Privacy

This policy covers the website asciitube.com and the AsciiTube extension for Chrome. Last updated 16 October 2026.

In short

  • The extension collects nothing and sends nothing anywhere.
  • The website counts visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets no cookies.
  • Video is turned into ASCII on your own computer. Its pixels are never recorded, stored or uploaded.
  • No accounts, no advertising, and nothing is sold or shared.

The website

Hosting

The site and its films are served by Cloudflare (Pages and R2). Like any web host, Cloudflare processes the technical details every request carries, such as your IP address and browser, to deliver the pages and protect them from abuse. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.

Analytics

We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count page views and measure how fast pages load. It does not use cookies or local storage and does not fingerprint you; it reports aggregate numbers only. We see totals such as visits per page and country, never individual visitors.

YouTube videos

When you paste a YouTube link (desktop Chrome), the page shows YouTube’s own embedded player. Inside that player, YouTube’s terms and Google’s privacy policy apply, including YouTube’s cookies. AsciiTube does not control the player and receives nothing from it except whether a video could be loaded and whether it is playing.

To draw the video as ASCII, the page asks Chrome to share this tab, and only the player’s box of it. Chrome asks you first and shows a sharing bar while it is on; stop it there at any time. The shared pixels go straight to the ASCII drawing on your computer. They are never recorded, stored or uploaded, and the page sends nothing about them anywhere.

The films

The open films (Big Buck Bunny and Sintel) stream from media.asciitube.com, also on Cloudflare, and are drawn as ASCII on your computer the same way.

On your device

The site keeps two things in your browser’s local storage, on your device only: the YouTube links you watched recently (so you can open them again) and your ASCII settings (colour and density). They are never sent anywhere. Clear them with “Clear” next to your links, or by clearing this site’s data in your browser. asciitube.com sets no cookies.

The Chrome extension

The extension redraws YouTube’s pages as ASCII text art in your browser: videos, thumbnails, avatars and the interface.

  • What it reads: the pictures and video frames of the YouTube pages you open (youtube.com, and YouTube players embedded on other sites), so that it can redraw them. It reads them in memory on your device and discards them; it keeps only the ASCII drawing on screen.
  • What it fetches: pictures YouTube is already showing you, such as thumbnails and animated previews, again from YouTube’s own image servers (i.ytimg.com and similar), usually straight from your browser’s cache, because a page may not read a picture’s pixels otherwise. Nothing is sent to us or to anyone else.
  • What it stores: one setting, whether ASCII is on or off, in Chrome’s extension storage on your device.
  • What it does not do: it has no servers, no analytics or telemetry, no accounts and no remote code. It does not collect, transmit, sell or share any personal or browsing data, and does not block or change ads.

The extension’s use of data complies with the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.

Children

AsciiTube collects no personal information from anyone, including children.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new date.