Privacy Policy
Effective 18 October 2026
The short version: Kolona keeps your links in your browser. Without an account, nothing you add is sent to us. There is no tracking and there are no ads.
Who we are
Kolona is a new tab extension for Chrome and the website kolona.app.
TODO(legal): the legal entity that operates Kolona, and its address.
Questions about privacy, or a request to see or delete your data: [email protected].
The extension without an account
- Your workspaces, columns, links, settings and stashed tabs are stored in your browser’s local storage (IndexedDB) on your computer.
- Nothing is sent to our servers. We don’t collect analytics, crash reports or usage data from the extension.
- There are no ads and no third-party trackers.
- Site icons (favicons) come from Chrome’s own icon cache, through Chrome’s built-in favicon service. Kolona makes no requests to the sites themselves or to any icon service.
- Kolona keeps its own small log of the tabs you open, so it can show Recent tabs, find closed pages in search and close tabs you have forgotten. The log stays on this device, is kept for the time you choose in Settings (at most 90 days), and never includes incognito windows. Kolona does not read your browser history and does not read the content of the pages you visit.
Smart search
Smart search is off until you turn it on.
- When you turn it on, Kolona downloads a language model (about 135 MB) once from Hugging Face. As with any download, Hugging Face’s servers see the IP address of the request. Nothing else is sent.
- The model runs inside the extension, on your computer. It indexes only the title, the domain and the words in the address of each page.
- The index and the log of pages you visited are not synced, are not part of an export and never leave your device. Incognito windows are never recorded or indexed.
- Turning Smart search off deletes the index. Delete model removes the downloaded model.
Permissions
Kolona asks Chrome for these permissions, and uses each one only for what is listed here. It has no host permissions: it cannot read or change the pages you visit.
| Permission | Why Kolona needs it |
|---|---|
tabs | To show your open and recent tabs, switch to them, stash a window and close forgotten tabs. |
storage | To keep small pieces of state, like the Recent tabs log and the Smart search status. |
unlimitedStorage | So your board, your own wallpaper and the Smart search model are not cut off by the browser’s default storage limit. |
favicon | To show site icons from Chrome’s own cache, without contacting the sites. |
contextMenus | To add Save to Kolona and Save link to Kolona to the right-click menu. |
search | To send a web search to your default search engine when you ask for one. |
identity | To sign in with Google for sync. Used only when you sign in. |
offscreen | To run the Smart search model in a hidden extension page, so it doesn’t slow down your new tabs. |
alarms | To schedule Smart search indexing in the background. |
bookmarks (optional) | To import your Chrome bookmarks. Chrome asks you first, and Kolona uses it only when you import. |
Account and sync (Pro)
If you create an account to sync your board:
- We store your email address and, if you sign in with Google, the account identifier Google gives us. If you use email and password, the password is stored as a hash by our authentication provider.
- We store your workspaces, columns, links, settings and your own wallpaper image, so your other devices can read them.
- This data is kept in Supabase, our database provider, in the European Union. Access is limited to your own account by row-level security rules in the database.
- The data travels over encrypted connections, but it is not end-to-end encrypted: Kolona does not encrypt it on your device before upload.
- Stashed tabs, the Recent tabs log, the history of closed pages and everything related to Smart search are not synced.
- Signing out stops sync and leaves the copy on your device.
- To delete your account and the synced data, email [email protected] from the address you signed up with. A delete button in the extension will come later.
Free trial
Signing in, in the extension or on kolona.app, starts a 14-day Pro trial. No card is needed and nothing is charged. To give it to you, we store the date your trial ends next to your account. When the trial ends, Kolona goes back to Free and nothing is deleted.
Payments
Pro is sold through Link, by Stripe as the merchant of record. When you subscribe, you enter your details on a page served by Stripe. Stripe sees your email address, your name and billing address (to calculate the tax for your country), your phone number if you give one, and your card details; we never see or store your card. Stripe sends receipts and invoices by email from Link, and may offer you a Link account to see your orders and manage the subscription at link.com. Stripe’s privacy policy and Link’s privacy policy apply to the data they process. If you ask Stripe to delete your data, it cancels the subscription and deletes the payment records on its side; we then see only that the subscription has ended.
What we keep about your subscription: its status (trial, active, past due or cancelled), the plan (monthly or yearly), when the current period ends, whether it is set to cancel, and the identifiers Stripe gives us for you and your subscription. We keep this so the extension knows what you have paid for and so you can manage the subscription from your account page.
This website
- kolona.app is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Like any web host, Cloudflare processes standard server logs, such as IP addresses and the pages requested, to deliver and protect the site.
- We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits. It sets no cookies, does not track you across sites and does not collect personal data.
- The site sets no cookies of its own and loads no third-party fonts or scripts besides the analytics.
Children
Kolona is not directed at children under 16, and we don’t knowingly collect data from them.
Changes to this policy
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes too. If a change is significant, we will say so in the extension before it takes effect.