Privacy, by design.

Your images stay with you

Japanese OCR runs in a browser worker on your device. Photos and screenshots are held in memory for the current scanning session. Kanji Scanner does not upload or permanently store these images. Closing the page releases the session.

What this browser remembers

Favorites, recently viewed characters, recent searches, saved reviewed text, theme and learning language are stored locally. Activity is capped at 100 scans, 30 recently viewed characters and eight searches. You can disable activity history, export your data, or delete it in Settings. Clearing browser data also removes this information. The interface language is stored in a first-party preference cookie (kanji-ui) for up to one year.

Online dictionary

An internet connection is required. Dictionary results and translations are requested from our server. Drawing recognition sends your stroke coordinates to the server for processing; drawings are not saved. Photos still remain on your device. The old offline dictionary cache is removed when an existing installation reconnects and updates.

Abuse prevention

We keep temporary request counters to limit automated bulk downloads. A signed first-party security cookie (kanji-visit) lasts up to one day and separates each browser’s request budget. Counters use keyed hashes of that random browser identifier and, when securely available, your network address. The raw identifiers are not stored in counters. Search terms, photos and drawings are not stored in these counters. Expired counters are removed during subsequent traffic.

Network requests

Loading pages, dictionary content and recognition models sends ordinary web requests to the hosting service. Hosting providers may process request information to deliver and secure the site. Camera permission is requested only after you choose the camera. Clipboard access is requested only when you choose Paste image.

Analytics and advertising

Kanji Scanner sends no analytics events to external services. Advertising scripts load only when configured and the consent integration permits them. An internal event interface exists for a future privacy-conscious integration; it excludes scanned text, search terms and photos. AdSense placements are prepared but disabled until ad slots and a certified consent platform are configured. The site publishes its Google AdSense publisher identifier for ownership verification. When enabled, Google may process device and network information under your consent choices; photos, handwriting, scanned text, and search terms are not passed to our ad adapter. You can review Google’s data practices at policies.google.com/technologies/ads. Advertising remains disabled unless the deployment explicitly enables it with a configured consent integration.