SAL Install

Privacy policy

Last updated: October 26, 2026

SAL is a browser extension that changes the channel between live games in the streaming services you already subscribe to. This policy explains what SAL does with information.

The short version: everything stays on your computer. SAL has no accounts (none yet), no server and no analytics, and it sends nothing about you anywhere.

1. What SAL reads on the streaming page

In the YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV tabs you open in the SAL window, SAL reads:

  • the captions text (SAL turns captions on in its own tabs and keeps them out of view, so their words can help tell a break from play);
  • the video's position and state (playing, paused, how far behind live);
  • the channel name and the program title shown in the player;
  • the tab's address, to know which channel it is on.

In an NBA League Pass tab (www.nba.com and watch.nba.com), and only once you turn that service on in Settings, SAL reads:

  • the game page's address and title, to know which game the tab shows;
  • the video's position and state (playing, paused, how far behind live).

To change games in that tab, SAL opens a game's page by its address, or the site's games page and that game's link or button there, and it presses the page's own controls: the close button of the how-to-watch pop-up, the continue button of a still-watching prompt, Try again (or OK) on the player's error message, and, when a stream does not start by itself, the game's Watch Live button, the player's play button, its live badge or the first stream in its list. It reads nothing from your account there and never presses a sign-in, subscribe or purchase control.

When a YouTube TV tab or a game page on that service shows no picture, SAL reads the text the page shows over the player (an error, a notice, a prompt): at most 200 characters, with account parts of the page left out and any email address removed. On a game page whose stream would not start, it also reads the labels of the buttons and links around the player. Both go into the local session log described below, so a report can say why the tab had no picture.

In a Peacock tab you choose to use during breaks, SAL reads only the show's title and its position, so it can pause and resume it. If you tick "Captions on the show during breaks" in Settings (off unless you do), SAL also turns the show's captions on through the player while the show is on air, and off again when a game comes back; it never reads their words.

SAL uses this to rank the games and to notice breaks. It is held in memory on your computer; the parts that explain a channel change go into the local session log described below. None of it is sent anywhere. SAL never reads or touches sign-in fields, passwords, payment details or account pages, and it does not read pages on any other site.

2. What SAL captures

SAL looks at the picture of the tabs you arm, and only those: you arm a tab by clicking the SAL button while it is in front, one tab per stream your plan allows (three on YouTube TV, two on Hulu + Live TV, one or three on NBA League Pass depending on its plan), and the browser shows its own capture indicator on each armed tab. SAL takes the picture only, never the sound. A few small parts of the picture (the corners and the strip where a broadcast shows its logo or its score) are read a couple of times a second and analysed in memory on your computer to tell a broadcast from a break, then discarded. The picture is never recorded, never saved and never uploaded, with these exceptions, which also stay on your computer:

  • Logo templates. The small image of a network's on-screen logo (or of a game's score box), learned so SAL recognises it next time, kept in the extension's own storage.
  • Event thumbnails. At each moment SAL noticed a break or a return, a 160x90 thumbnail of the picture and the logo patch, kept in the local session log so the review page can show why it changed the channel.
  • Record the picture (for testing). A setting for test computers, off by default, under For testing in Settings: while it is on and a session runs, SAL keeps those small parts a couple of times a second and a 480x270 picture of each armed tab about once a second, with what the tab reported beside them (its address, the captions text, the video's state), in the extension's own storage on your computer only (at most 3 GB, the oldest dropped first). They become a file only when you press Export recording on the review page yourself.

When SAL changes to a tab whose picture has not started yet, it shows its own card on black (the SAL mark, the game's name and "Loading") until the picture moves, for 15 seconds at most. The card is drawn by SAL on your screen; nothing about it is kept but how long it stayed up, in the session log.

3. The scoreboard request

To know which games are live and how close they are, SAL requests the public sports scoreboard from site.api.espn.com, one request per sport you follow (for college sports, the current day's games only): about once a minute while a session runs (every three minutes for a sport with nothing on), and, while no session runs, every 30 seconds when a game is live or about to start and every five minutes otherwise. Untick "Check scores every 30 seconds" in Settings and SAL makes no scoreboard request outside a session. During a session it also requests the scores of the few games in its tabs from sports.core.api.espn.com about every 5 seconds, a few small requests per game. Each request asks only for public scores. It carries nothing about you, your streaming services or what you watch; like any web request, it reaches that site from your internet address with your browser's standard headers. SAL is not affiliated with that site's operator.

Once a day SAL also reads one small public file from its own site, watchsal.com: the newest version number, a one-line notice (for example a known problem with a streaming site), and the version of the latest logo template pack, so the start screen can tell you. That request carries nothing about you either: no identifier, no cookies, no settings. These two are the only network requests SAL makes on its own. If you remove SAL, your browser opens one page on watchsal.com that asks what went wrong; that request carries nothing about you either, and the page has no form.

4. What SAL keeps on your computer

In the browser's own extension storage, on your computer only:

  • your settings (sports, services, favorite team, how many streams to use, break timing, the ranking order, captions on the show, the For testing settings);
  • the channel map SAL learns from your own YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV guide, and the games it has seen on NBA League Pass (each game's page name and date);
  • the logo templates described above, one per channel and sport;
  • the daily notice described in section 3;
  • a short summary of your last session (when it ran, the tabs, how many channel changes, which games were on and for how long, your bad-cut marks, anything that went wrong), which the start screen shows in its Last session box;
  • a session log of your last 20 sessions: the games and scores, each channel change SAL made and why (a reason can quote a short caption phrase), the channel and program names of your tabs, the addresses of NBA League Pass's game pages SAL moved a tab to, the text a page showed over a player with no picture and the button labels described in section 1, the channels that showed no player for a game, the title of a show you chose for breaks and when its captions went on and off, your bad-cut marks, and the event thumbnails described above;
  • while Record the picture is on, the recording described in section 2.

You can delete any session on the review page. Removing the extension removes all of it.

5. Files you export

The review page can write files to your computer, only when you press its buttons: a session file (.jsonl, Export), a learned marks file (the logo templates, the channel map and short summaries of your sessions), and, if you turned Record the picture on, the recording (Export recording). One setting for testing, Live export (off unless you turn it on, under For testing in Settings), saves that same session file to your Downloads folder every 5 or 10 minutes while a session runs, replacing it each time. The start screen's Copy button, in the Last session box, puts that box's few sentences on your clipboard. SAL never sends any of it anywhere. If you choose to share one, for example to report a channel change that went wrong, you send it yourself, and it contains only the items listed above: no sound, no account details, no passwords, and no video except the small pictures of a recording you made yourself.

Reports you send

When something goes wrong, Report a problem (on the bar over the picture, in the lobby, or Alt+R) saves one file to your Downloads folder when you press Save, named sal-report- and the date and time. It contains what you picked and the note you typed; the last 15 minutes of the session log described in section 4, without the thumbnails; your settings and the channel map; the state of each SAL tab (its channel id and picture status, never its web address); SAL's version; and the names and versions of your browser and operating system. It contains no video, no pictures, no passwords or account details, no cookies and no web addresses (any address in the log is taken out of the file). Nothing is sent automatically: SAL only saves the file. You decide whether to send it, by email to hello@watchsal.com, and you can open it in any text editor first to see exactly what it says.

6. Your streaming accounts

You log in to your streaming services on their own pages, exactly as you would without SAL. SAL never sees, asks for or stores your passwords or account details, and never signs in on your behalf. Your relationship with those services, and their terms, are between you and them.

7. What SAL does not do

  • No accounts (there are none yet; see section 11), no server, no analytics, no tracking, no advertising.
  • No selling, renting or sharing of any data, with anyone.
  • No remote code: everything SAL runs ships inside the extension, and it downloads no code.
  • No recording, copying, downloading or re-streaming of any video or sound, beyond the test recording on your own computer described in section 2.
  • It never alters any stream or anything in it, and never hides any part of a broadcast. It changes which tab is in front, the way a remote control changes the channel.

8. Sites SAL runs on, and its permissions

SAL has access to these sites and no others:

  • site.api.espn.com: the public scoreboard (section 3). Read only.
  • sports.core.api.espn.com: the scores of the games in SAL's tabs, one game at a time (section 3). Read only.
  • tv.youtube.com: the streaming service SAL works with (section 1).
  • www.hulu.com: Hulu + Live TV, the second live service SAL works with, when you turn it on in settings or open it from the start screen (section 1).
  • www.nba.com and watch.nba.com: NBA League Pass, the third live service SAL works with, where a game's page is the tab SAL changes games in; only once you turn the service on in settings, and until then SAL does nothing on those pages (section 1).
  • www.peacocktv.com and *.peacocktv.com (Peacock's own subdomains): optional, only for a show you choose to play during breaks (section 1).
  • watchsal.com: SAL's own site, for the daily notice (section 3). Read only.

Three more addresses are listed as optional and never asked for at install: *.netflix.com, *.max.com and *.hbomax.com (shows for breaks). The browser asks you for one only when you press Open on that service in SAL; until you allow it, SAL cannot reach it. In this version none of them is asked for yet.

The browser shows the permissions SAL asks for when you install it. Each has one use: storage and unlimited storage, for the settings, templates and session log on your computer (section 4); alarms, to check the scoreboard and keep a session running every 30 seconds, and to read the daily notice; notifications, for a short note when you press a SAL key outside a session, and the break and big-moment notes you can switch off in settings; tabs, to open your services in the SAL window, bring a game to the front, mute the others and reload a tab whose player stopped; active tab and tab capture, to look at the picture of a tab you clicked on (section 2); offscreen, for the hidden page that does that looking; scripting, to put SAL's own page script back into a tab on the sites above that stopped answering, for example because it was open before SAL was updated; downloads, to save the files you ask for to your Downloads folder: a report file when you press Save in Report a problem, a recording when you press Export recording, and the Live export file while that setting is on (section 5), whose earlier entry it also takes off the browser's download list (the list entry only, never the file).

9. Limited Use

The use of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

In plain words: the information SAL handles is used only to provide its single purpose, changing the channel between your live games. It is not transferred to anyone, not used for advertising, not used to determine credit-worthiness or for lending, and no person reads it. It never leaves your computer unless you export a file and send it yourself.

10. Children

SAL is not directed at children under 13 and collects no information from anyone.

11. Changes

If SAL ever starts collecting anything, this policy will say so before that version ships, and the store listings will reflect the change. The date at the top shows when it last changed.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy: hello@watchsal.com.