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Privacy

Is it safe to use a meeting translator extension?

August 1, 2026

A translator listens to your meeting, so it is fair to ask where the audio goes. Here is how these tools work and what to check before you trust one.

Two different questions

Separate two things. First: does a bot join the call? A bot that joins is visible to everyone and often shows up in the participant list and recordings. An overlay tool, by contrast, runs only on your side — nothing is added to the meeting.

Second: where does the audio go to become text? That is the part worth checking, because most live translators use a cloud service to turn speech into text.

How speech becomes translated text

To caption a call, a tool captures the audio, sends it to a speech-to-text service to get words, then to a translation service. This is normal and how near-instant captions are possible. The questions that matter are whether that audio is stored, whether your identity is attached to it, and whether the connection is encrypted.

What to check before you trust one

• No bot joins the call — captions appear only on your screen.
• Audio is processed in real time and not stored.
• A clear privacy policy that names what is sent and to whom.
• Minimal permissions — it should not need your browsing history or unrelated sites.
• You control when it runs — nothing is captured until you press Start.

How Trippi handles it

Trippi adds no bot: the caption overlay is drawn only on your screen. It captures the meeting tab’s audio while a session is active, sends it to speech and translation providers only to return captions, and does not store it. Provider keys stay on Trippi’s server, not in the page, and traffic is over HTTPS. Nothing is captured until you press Start, and it stops the moment you press Stop or close the tab. See the privacy policy.

One practical note

Captioning a call is about understanding it, not recording it — but rules on consent and recording vary by place and organization. Follow the ones that apply to you, and remember you decide when the tool is on.