Privacy

Glossing — the web app and the browser extension. Last updated 7 September 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 an extension that is not connected to a notebook, requests go straight from your browser to Anthropic with your own API key. A connected extension asks through the notebook. If you gave no key of your own, questions go to OpenAI on the site's key instead, and the same rules apply. From the web app, requests pass through the Glossing server on their way to the provider — the server keeps your API keys with your account, uses them only for your own requests, and never shows them back to you or anyone else; your text is relayed for the duration of the request and not kept, though "not kept" is again my code and my word, not cryptography. The providers' own terms govern what happens on their side.
• When you dictate a note. Hold the microphone key in the extension and it records your voice — in the extension's own offscreen page, so the browser asks for the microphone once rather than on every site. Recordings are capped at a minute and go, through your connected notebook, to ElevenLabs to be turned into text; the Glossing server relays the audio and keeps none of it. Nothing is recorded unless you are holding the key, and there is no dictation without a connected notebook.
• Usage counts. The server keeps, per account and per day, how many times you were seen and how many questions, highlights, imports and saved pages there were, so the person running it can tell whether Glossing is being used. Counts only: not what you read, highlighted or asked. Nothing runs in your browser for this, and nothing goes to any third party.
• 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.
• Documents you explicitly share. Sharing a document creates a secret link; anyone who has that link can read the document and see your highlights — and your conversations about it only if you chose to include them when creating the link. Nothing is ever shared without you pressing the share button, and revoking a link stops new access immediately.

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), Google (sign-in), and ElevenLabs (only if you dictate) — 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.