What is sent, and when
Kukuluku has no servers of its own and needs no account. Text goes directly from your browser to Google Translate and, if you enabled it, to your chosen AI provider.
| You do this | This is sent | This is kept |
|---|---|---|
| Select text | The selection. | Recent history and word memory, on your device |
| Select your own text in a field and press Alt+Q | That text. Password, card and one-time-code fields are never read. | Nothing |
| Hold Alt+Q | The text on screen, and a little around it. | Nothing: let go and the page is back |
| Press Alt+Q twice | The text on screen, and text the site adds later. | Nothing: Alt+Q, Esc or the bar ends it |
| Always translate a site | The visible text, each time one of its pages opens. Switch it off in the popup. | The site name, in your own list |
| Hold Alt over a paragraph | That paragraph, and the next one if it is close by. | Nothing |
| Click while holding Alt | A word you pick, for its dictionary entry; the sentence again if you ask for another wording. | Only what you save yourself |
Never read or sent while you hold a key — text in input fields and editors, passwords, code blocks, parts a site marks as not to be translated, the page title and its address. While Kukuluku is paused or off for a site, holding the keys does not translate the page there.
At other times Kukuluku reads only your selection and the sentence around it. Every request also carries the target language. Pronunciation uses your browser’s speech voices; some of them work online. Translations stay in the open tab’s memory until it is reloaded or closed, and they reach your history or lexicon only if you save a word or sentence yourself.
Nothing else leaves your device, and page addresses are not recorded at all. Your history, saved words, word memory and usage counters stay local: see section 03. Providers process text under their own policies, and Kukuluku does not control what they keep: see section 06.
The address of the page you are on
Kukuluku does not record the addresses of pages you visit. There is no browsing history and no list of addresses — not in your history, not in your lexicon, not in word memory, and not on any server. The only site names stored are the ones you add yourself, described in section 04.
The extension uses the address of the tab you are on in two situations. On each page it checks, on your device, whether the page is Google Docs or Sheets and whether its host name is in your own lists from section 04, so it knows when to stay silent and when to translate. And while the Kukuluku popup is open, it takes the host name — for example example.com — to show that name next to the translate on this site and always translate pages switches. This is what the activeTab permission is for.
In both cases the address is used on your device and then discarded. A site name is written down only if you flip one of those switches yourself, and then it goes into your own local list described in section 04.
Earlier versions kept the page address with each saved word. Version 3.0 no longer does, and it deletes those old addresses from your device when it updates.
History and lexicon
Kukuluku can store recent translations locally in your browser so you can review or copy them from the extension popup. This history may include the selected text, the translated text, source language, target language, timestamp, and the sentence surrounding your selection — the sentence is used to show the phrase in context when you review a saved word.
Words you look up more than once, and words or sentences you save yourself, are kept locally as a lexicon you can review. An entry holds the word or phrase, its translation, an example sentence, how many separate days you have met it, and your review progress. It does not hold the page it came from.
Kukuluku also keeps a local word memory: for each word you translate it records the translation, how many times you looked it up, and when you first and last saw it. This is what lets a repeated word be answered instantly and without a network request. It stores no page addresses and no sentences, and it is capped so it cannot grow without limit.
All of this is stored using chrome.storage.local on your own device. None of it is sent to Kukuluku servers — there are no Kukuluku servers — and it can be cleared from the extension.
Local counters, for example translation count and active days, decide when to show optional rating or support prompts. They contain no personal identifiers and stay on your device.
Sites you add yourself
You can switch Kukuluku off for a particular site. The site’s host name is then saved locally so the extension knows to stay silent there.
You can also set a site to always translate pages. Its host name is saved in a second local list, so the extension knows to open that site’s pages translated.
These lists contain only sites you added yourself. They are not a record of where you have been: a site you never switched never appears in them. You can flip either switch back in the popup while you are on that site; the full list of quiet sites is also in the extension settings. Your other settings — gestures you turned off, the language you write in — are stored locally the same way.
No analytics, no ads, no sale
Kukuluku does not include analytics trackers or ad SDKs and does not sell user data.
After you remove Kukuluku, Chrome opens a short page on our website asking why. Its address carries only the extension version and the menu language — no page addresses, no history, no identifiers. If you click a reason, only that reason, the version and the language are recorded, in a Google Form; if your language is missing and you pick it from the list, the language you ask for is recorded too. There is no free-text field. Answering is optional, and closing the page sends nothing.
Kukuluku uses user data only to provide and improve translation of selected text and the visible page and optional AI explanations, and complies with the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
Third-party services
Selected text — and visible page text while you hold the page-translation keys — may be sent to the following services depending on your settings:
- Google Translate — core translation, dictionary entries and other wordings of a sentence. Google Privacy
- Anthropic Claude — optional AI explanations. Anthropic Privacy
- OpenAI GPT — optional AI explanations. OpenAI Privacy
- Google Gemini — optional AI explanations. Google Privacy
- xAI Grok — optional AI explanations. xAI Privacy
How to delete your data
- Everything at once — remove Kukuluku from
chrome://extensions. This clears all extension local storage. - API key — open Kukuluku → Settings → AI explanations → clear the key field → Save key.
- Translation history — open Kukuluku → Settings → Data → Clear history.
- Lexicon — open Kukuluku → Lexicon → Remove next to a word.
- Sites without translation — open Kukuluku → Settings → Sites without translation → turn a site back on.
API keys
API keys are stored locally on your device only using chrome.storage.local.
Keys are not sent to Kukuluku infrastructure. A key is sent only to the AI provider you entered it for, and only when you ask for an explanation.
Policy changes
If this policy changes materially, we will update the date above and describe key updates in the Chrome Web Store release notes.