Privacy notice
In brief
darken.video has no copy of your video, at any point. The tool is a web page that does its work inside your browser: the clip is read from your device, made darker there, and the new file is written back to your device. We count visits to improve the site, and you can switch that off.
How your video is handled
Choosing a file gives the page permission to read it, nothing more. Your browser decodes the frames, applies the exposure, highlight and other settings you pick, encodes a new video and hands it to you as a download. The settings Auto fix chooses are worked out the same way, by looking at a few small frames on your device. No picture, sound, file name or metadata from your video is sent to darken.video or to anyone else.
Storage in your own browser
The site keeps a few things in this browser so that it works the way you expect:
- Work in progress. The open video, your settings and a finished export are held in the site's IndexedDB storage, so reloading the page doesn't lose them. Pieces of a render are deleted once it completes; any left over after a crash are removed on a later visit when they are a week old.
- Recent videos. Up to 24 of your latest exports are kept on the shelf until you delete them or newer ones replace them.
- Preferences. Light or dark appearance (
vt-theme) and whether you have turned analytics off (vt-consent) are kept in local storage.
None of this leaves your device. To remove all of it, clear the site data for darken.video in your browser settings.
Downloads from other servers
If your browser can't decode a video's format by itself, darken.video downloads the open-source ffmpeg.wasm converter from unpkg.com and converts the clip on your device. That download, like any web request, tells unpkg.com your IP address. The video is not included. Most clips never need it.
Hosting and security
The pages and scripts are delivered by Cloudflare. In doing so, and in filtering out attacks, Cloudflare's servers process technical request data such as IP addresses, browser details and the address requested. Our legal basis is our legitimate interest in running a working, secure website (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)). How Cloudflare handles that data is set out in Cloudflare's privacy policy.
Measuring visits
Two cookieless services give us traffic totals: Cloudflare Web Analytics and Ahrefs Web Analytics. They report figures such as page views, referring sites, rough country and device type, and set no cookies.
We also use Google Analytics 4, to see which darkening controls and guides people actually use. It records the pages you visit and events such as opening a video, choosing Auto fix or a look, exporting and downloading, with rounded figures like the file's approximate size and length. These are tied together by a random identifier in a cookie on this site. Google Analytics never receives your video, its frames, its sound or its name. It is not used for advertising: Google signals and every advertising feature are switched off, and the page tells Google to deny all ad storage. Google acts as our service provider, as described in Google's privacy policy and how Google uses information from sites that use its services. Data may be processed in the United States under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension, and we keep it for 14 months.
Legal basis: our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the site (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)). The analytics cookie relies on the statistical-purposes exception in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, as amended by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, which allows it on condition that you are told about it and can object at any time.
Cookies, and turning analytics off
The only cookies darken.video uses are the Google Analytics cookies _ga and
_ga_*, which last up to two years. On your first visit a short notice says so,
with a Details link to this page and an OK button that simply
closes it.
You can object whenever you like: choose Cookie settings at the bottom of any page, then Turn off analytics. Google Analytics stops at once and stays off on later visits from this browser. Turn analytics on in the same place reverses it. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as an objection: analytics stay off and the notice is not shown. We don't sell personal data and the site carries no advertising.
Who is responsible
darken.video is an independent project, paid for by the people who make it. There are no user accounts and we keep no profile of visitors, so apart from the analytics data described above there is nothing about you on our side.
Your rights
Under UK and EU data protection law you can ask to access, correct or delete personal data, to restrict or object to its processing, and to receive it in a portable form. You can also complain to a supervisory authority; in the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk). Because your videos and settings never leave your browser, clearing the site's data there removes them. For analytics, use Cookie settings, and Google's own controls described in its privacy policy.
Changes to this notice
When the way darken.video handles data changes, this notice is updated in the same release and the date at the top moves.