Botless
Botless for YouTube · effective 30 September 2026
Botless is a browser extension that labels YouTube channels as Probably AI, Probably Human or Inconclusive. This policy explains what it handles, where that data stays, and when anything leaves your device.
- Botless has no servers, no accounts, no analytics and no advertising. The developer never receives any of your data.
- Everything Botless learns is stored on your device, in your browser's extension storage.
- By default Botless sends no requests of its own. Only if you turn on Active mode does it ask YouTube itself for public information about videos shown on your screen, without your cookies.
- Botless never acts on your YouTube account: no likes, subscriptions, "Not interested" or similar.
Botless runs only on www.youtube.com. While you use YouTube, it reads from the page:
- the IDs of the videos and channels shown, and the channel names;
- whether a video carries YouTube's own "Made with AI" (altered or synthetic content) label.
From this it keeps, on your device:
| Data | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your settings | To remember your choices | Until you change them |
| Channels you marked as AI or human | Your marks always decide the verdict | Until you remove them |
| For each channel seen: IDs of videos you watched (or Active mode checked), whether each carried the AI label, the channel name, and a cached verdict | To judge the channel | Up to 200 videos per channel; the channel is forgotten after 180 days unseen (configurable), or sooner if storage runs low |
| Which channel a video belongs to | To label Shorts, whose thumbnails don't name their channel | The newest 3,000 |
| Today's count of flagged videos and of Active mode checks | The popup counter and the daily limit | Reset every day |
This is stored with Chrome's chrome.storage.local. It isn't synced to your Google account or sent anywhere.
The exact storage keys are listed in the README.
Botless does not handle names, email addresses, passwords, payment details, location, messages, form
contents, or your activity on any site other than www.youtube.com.
Active mode off (the default): never. Botless makes no network requests of its own. This is checked automatically on every change to the code.
Active mode on: to judge channels before you watch them, Botless asks YouTube about videos whose
thumbnails are on your screen. It sends the video ID (and YouTube's app version number) to YouTube's
own www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/next endpoint, and sometimes a channel ID to the channel's public feed
at www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml. These requests:
- go to
www.youtube.comonly, and never follow a redirect to another address; - are sent without your cookies, so they aren't linked to your YouTube or Google account and don't appear in your watch history;
- are limited to one every 3 seconds and to a daily maximum you choose (150 by default).
Like any request, they reach YouTube (Google) with your IP address and browser details. What YouTube does with them is covered by Google's privacy policy. You can turn Active mode off at any time from the popup.
Export: if you click Export in Settings, Botless saves a backup file to your computer. It goes wherever you choose to save it, and nowhere else.
Badges, faded or hidden thumbnails and the label next to a channel name are part of the YouTube page, so YouTube's scripts, or another extension on that page, could notice them, including a badge's tooltip such as "You marked this channel". Your stored data itself never enters the page.
Botless doesn't sell, rent, share or transfer your data to anyone. It doesn't use it for advertising, for credit or lending decisions, or for anything other than labeling YouTube channels for you.
- Turn Botless off from the popup: it stops recording anything and removes its labels.
- Clear observations in Settings deletes every channel Botless has learned (your marks and settings stay).
- Remove a mark from the list in Settings.
- Uninstalling Botless deletes all of its data.
Botless isn't directed at children and doesn't knowingly handle any data about them beyond what is described above.
If this policy changes, the new version is published here with a new effective date. Its history is public in this repository's commit log.
Questions: open an issue at github.com/j3ffx/botless/issues. For a security or privacy problem you don't want to make public, use Security → Report a vulnerability on the repository instead (see SECURITY.md).
This page is generated from PRIVACY.md; its history is public in the repository.