Kiku Hours is a browser extension for Chrome, the other Chromium browsers and Firefox that counts the time you spend listening to a language you are learning. This page says exactly what it stores, what leaves your computer, and what never does. It is written to be read.

What is stored, and where

Everything the extension knows about you is stored in your browser's local extension storage, on your machine:

• Watch intervals. For each video you played on a supported site: an identifier for the video, the title, when you watched, and how many seconds counted. Intervals are stored individually so the totals can be audited.
• Language labels. The language detected for each video, so it is never listened to twice.
• Settings. The languages you declared, your daily goal, and display preferences.

None of this is sent to us. There is no account and no server of ours that holds it. You can export it as a spreadsheet, back it up to a file, restore that file elsewhere, or delete all of it, from the extension's Settings.

Audio

To detect the language of a video, the extension holds the most recent minute of the video's audio in memory and analyses it in windows of up to thirty seconds. That analysis is performed entirely on your computer, by a language-identification model that ships inside the extension. No audio leaves your machine, in any browser.

Kiku Hours never records the audio, never stores it, and never sends it anywhere. The buffer and the analysis exist in your browser only for as long as it takes to judge which language the audio is in, and are then discarded. Only the resulting language label is kept. On YouTube, to confirm a label, the extension also reads the language of the video's auto-generated captions from the video's own page; nothing about that leaves your browser. On Netflix no audio is analysed at all: the language comes from the audio track you selected in the player.

Usage analytics

The extension sends a small number of anonymous usage events, such as that it was installed, that a language was detected, or that a feature was used, to help us understand whether it is working and to improve it. Events are processed by PostHog, hosted in the European Union. Each installation is identified by a random identifier generated on install and derived from nothing about you. Where an event carries a number, it is a coarse range about the extension itself, such as how long detection took or how many of a day's videos it could label. We never send video identifiers, titles, URLs or channels; never the language of any video; never how long you watched anything or your totals; never your other settings. Two things about you are included. The languages you declare in the extension as native or learning, so we can see which languages the extension is used for; this is sent when you declare one, and never tied to anything you watched. And the language your browser's interface is set to, which is the language the extension shows in, so we can see which of its translations are used. As with any web request, your IP address reaches the analytics service when an event is sent; the service is configured to discard it on receipt, so it is never stored, no location is derived from it, and no profile is built.

In Firefox these events are controlled by the data-collection permission Firefox shows when the extension is installed. Leave it unticked and no usage events are sent; the extension works exactly the same either way, and the choice can be changed later under the add-on's permissions in Firefox's add-ons manager.

Permissions

• Site access to the supported video sites (YouTube, Twitch, Kick, Vimeo, Dailymotion, TED, Bilibili, Niconico and Netflix), to read the player and, where the audio is not encrypted, tap its audio.
• Storage, for the data above.
• Side panel in Chrome, or the sidebar in Firefox, which is the extension's only interface.
• Tabs and scripting, to know which supported site is open and to start tracking in tabs that were already open when the extension was installed.

This website

This site may use PostHog to count page views. It sets no advertising cookies and does not build profiles.

Children

Kiku Hours is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the effective date above changes with it. Questions: ablomley04@gmail.com.