Covers the browser extension and its companion desktop app · Last updated September 3, 2026
In short
01 Everything the extension reads from Brightspace or Gradescope is sent to one place: the companion app running on your own computer. It never leaves your machine.
02 There is no analytics, no ad tracking, and no third-party data broker anywhere in this project.
03 Nothing is sold. There is no business model here — this is a student-built tool for USC students.
04 A few features are opt-in and involve a service you connect yourself (Google, Anthropic) — those are called out explicitly below.
What the extension does
Brightspace Companion is a browser extension paired with a desktop app. The extension opens a hidden browser tab using your own already-logged-in Brightspace and Gradescope sessions, reads the grades, assignments, announcements, and due dates visible on those pages, and hands that data to the desktop app so it can show you one dashboard instead of several tabs.
It does not see or store your USC password. It only reads pages you're already authenticated into — the same way you'd read them yourself.
Lets the extension read grade, assignment, and announcement pages on these two sites — the entire reason the extension exists.
stays on your device
tabs, scripting
Used to open a background tab to those two sites and read the rendered page content (grades pages are built by JavaScript, so a plain network request can't see them).
stays on your device
cookies
Used only to check whether you're currently logged in to Brightspace or Gradescope, so the extension knows whether a sync will succeed before it tries.
stays on your device
host_permissions 127.0.0.1:47823
The one destination for everything the extension reads: a small server that the desktop app runs on your own computer. This address is not reachable from outside your machine.
local only
alarms, storage
Schedules periodic background syncs and remembers small preferences (like when the last sync ran) inside Chrome's own local extension storage.
stays on your device
Where data is stored
Everything synced — grades, assignments, announcements, your to-dos and notes — is written to plain JSON files in the desktop app's local data folder on your computer. There is no cloud database and no remote copy the developer (or anyone else) can see.
Optional integrations
A few features are off by default and only activate once you connect an account yourself:
Google Calendar & Drive opt-in
If you connect Google in Settings, the app reads your calendar events and Drive files through Google's own sign-in — using your Google account directly, not a server the developer operates.
AI Assistant opt-in, bring your own key
If you add your own Anthropic API key in Settings, your messages are sent to Anthropic to generate a response, under your own API account and billing — not through any server operated by this project.
Friends & Leaderboard opt-in
If you turn this on, a small amount of data (an invite code, your on-time submission rate) is stored in a Firebase project — one you or a friend set up, not one the developer runs or has access to.
Deleting your data
Uninstalling the extension stops all syncing immediately. Deleting the desktop app's data folder (shown in Settings) removes every synced record. Since nothing is copied anywhere else, there's nothing further to request deletion of.
Changes to this policy
If what the extension collects or where it sends data changes, this page will be updated and the "last updated" date above will change accordingly.