is written down. These use
storage.local. The weekly summary below is built from them; nothing else is. - The latest message file, the one described above, so the popup can show it straight away rather than waiting for the network. It uses
storage.local.
Apart from the anonymous weekly summary below, none of that is sent anywhere. It is kept on your own computer, and it is deleted with the extension.
None of it includes anything about which sites you visit, or anything about you.
Page access
The extension asks for access to the pages you visit so it can draw a cat on top of them. It uses that access for exactly two things: adding its own element to the page, and reading the size of the window to decide where the cat should stand.
It does not read the text of pages, does not touch form fields, does not look at what you type, and does not record which sites you visit.
One clarification, because it sounds worse than it is: while a page is open, the extension keeps a single number in memory — the time you last pressed a key. Not which key, not how many, just a timestamp. It exists so a cat never interrupts you mid-sentence. It is never written to storage, never leaves the page, and is discarded the moment the tab closes.
Anonymous usage summary
Smol Cat collects anonymous usage data to improve your experience. It is on unless you switch it off. You are told about it in the toolbar popup after your first 30 cat visits, and nothing is sent before that. You can switch it off there, or at any time under Settings → Help improve Smol Cat.
Once a week, on a day chosen at random when you installed it, the extension sends: how many cats turned up, how many times you rang the bell or put out treats, which kinds of visit happened, whether a cat has ever appeared at all, which settings you changed away from their defaults, and how many sites you added to the blocklist — never which sites. Plus any errors: the message, the line numbers inside this extension, and the last few steps before it broke, with any web address stripped out first.
There is no account, no identifier and no cookie. Nothing ties one week to another, or to you. The only things kept for it are which day of the week to report on (a number from one to seven) and when the extension was installed, which works out how long each summary covers. Both stay on your computer and identify nobody. It goes to a small service we run ourselves on Cloudflare, which does not store your IP address; no analytics company is involved.
Data sharing and sale
We do not sell or share any data with anyone. The anonymous weekly summary is used only to make Smol Cat better.
Children
The extension collects no personal information from anyone, of any age.
Changes
If this ever changes, the change will appear here and in the extension's listing before it ships. The commitment above is a design constraint, not a preference: only two files in the extension are able to make a network request at all. One reads the message file described above and sends nothing; the other sends the anonymous weekly summary unless you have switched it off. An automated check runs before every release and fails if a third file gains that ability, or if the message request starts carrying anything.
Other versions of Smol Cat
This policy covers the browser extension. The VS Code panel and the desktop app collect nothing and make no network requests at all.
This website
smol-friends.com uses no cookies, no analytics and no tracking. The Adopt buttons look at which browser and computer you are using, inside your own browser, only to point you to the right place; that is not stored or sent anywhere. Like any website, it is delivered by its host, Cloudflare, which sees your IP address in order to send you the page.
If you answer the one question on the page shown after removing Smol Cat, your answer and any note you add are sent to our service at api.smol-friends.com. They are stored without your IP address or any identifier, and anything that looks like a web address in the note is removed before it is saved. Answering is entirely up to you.
Where this is published
This policy is served at https://smol-friends.com/privacy-policy and is generated from the copy in the extension's own source tree, so the two cannot disagree.
Contact
Questions or problems: hello@smol-friends.com.
Applies to Smol Cat 0.3.1.