Privacy policy

Last updated: October 1, 2026 · applies to version 2.1.0 and later

Short version: PlayLens collects nothing. There are no servers of ours, no accounts, no analytics, no tracking. Everything happens inside your browser. The only exception is the optional Pro licence key, described under “PlayLens Pro and payments”.

What the extension does

PlayLens runs only on play.google.com pages. To show installs, ratings, age, price and last-updated dates, it fetches each app's public Google Play detail page directly from play.google.com — the same pages you could open yourself. These requests go straight from your browser to Google; they never pass through any server operated by us.

Some requests are made only when you ask for them: comparing an app across countries, reading or exporting its reviews, and looking up search suggestions for a word you typed. They go to play.google.com as well.

If you put apps on the Watchlist, PlayLens re-reads their public pages about every six hours, also while no Google Play tab is open. With an empty Watchlist nothing is requested, and the background update can be switched off in the settings.

The details view shows an app's store screenshots; your browser loads them from Google's image servers, exactly as the app's own page does. It also offers links to look an app up on other sites (AppBrain, APKMirror, the App Store). Nothing is sent to those sites unless you click the link, and then only what any link carries: the address you are opening.

Data stored on your device

• Settings (feature toggles, the columns you chose, the countries to compare) are stored in chrome.storage.sync so they follow your Chrome profile.
• A list of apps you opened (package name, app name, icon URL and their public numbers) is stored in chrome.storage.local to fill the panel's Recent tab — at most 60 entries. Clear it from the panel or the settings page, or switch the feature off entirely.
• Your Watchlist — the apps you starred, the changes noticed in them, and the position they had for searches you ran while they were on it.
• A daily record of public numbers (installs, number of ratings, rating) for the apps you came across, at most one entry per app per day, used to work out growth. It can be switched off and cleared in the settings.
• A cache of public app data, kept for up to 12 hours so pages load faster. You can clear it anytime from the settings page.

All of this stays on your device and is never transmitted. The Recent list, the Watchlist and the search positions reflect what you looked at on Google Play; that is why they are kept locally only and each has its own Clear button. Nothing else about your browsing is recorded, and no identifier is created.

PlayLens Pro and payments

The core of PlayLens is free. An optional paid plan, PlayLens Pro, is sold by Polar, which acts as the merchant of record: Polar takes the payment, handles tax and refunds, and emails you a licence key. PlayLens never sees your name, email, card or any payment detail; you enter those on Polar's checkout page, under Polar's own privacy policy.

If you paste a licence key in the settings page, PlayLens sends three things to Polar (api.polar.sh) to check the key and claim one of its device slots: the key, the seller's organisation identifier, and a label for this browser such as “PlayLens · macOS”. It repeats the check about once a day while a key is stored, from the background process, and once more when you remove the key to free the slot. No other data goes with these requests. Without a key, nothing is ever sent to Polar.

The key and the result of the last check (valid or not, expiry date, when it was checked) are stored on your device in chrome.storage.local. They are left out of the backup file Pro can export.

Rank tracker. With a followed keyword, the extension searches Google Play for it about once a day (more often only when you press a button) and stores the app's position on your device, for up to 90 days. These searches go to play.google.com and nowhere else.

Alerts are off until you switch them on in the settings; Chrome then asks for the notifications permission. Notifications are built on your device from data already stored there.

Reviews

Reviews are public text written by other people. PlayLens shows them and lets you save them to a file on your own computer; it leaves the reviewers' names out of both, and does not keep the reviews in its own storage.

Data collected or shared

None, apart from the licence check above for people who buy Pro. PlayLens does not collect, sell, or share any user data. It contains no analytics, telemetry, ads, or third-party code.

Permissions explained

• storage — save your settings, the Recent list, the Watchlist, the daily record and the 12-hour cache described above.
• clipboardWrite — used only when you click a Copy button, to put a table, an email address or a list of search terms on your clipboard.
• alarms — wakes the extension about every six hours to update the Watchlist, follow keyword ranks and re-check a Pro licence.
• notifications (optional) — requested only when you switch on Alerts in the settings, to show a desktop notification when a followed keyword or watched app changes. You can withdraw it by switching Alerts off.
• Calls to api.polar.sh for the licence check need no extra permission: Polar's endpoint accepts requests from extensions, so Chrome shows no additional warning.
• Access to play.google.com — required to read list pages and fetch public app pages, from the page you are on and for the Watchlist update. The extension never runs on any other site.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the update will be published at this address and noted in the project's release notes.

Contact

PlayLens is open source. Questions or concerns: open an issue at github.com/fighttechvn/playlens/issues.