sidewire

Sidewire — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-05-15

Applies to Sidewire version 0.3.0.

Sidewire is a Chrome extension that displays the network traffic of the tabs you are actively capturing inside a side panel, as a developer tool.

Summary

Sidewire does not collect, transmit, sell, or share any of your data. Everything observed by the extension stays inside your browser, on your machine.

What the extension processes

While you have capture enabled, Sidewire reads the following from the tabs in scope:

• Request URL, method, resource type, status code, timings
• Request and response headers
• Request body (form data or raw, when present)
• Response body — only when you explicitly enable the “Capture response bodies (debugger)” toggle, which attaches chrome.debugger to the active tab. While attached, Chrome shows its built-in debugger notification bar on the inspected tab so you remain aware that a debugger session is active.

This is the same kind of information you would see in Chrome’s built-in DevTools Network panel.

What the extension stores

• A rolling buffer of captured entries (capped at 2,000) is kept in chrome.storage.session so that the side panel survives service-worker restarts. chrome.storage.session is cleared automatically by Chrome when the browser closes.
• chrome.storage.local is used only to persist UI preferences (currently: theme, JWT-decoding toggle). No captured request data, headers, bodies, or URLs are written to it.
• The extension does not write to chrome.storage.sync.
• The extension does not use cookies, IndexedDB, or any other persistent client-side storage.

What the extension transmits

Nothing. Sidewire has no backend, no analytics, no telemetry, no remote endpoints, no crash reporting, no update pings beyond the standard Chrome Web Store mechanism.

The only network requests Sidewire itself performs are:

• The “Replay” and “Replay with…” features, which re-fire a captured request at your explicit click. By default the request is sent unchanged to its original URL; the “Replay with…” editor lets you modify query parameters and the request body before sending. The destination is always the original host of the captured request, and the response is shown locally — it is not sent anywhere else.
• The “HAR export” feature, which writes a .har file to your local file system via the browser’s download dialog.

Permissions

Permission	Purpose
webRequest	Read request/response metadata (URL, headers, status, timings) from tabs in capture scope
sidePanel	Render the extension’s UI in Chrome’s side panel
tabs	Identify the active tab when “Active tab” scope is selected
storage	Persist the rolling buffer in chrome.storage.session and UI preferences (theme, JWT decoding) in chrome.storage.local
debugger	Optional — attached only while the “Capture response bodies” toggle is on, to read response bodies via the Chrome DevTools Protocol
<all_urls> host access	Allow the above to observe whichever site you choose to inspect

Third parties

Sidewire does not share, sell, or transfer any data to third parties. There are no third parties involved.

Children’s privacy

Sidewire is a developer tool. It does not knowingly collect any data from anyone, including children under 13.

Changes

If this policy changes in a material way, the updated version will be published in the extension’s repository and bundled with the next Web Store release.

Contact

Questions about this policy: yoann.piconcely@skores.com