Browser permissions explained

Asked for at install

Asked for only if you use it

• bookmarks - requested at the moment you use one of the controls that needs it: importing a folder, exporting a selection back out, and the Bookmarks section of the library, where you can make folders, add links, rename, move and delete your bookmarks without leaving Latr. That last one writes, which is why the permission is the read-and-change one. Latr never fetches a bookmark to check whether it still works: that would mean a request per bookmark, and it is not a trade it makes. As a required permission it would put read and change your bookmarks on the install dialog for a feature most people never open. See importing bookmarks.
• tabs - requested by the controls that work with your open tabs: the Open tabs list, saving or restoring a window, auto-snoozing tabs you have not touched, a tab limit, closing duplicates as they open, and rules that group tabs for you. Reading the titles and addresses of your open tabs is what Chrome calls read your browsing history, which is why it is asked for at the moment you use one of those and never at install. Features that run on their own check that it is still granted every time and do nothing if it is not.
• tabGroups - requested when you use a tab-group control: grouping, collapsing or moving groups, a rule that groups tabs automatically, or restoring a saved window that had groups in it. Decline it and everything else still works, just without groups.
• sessions - requested when you press Show recently closed on the saved-windows page, or turn on Save a window when you close it. It lets Latr read the list your browser already keeps of tabs and windows you closed. Once it is granted, quick switch also offers those closed tabs. It is never asked for at install.
• clipboardRead - requested only when you choose Save the link you copied in the command palette, and read only at that moment, to pick up the link. Latr never looks at your clipboard on its own.
• history - requested only when you press Search your browsing history too in quick switch. Latr then searches your history for what you type there, on this device, and does nothing else with it. Chrome's prompt says it can also change your history; Latr never does.
• access to latr.page - requested when you activate a Pro licence, and used for nothing else. See activating your licence.
• access to the sites you visit - requested the first time you save several tabs at once with Saving several tabs at once switched on under Page previews in Settings. Chrome can only picture the tab that is showing, so Latr takes a picture of a tab when you look at it, keeps the one latest picture per open tab in memory, deletes it when the tab closes or the browser restarts, and uses it if you save that tab. Picturing a tab other than the one you pressed the button on needs this permission, which Chrome words as read and change your data on all websites. Latr uses it to take that picture and for nothing else: it reads no page content, keeps nothing after the tab is gone unless you saved it, and sends nothing anywhere. Decline it, or switch the setting off, and tabs are saved without pictures.

Every one of these can be revoked afterwards from your browser's extension settings, and everything else keeps working.

What Latr does not ask for

• Your browsing history. Latr cannot see where you have been. It knows about the pages you explicitly saved and nothing else.
• Access to all websites at install. The permission that reads "read and change your data on all websites" is never part of installing Latr. It is offered only as the optional permission above, for pictures of the tabs you save, and only when you use it.
• Your identity, your tabs in general, your downloads, your cookies. None of it, at any point.

What an update will not add

Permissions are not only an install-time question. When an extension adds a permission in an update, and that permission is one your browser warns about, the browser switches the extension off on your machine until you re-approve it - with the same alarming dialog it would have used at install. It is a genuinely unpleasant thing to have happen to software you already trusted, and plenty of people answer it by uninstalling instead.

Latr's required list has not changed since launch, and the commitment is that anything which would trigger that dialog goes in the optional list instead - asked for by the control that needs it, at the moment you use it, and revocable afterwards. That is already why bookmarks is optional rather than required.

What activeTab actually means

activeTab is a deliberately narrow permission: it grants access to one tab, only when you have just performed a gesture on it, and only until that tab navigates away. It is not standing access.

All four ways of saving a reminder are such gestures - clicking the toolbar icon, pressing the shortcut, using the right-click menu, running the address-bar keyword. That is why Latr can read the page title and address at that moment and cannot read anything at any other moment.

Checking and revoking

chrome://extensions → Latr → Details lists what is granted, and the optional ones can be turned off there. Firefox has the same under its Add-ons manager.

You can also see what Latr has actually done from inside it: Settings → About Latr shows live counts of data sent and servers contacted. On a free install both read zero - see where your data lives.