What happens to your webcam video

The homepage and content pages do not need webcam access. The browser asks for camera permission after an explicit action on the play experience. You decide whether to grant that request, and you can revoke it later through your browser's site-permission settings.

Gesture Synth requests video and explicitly does not request microphone audio. The instrument creates sound with Web Audio; it does not need to listen to the room, record your voice, or capture an audio stream from the camera device.

Camera frames are provided to MediaPipe Tasks Vision in the browser so it can estimate hand landmarks such as wrists, finger joints, and fingertips. Gesture Synth uses the resulting geometry to infer raised fingers, wrist orientation, hand height, and other controls required by the instrument.

The Gesture Synth application does not send those camera frames to its application server and does not keep a recording of them. The useful state for the instrument is the gesture result—such as a selected scale degree or chord quality—not a stored copy of the video image.

Local camera processing does not mean the entire website is offline. When tracking starts, the browser may download MediaPipe runtime files from jsDelivr and a hand-landmarker model from Google-hosted storage. Like ordinary web requests, those downloads can reveal standard connection information such as IP address, browser request headers, and timing information to the resource providers.

Production pages also use Google Analytics to understand aggregate traffic and product interactions. That analytics behavior is separate from camera-frame processing. The full disclosures for cookies, analytics, third-party vendors, and future advertising are maintained in the Privacy Policy.

Leaving the active play experience stops Gesture Synth's use of the camera stream. You can also use the browser camera indicator or site settings to revoke permission at any time. Revoking permission means the next play attempt will need a new permission decision before hand tracking can start.

If you share a computer, remember that browser permission and site data are controlled by the browser profile. Clearing site permissions and storage is the most direct way to reset both the camera decision and the saved tutorial-completion preference for Gesture Synth.

Gesture Synth may use Google AdSense on eligible content pages in the future, but advertising is not needed for hand recognition and the play page is intended to remain excluded from Auto ads. When advertising is enabled, Google and other third-party vendors may use cookies or similar identifiers for ad delivery, measurement, protection, and—where permitted—personalization.

Where consent is required, applicable advertising storage or personalization should not be enabled until an appropriate consent mechanism has run. This advertising data path does not change the product's camera rule: the application does not upload or store webcam video for advertising.

Browser camera permission controls access to a hardware device. Cookie or advertising consent controls a different category of storage and data use. Accepting one does not automatically grant the other. You can allow the webcam while blocking advertising identifiers, or revoke camera permission without clearing analytics cookies. Keeping those controls separate makes the privacy model easier to reason about.

This distinction also matters for regional consent rules. A consent management platform may govern whether advertising storage or personalization can be used, but it does not replace the browser's own webcam permission prompt. Gesture Synth still waits for an explicit play action before requesting the camera.

The instrument does not need facial recognition, microphone audio, a user account, or a saved video history to map hand gestures to chords. The musical controls come from hand geometry and movement during the active session. Avoiding unnecessary capture reduces both the technical surface area and the amount of personal data the application would otherwise have to manage.

1. Load the homepage and confirm no camera permission is requested.
2. Open Play, start the experience, and inspect the browser camera indicator.
3. Leave the play page and confirm the camera indicator turns off.
4. Open browser site settings to review or revoke the camera permission.
5. Use developer tools if you want to inspect network requests for MediaPipe resources separately from the live camera stream.