Markpad

Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 27, 2026

Markpad ("the extension") is built to work primarily on your device. The Translator feature is the one exception — see "Translator: on-device with an online fallback" below.

What Markpad stores

Snippets, vocabulary terms, page notes, Today tasks (including their time logs), and your settings are stored locally in your browser using Chrome's storage API. This data never leaves your device unless you explicitly enable the optional Google Sync feature, or trigger the Translator's online fallback described below — in which case it is stored only under your own account (for sync) or sent only for that one translation request (for the fallback), and is never shared with, sold to, or used for any other purpose by any third party.

What Markpad does NOT do

• It does not track your browsing history.
• It does not collect analytics, telemetry, or usage statistics.
• It does not show ads.
• It does not transmit page content, snippets, vocabulary terms, notes, or tasks to any server by default — the one exception is the Translator's online fallback, covered below.

Optional permissions

The floating in-page capture button, translate panel, and Pin Widget are off by default. If you enable them in Settings, Markpad requests permission to read the content of the page you're viewing — solely to let you select text and save it. This permission is scoped to the pages you choose and can be revoked at any time from Settings or chrome://extensions.

Translator: on-device with an online fallback

Markpad's Translator runs on Chrome's built-in on-device AI Translator when your browser supports it (Chrome 138+) — in that case, selected text never leaves your device. When on-device translation isn't available, Markpad can fall back to sending the selected text to Google's public translation service so translation still works. This fallback is on by default and can be turned off in Settings ("Online fallback translation") if you'd rather translation simply not work on unsupported browsers. Text sent this way is used only to produce that one translation, is not logged or stored by Markpad, and is subject to Google's own terms for that service.

Optional Google Sync (Markpad Pro)

If you choose to sign in with Google for the optional Markpad Pro sync feature, Markpad reads your Google account email to identify your account and stores your snippets, vocabulary, notes, and Today tasks (including their time logs) in your own private cloud storage so they can sync across your devices. This only happens if you explicitly sign in — nothing signs in automatically, free users are never asked to sign in or pay, and nothing leaves your device otherwise. The only sign-in link a free user sees is "Already have Markpad Pro? Sign in to restore", for someone who bought Markpad Pro on another computer; if that account has no active subscription, you are told so and signed straight back out. You can remove all synced data and disconnect your account at any time from Settings.

Payment and billing (Markpad Pro)

Markpad Pro is sold through Lemon Squeezy, which acts as the Merchant of Record for the sale. Checkout happens entirely on their hosted page: they collect your name, email address, billing location, and payment details, and they handle the charge, invoicing, and any applicable tax. Markpad never sees or stores your card details. Their handling of that information is governed by Lemon Squeezy's own privacy policy.

To connect a purchase back to your copy of the extension without requiring a billing account, Markpad generates a random identifier for your installation the first time it is needed. That identifier is not derived from your name, email, device, or browsing activity — it is simply a random string. It is sent to Lemon Squeezy at checkout so that the resulting subscription can be matched to your installation, and it is stored alongside your subscription status (active or not, which plan, when it expires). If you sign in for Google Sync, that identifier is also linked to your account so your subscription follows you across devices. To do this, the extension sends your Google sign-in token and that installation identifier to Markpad's own license-verification endpoint (hosted on Google Cloud), which checks whether the account has an active Markpad Pro subscription. Nothing else is sent to it.

Time tracking and idle detection

If you start a timer on a Today task, Markpad uses Chrome's idle API to notice when you have stepped away from your computer for 10 minutes or more, so it can ask whether that time should count. This only reads whether the device is active, idle, or locked — never what you were doing — and the result stays on your device.