Privacy Policy for Material You NewTab Extension

Introduction

"Material You NewTab" is an open-source extension designed to enhance the appearance of your browser’s default home page and new tab. It was originally developed as a personal project using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Due to positive feedback, it was later made available on both the Firefox and Chrome Web Stores.

Community Contributions

Since its release, talented developers from the community have contributed to improving the extension through GitHub. These contributors have added new features and fixed bugs, making the extension even better. Each pull request is carefully reviewed, tested, and verified to ensure it meets our standards before merging.

Data Collection and Permissions

Material You NewTab prioritizes your privacy and is focused solely on providing a better browsing experience. This extension does not collect, store, or share any personal data. All processing is done locally within your browser. No analytics, tracking scripts, or remote logging systems are included.

Permissions

We only request the minimal permissions needed to deliver a rich, dynamic browsing experience. Below is a breakdown of the permissions used and what they are for:

• search: Enables integration with the browser’s default search engine.
• bookmarks (optional): If granted, allows optional display of your bookmarks directly on the new tab page.

Browser APIs

• SpeechRecognition (Web Speech API): Enables voice search. Microphone access is triggered only when the mic icon is clicked and handled entirely by your browser. No voice data is collected or stored.
• Geolocation: Used to improve weather accuracy. Access is browser-managed and not tracked or shared.

External APIs

We use the following external services to improve user experience:

• Search Suggestions:
  • Google: https://www.google.com/complete/search?client=*
  • DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/ac/?q=*
  • Brave: https://search.brave.com/api/suggest?q=*
  • Wikipedia: https://*.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=opensearch&search=*

  These are used to provide auto-complete suggestions while typing in the search bar. You can control which sites the extension can access from browser settings.

• Location Detection (IPinfo):
  • https://ipinfo.io/json – fetches approximate city-level location based on your IP for local weather display.
• Weather Updates (WeatherAPI):
  • https://api.weatherapi.com/v1/forecast.json?key=* – retrieves daily forecasts based on your location and language preferences.
  • https://api.weatherapi.com/v1/search.json?key=* – used to fetch location suggestions when searching for a city.
• Random Wallpapers (Lorem Picsum):
  • https://picsum.photos/1920/1080 – used to fetch high-quality random images.
• Quotes (well300's Quotes API):
  • https://quotes-api-self.vercel.app/quote/ – provides motivational quotes.
• Favicon Fetching (Google's Favicon API):
  • https://s2.googleusercontent.com/s2/favicons*
  • https://www.google.com/s2/favicons*
  These are used to fetch favicons of websites for shortcuts and bookmarks.

Proxy Server (Optional)

Material You NewTab includes an optional proxy feature that is disabled by default. This feature can be used to bypass CORS restrictions when fetching search suggestions.

For users who wish to enable this feature, we highly recommend hosting your own proxy server to maintain full control and ensure maximum privacy.

If enabled and left at the default setting, search suggestion requests will be routed through the public proxy at: https://mynt-proxy.rhythmcorehq.com.

Transparency and Security

While we strive to keep our code secure, we acknowledge that no project is entirely immune to potential issues. In rare cases, unintended code or errors could be introduced through contributions. We encourage users to review the source code directly on GitHub for peace of mind. Use this extension only when you are fully comfortable with its contents.

Thank You

Thank you for your trust in the Material You NewTab extension, and we hope it enhances your browsing experience with every new tab you open!