Privacy policy
Wakaru Studios · last updated 30 August 2026
This page lists everything Wakaru sends off your machine, where it goes, and why. The short version: subtitle text and the words you click leave your machine to make the features work; your viewing habits, browsing history, and identity beyond your email do not. There are no analytics, no ads, and nothing is sold or shared for marketing — in the extension or on this website.
Who we are
Wakaru is made by Wakaru Studios. For anything in this policy, email [email protected].
Your account
Signing in with Google gives us three things: your email address, a Google account identifier, and the time you signed in. That's the whole account record. We use it to run your free trial, check your subscription, and attach your synced data to you. We never see your Google password, contacts, or anything else in your Google account.
What the extension sends to our server
Our server (api.wakarustudios.com, hosted on Cloudflare) receives:
- Subtitle text — the Japanese and English lines of the episode you're watching, sent for AI word alignment and for the per-line explanation feature. Our server forwards them to OpenAI to compute the alignment, and the resulting word links are cached in a shared cache (keyed by the subtitle content, not by you) so each episode is only aligned once for all users.
- Single words — when you play pronunciation, the word is sent to our server, which forwards it to Cartesia to generate the audio. Generated clips are cached on your machine.
- Your word list and settings — if you're signed in, saved words (with their context sentence, show name, and scene picture) and your settings sync through our server so your devices stay in step.
- Feedback — if you use the feedback button, we receive your message and, only if you leave the visible checkbox ticked, diagnostics: extension version, browser version, the show and episode open, and the subtitle/sync/AI status. Anonymous feedback also records your IP address, used only to rate-limit spam and never shown alongside your report.
- The uninstall survey — the optional page that opens when you remove Wakaru sends only what you type, plus the extension version.
Services the extension talks to directly
Some lookups go straight from your browser to public services:
| Service | What is sent | Why |
|---|---|---|
| jimaku.cc | Show and episode names | Finding Japanese subtitle files |
| AniList | Show names | Matching a title to its alternate names |
| jisho.org | A word you clicked | Dictionary lookup for words our bundled dictionary lacks |
| JapanesePod101 | A word and its reading | Native-speaker pronunciation recordings |
Each of these operates under its own privacy policy. None of them receives your name, email, or account details from Wakaru.
What we never collect
- No analytics or tracking of any kind, anywhere.
- No browsing history — the extension runs only on Crunchyroll watch pages.
- No video, audio, or screenshots of what you watch (scene pictures on saved words come from Crunchyroll's public preview thumbnails and stay in your own synced storage).
- No payment card details — payments will be handled by a payment processor, and card numbers never touch our servers.
This website
The website sets no cookies and runs no analytics. If you sign in on the account page, a session token is kept in your browser's local storage so you stay signed in; signing out removes it. Headline fonts load from Google Fonts, which means your browser requests the font file from Google.
Where data lives and how long
Accounts, synced data, and feedback are stored with Cloudflare (our hosting provider). Shared alignment caches are keyed by subtitle content and kept indefinitely — they contain subtitle text and word links, nothing about you. Your account and synced data are kept while your account exists.
Deleting your data
Email [email protected] from your account's address and we'll delete your account, word list, settings, and images. Words saved only on your device can be deleted right in the extension.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date above changes with it, and significant changes are announced in the extension before they take effect.