Last updated: 27 October 2026
Language Lens – Sawa English (“Language Lens”) is a browser extension and web app made by Sherif Abdelbaset for members of the Sawa English community. It helps you learn English from YouTube videos and websites: meanings on hover, pronunciation, grammar and sound focus, saved words and sentences, and review cards. This policy explains exactly what data it uses and why.
The short version
- We only store what you choose to save for your learning: your known and learning words, saved sentences and phrases, your level and settings.
- We never sell your data, never show ads, and use no analytics or tracking tools.
- Pages and videos are read on your own device. Only text you ask about, and text you type when the writing checker looks at your grammar, is sent to our server.
- You can ask for all your data to be deleted at any time.
1. Your account
You sign in with your Sawa English account on sawaenglish.com. The extension receives a random sign-in token, which is stored in your browser. Our server keeps only a one-way fingerprint (hash) of it, plus the browser name and when it was last used, so you can see and remove connected browsers. We never see or store your password in the extension.
2. What we store to sync your learning
So your progress is the same on every device (browser, phone and the web app), these are saved to your account on sawaenglish.com:
- Words you mark as known or learning, and when.
- Sentences, phrases and grammar examples you choose to save, with the page title and link (or YouTube video and time) they came from.
- Your level, vocabulary test result, review-card schedule and app settings.
- How many English words you read on websites and heard in YouTube captions each day — only the number, never which pages or videos — and the words you tap 💡 Curious on.
- Text you check with the writing checker, and the corrections, so you can see your progress over time.
- Study time: the extension counts the minutes Language Lens is active (minutes only, never page content) and sends them to your Sawa account to show your progress.
- Watched videos: when you watch YouTube with Language Lens, the video title and how much of it you understood are saved to your account so you can find it again. You can delete them in the app.
- Interests and sign-in: at first run you can pick topics you like; they are saved to suggest videos. Signing in with Google shares only your name, email and profile picture.
3. Web pages and YouTube videos
On YouTube and other websites, the extension reads the captions or the page text on your own device to colour words by level, show meanings and find grammar points. Your browsing history, the pages you visit and the videos you watch are not sent to us. You can pause Language Lens on any website from its icon, and switch off word colours, the writing checker and Arabic → English in its settings.
3a. The writing checker
When you write in a text box on a website, spelling is checked on your device with the built-in dictionary. After you stop typing for a moment, the English text in that box is sent to our server to check grammar, and the result is saved on our server for a short time so the same text is not checked twice. Password, email, username and code fields are never read. You can switch the writing checker off at any time in the extension settings.
4. AI explanations
When you ask for an AI explanation, a translation (English → Arabic or Arabic → English), “English under Arabic posts” if you switch it on, “how it sounds”, writing feedback or practice exercises, the text you selected (and the sentence around it) is sent to our server, which asks Anthropic’s Claude AI for the answer. Answers are saved on our server so the same question is not paid for twice. Anthropic processes this text only to produce the answer and does not use it to train its models. Pictures for words come from Wikipedia, or are drawn once by OpenAI’s image model and shared by everyone learning that word (only the word is sent, never anything about you). Voice messages you choose to transcribe in the Sawa Tracker chat are processed by OpenAI’s speech-to-text service in the same way.
5. What we never do
- We do not sell, rent or share your data with advertisers or data brokers.
- We do not use your data for advertising, credit decisions or anything unrelated to helping you learn English.
- We do not use analytics, tracking pixels or third-party cookies in the extension.
The use of information received from Google APIs and the Chrome Web Store follows the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
6. Permissions the extension asks for
- Storage: keeps your words, settings and dictionary on your device.
- Identity: opens the Sawa English sign-in page.
- YouTube and sawaenglish.com: shows captions help on YouTube and syncs with your account.
- Other websites: shows meanings, word colours, the writing checker and Arabic → English on the pages you read. Page text is read on your device; you can pause any site.
- Scripting, active tab, alarms: runs Language Lens on the page you are on, and syncs your words in the background.
7. Keeping and deleting your data
Your data is kept while you are a Sawa English member, on our server (sawaenglish.com). Signing out removes the token from that browser. To delete everything — words, sentences, writing, review cards and AI history linked to you — message Sherif in the Sawa English community or write to the contact email on the Chrome Web Store page, and it will be deleted within 30 days.
8. Children
Language Lens is meant for Sawa English members aged 13 and over.
9. Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new date.