Privacy

Glossing — the web app and the browser extension. Last updated 30 July 2026.

Glossing is a reading tool. It keeps the passages you highlight, the notes you write, and the conversations you have about them. This page says plainly where that goes.

What is stored, and where

• In your browser. The extension keeps your highlights, notes and threads in the browser's own extension storage. If you never connect a notebook, that is the only copy and it never leaves the machine.
• On the Glossing server, if you sign in or connect a notebook. Highlights, notes, threads, conversations, documents you save, and the URL and title of the pages they came from are stored on the glossing.app server, and sync back down to any browser you pair — connect a new laptop and your highlights follow you. To be plain about what that means: glossing.app is one machine (currently rented from Fly.io, in San Jose), administered personally by me, Noa. Your data sits in ordinary files on its disk. It is encrypted on the way there and the disk is encrypted at rest, but it is not end-to-end encrypted — I have root on that machine and nothing technical stops me from reading what is stored. I don't read anyone's notebook, but that is a promise you are trusting, not a mechanism the system enforces. If you self-host instead, all of the above applies to your server and whoever runs it. If Glossing ever outgrows one machine, the shape of the promise stays the same — your notebook lives on hardware I run — and this page will say what changed.

What leaves your device, and when

• When you ask a question. The passage, your question, and the text of the page you are reading are sent to an AI provider to be answered — Anthropic (Claude) or OpenAI (GPT), whichever model you picked in settings. (OCR of scanned PDFs, by contrast, runs on the Glossing server itself with a local model — page images go to no provider at all.) From the extension, requests go straight from your browser to Anthropic with your own API key. From the web app, requests pass through the Glossing server on their way to the provider — the server relays your key and your text for the duration of the request and does not keep them, though "does not keep" is again my code and my word, not cryptography. The providers' own terms govern what happens on their side.
• When you sign in. Accounts use Google sign-in, so Google learns that you signed in, and Glossing stores your email address to identify your notebook.
• Web search, if enabled (it is on by default and can be turned off in settings). The model may search the web or fetch a URL while answering. That runs on Anthropic's servers, never in your browser — no cookies, no sessions, nothing signed in.
• Routing PDFs through Glossing, if enabled (off by default). Your Glossing server fetches the PDF's URL so your browser doesn't have to.

What never leaves

• Passwords, cookies, form contents and payment details. Glossing does not read them.
• Anything to a third party beyond the ones named above. The extension talks to exactly two places: Anthropic, to answer your question, and your notebook server if you connected one. The web app adds OpenAI (if you pick a GPT model) and Google (sign-in) — and nothing else. Site icons are taken from the page itself when you save it and kept locally, so opening your library asks nobody anything.
• Pages you have not highlighted or saved. Nothing is captured in the background — every send follows something you did.
• There is no analytics, no telemetry, and no tracking of any kind. Nothing is sold, rented, or shared — with advertisers, brokers, or anyone else.

What you can do about it

• Turn Glossing off for any site — an inbox, a bank — from the toolbar popup.
• Delete any highlight, note or conversation and it is deleted from the server's disk, not marked hidden. One caveat: the disk is snapshotted daily for disaster recovery and snapshots are kept for five days, so a deleted item can survive in those for up to five days before it is gone everywhere.
• Revoke the extension's pairing at any time in Settings, which stops all syncing.
• Sign out of every device at once from Settings → Account.

Children

Glossing is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect their data.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or where it goes, the date above changes with it.

Questions, or want your data removed? Email privacy@glossing.app.