Privacy

Who is responsible

Sapience AS, a company in Norway, maintains Free the Tools. Write to hello@freethetools.com with any question.

What never leaves your device

The files and text you put into a tool stay in your browser. Nothing is uploaded. Every page carries a security policy that blocks sending data to other servers.

Read how this works or the architecture explanation on GitHub.

What the site stores in your browser

• Your theme choice, when you pick dark or system. Light is the default.
• Whether the / key jumps to search.
• Whether the donation card was already shown in this tab, so it shows only once.
• Your favourite tools.
• The tools you liked.
• The planned tools you pressed “I want this” on, so each browser votes once.
• Your sort choice on the home page.
• A short note about your latest library job.
• The library of your jobs, with the results, in your browser's database.
• A mark that says this visit was already counted. It lasts until you close the tab.
• A copy of the site's own pages and files, so tools work offline: the tools you open, or the whole site when you download it on the Offline use page or install the app. With it, a note of what you chose to keep.

This data never leaves your browser. Only you can read it. To remove it, clear this site's data in your browser settings. You can also delete jobs on the Library page, and remove the offline copy on the Offline use page.

What is counted anonymously

We count visits and how often each tool is used. We also count likes and “I want this” votes, plus the country, device type and referring site of a visit. When no referrer is sent, we read the site name from a utm_source link tag, as ChatGPT adds. When a search on the home page finds no tool, we may count the short phrase you typed, but only plain words: never a phrase with a digit, an email, a link or a file name. A phrase is shown on the stats page only after 5 searches on 3 different days. We never count what you put into a tool.

The counts are daily totals. They link to no person. The site honours Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track: if your browser sends either, nothing is counted except the likes from favourites you add yourself and the “I want this” votes you press yourself. See the full list on the stats page, or check it yourself.

The suggestion and problem form

The form sends what you type: your message, the answer to “What do you use today?”, the tool you name, and your email address if you give one. It also sends whether you are suggesting a tool or reporting a problem, the page the form was opened on or came from, the words you searched for when you opened it from a search with no results, and the site language. The form lists these before you send.

It goes by email to the maintainers' inbox. It is also copied as an issue into a private GitHub repository that only the maintainers can read. That copy holds your message, the tool, the answer to “What do you use today?”, the page, the search words and the language, but never your email address. Nothing else is stored, and we do not add it to any list. Cloudflare carries the email, and the maintainers' mail provider keeps it like any other mail. GitHub keeps the issue until a maintainer deletes it. We use your email address only to answer you.

If a message cannot be delivered, the site counts that failure for the day, so the maintainers hear about it. The count holds no text and no address.

The form needs no account and sets no cookie. To have a message deleted, write to the same address.

Hosting

Cloudflare serves the pages and runs the small counting program. Like every host, Cloudflare sees the IP address of each request to deliver the page. Read Cloudflare's privacy policy.

Cloudflare tells the counter only the two-letter country. The site stores no IP address, cookie or user agent.

Your rights

Nothing identifies you, so there is nothing to look up or delete on our side. Write to hello@freethetools.com with questions.

You can complain to Datatilsynet, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority.

The npm package

The freethetools package runs on your computer. It makes no network connections. It keeps a local record of its jobs in a folder in your home folder.