Legal
Privacy policy
Last updated 29 September 2026.
OpenDownloader is a web app and a browser extension that save media to your own computer. The short version: the work happens on your machine, so most of what a service like this could collect never reaches us in the first place. The rest of this page says exactly what that means.
What OpenDownloader never collects
- The files you download. On this page our relay fetches them for you by default: it streams the bytes straight through to you and never stores or caches them. Turn the relay off in Settings and downloads go straight from the source to your disk with no server of ours in the path. Either way, no file you download is retained by us.
- The pages you visit, or the media detected on them.
- Your browsing history, bookmarks, form contents or keystrokes.
- Any analytics, telemetry, usage statistics or crash reports. There is no such reporting in the product.
- Advertising identifiers. There is no advertising.
This site sets no cookie and loads no third-party script, font or analytics tag.
Visits to the website, and which buttons are clicked, are counted by a self-hosted,
cookieless analytics service
(Umami) that runs on opendownloader.app itself — it records no
personal data, sets no cookie, and shares nothing with anyone; it is only how we
know whether the site is reaching people. The product itself — the web app and the
extension — still reports nothing, as listed above.
What's stored locally, on your device only
- The download queue — filenames, sizes, progress and SHA-256 digests, kept in your browser's IndexedDB so an interrupted download can resume.
- Your settings — how many downloads run at once, connections per file, and the folder you chose to save into.
- Per-site permissions for the extension, which the browser stores and which you can revoke at any time.
- A cached speech model, if you use subtitles-from-speech. See "Third parties" below.
All of it lives in your browser profile. Clearing the extension's storage, or the site's data, removes it. None of it is transmitted anywhere.
Data used only if you sign in (optional)
Signing in is optional and unlocks nothing — every feature works signed out. An account exists so that one identity and its credits work across our other apps.
- If you sign in, our account server stores the identifier you signed in with — a Google account identifier, an Ethereum address, or a Nostr public key — together with your credit balance and ledger.
- Session tokens are stored in your browser and sent only to
auth.opendownloader.app, which is our own account server. - Signing in through Google returns to
auth.opendownloader.app, and Google's screen says you are continuing to opendownloader.app. - Signing in with a wallet shows a message naming
opendownloader.app— the page you are on — so your wallet can check that it is the site asking.
Payments
OpenDownloader charges for nothing. There is no paid tier and no metered feature. If you choose to buy credits for use in our other apps, payments are handled by Stripe or on-chain; card details are never seen or stored by us.
Permissions the extension requests, and why
- Access to a site, one site at a time — to see the media a page is loading, so it can be offered for download. Detection is off until you enable it for that site, and the extension sees nothing on sites you have not enabled.
- Downloads — to write the finished file where you asked.
- Storage — for the queue and settings described above.
The extension requests no host permissions up front; it asks at the moment you enable a site, and you can revoke access in your browser at any time.
Third parties
- Hugging Face — if you use subtitles-from-speech, the speech model is downloaded once from Hugging Face and then cached by your browser. Your audio is never uploaded; the model comes to you, not the other way round. This is the only outbound request the feature makes.
- The sites you download from — necessarily, since that is where the media is. For most sites your request reaches them directly; for YouTube, X and Twitch it goes through our relay (below).
- Our relay — for YouTube, X and Twitch, and any site that refuses a web page directly. It runs on opendownloader.app itself, fetches the media on your behalf and streams the result straight through to you, storing and caching none of it. It keeps a short operational log, tied to no account, because the relay has no accounts. Nothing in it is kept beyond 30 days. Turn the relay off in Settings and nothing of yours goes near it at all.
- Our account server — only if you sign in.
The torrent bridge, and a relay you can run yourself, are on your machine, not ours. The one relay we host is the pass-through pipe above: everything other than YouTube, X and Twitch goes straight from the source to you, and none of those three leaves a file behind on it.
Data deletion
Local data: clear the extension's storage, or the site data for
app.opendownloader.app, and it is gone. To delete an account
and its ledger, write to the address below and it will be removed.
Children's privacy
OpenDownloader is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them. Since it collects no personal information from anyone by default, there is nothing held to remove.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and the history is public in the source repository along with everything else.