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FAQ

Quick answers to the questions we get most. If yours isn't here, the rest of the docs probably covers it — start with the page closest to your question.

Quick answers to questions we hear repeatedly. They link out to the deeper docs where there's more to say.

Account & sign-in

Do I need an account to use butter?
No. Every widget except the AI Inbox works on a fresh install — no email, no signup. You only need an account if you want the AI Inbox (one triage a day on free, unlimited on Pro) or Pro cloud sync.
How do I sign in?
Press , for Settings, then click Sign in with GitHub or Sign in with Google in the Account section. Sign-in is via Supabase OAuth — that's separate from the GitHub OAuth used by the GitHub widget.
What's the difference between signing into butter and connecting GitHub for the widget?
Two different things. Signing into butter with GitHub creates a butter account tied to your GitHub identity — it's the gate for Pro features. Connecting GitHub for the widget grants the extension permission to read your PRs. You can do one without the other.
I signed in but the AI Inbox says I've used today's triage.
The free plan caps AI Inbox at one successful triage per 24 hours. The widget tells you when the next free run unlocks and keeps showing your most recent triage in the meantime. Pro removes the cap — upgrade from the Account section in Settings.

Billing

How does billing work?
Pro is $5/month or $48/year, billed by Stripe. There's also a Lifetime tier at $79 once. Manage everything via the Manage button in Settings → Account once you're Pro — that opens the Stripe customer portal where you can change plan, update card, view invoices, or cancel.
What happens if I cancel?
You stay on Pro until the end of the period you've paid for. After that you drop back to Free — your layout, settings, and content all stick around. The AI Inbox keeps working but caps at one triage per day, AI Meeting Prep stops, and the six-widget-per-dashboard cap re-applies.
Will the free plan stay free?
Yes. The fourteen widgets shipping today stay on Free, with up to six on a dashboard. We won't yank free features into Pro after the fact.
What's the deal with Lifetime?
A thank-you to early adopters. One payment, Pro forever on that account. We might stop offering it after launch.

TickTick sync

How does TickTick sync work?
Connect TickTick once from Settings → Connections, then open any Todo widget's settings and pick a project. The widget reads tasks from that project and pushes every local change — completes, edits, due dates, priority, drag reorders — straight to TickTick. Other clients (mobile, web, desktop) see the change the next time they refresh.
Do I need a TickTick Premium account?
No. The free TickTick tier exposes the Open API we use. Premium gets you more features inside TickTick itself, but butter's sync works either way.
What happens to my local tasks when I switch to TickTick?
They stay on disk. Switching the source to TickTick hides the local list but doesn't delete it — flip back to Local only and they're still there. We don't auto-push local tasks into TickTick on first connect; if you want them there, copy them across manually.
Can I have multiple Todo widgets, each tied to a different project?
Yes. Each Todo widget instance has its own sync setting. One widget per project: Work, Home, Inbox all visible on the same dashboard, each syncing independently.
Does butter store my TickTick tasks anywhere?
A short-lived local cache (2 minutes) so re-opening a tab doesn't hit the API for every render. Nothing is sent to butter's servers — your TickTick tasks go directly from the extension to TickTick.

Sync & cross-device

Does my dashboard follow me to other Chromes?
If you're signed into Chrome with sync on, yes — your layout, theme, and background ride on Chrome's built-in sync. Pro users can additionally opt into butter's cloud sync for cross-browser portability and conflict detection.
I edited my dashboard and the other device is still showing the old one.
Chrome's sync has a short propagation delay (usually 10–60 seconds). If it doesn't catch up within a couple of minutes, check that Chrome is signed in with sync enabled on both devices, and that both browsers have butter loaded the same version.
My todos / scratchpad text aren't syncing.
On Free, that's expected — Chrome sync covers the widget (size, position, settings) but not the content inside it. Turn on Pro cloud sync in Settings → Account and todos + scratchpad text join the synced payload. Pomodoro running state, OAuth tokens, and network caches stay device-local on both tiers, by design.
I have two Chromes editing at once. What happens?
Chrome's native sync is last-write-wins, so you can lose updates if you edit on both at the same time. Pro cloud sync uses an optimistic-version model that detects conflicts and reconciles instead of clobbering.

Integrations not connecting

The Connect button does nothing.
butter opens the OAuth flow in a new browser tab. If a popup blocker is enabled, it can swallow the navigation — click Connect again. If that still doesn't work, check that your network can reach auth.trybutter.xyz (the auth-worker that brokers the handshake).
GitHub / Linear says "disconnected" right after connecting.
Most often this means the token wasn't handed back via the redirect — usually a popup blocker or a browser extension stripping URL fragments. Try Connect once more; if it persists, disable other extensions temporarily and retry.
The widget shows "Reconnect" out of nowhere.
Access tokens for Google, Linear, and TickTick refresh automatically through our auth-worker — you shouldn't see this just because time passed. A Reconnect prompt means the refresh token itself was rejected: you revoked the integration, the OAuth app is in test mode and hit its 7-day cap (Google), or there's a server-side issue. Click Reconnect in the widget header — same flow as the initial connect.

Widgets and content

I deleted a widget by accident. Can I get the content back?
No, sorry — removing a widget deletes its content immediately. There's no undo because the X is a one-click action. If you have a recent export file, importing it will restore the layout and content; otherwise it's gone.
The Pomodoro reset itself when I reloaded.
Expected — the running timer is local React state, not persisted. Settings stick across reloads; the countdown / round counter does not. More detail here.
Quick Links favicons aren't loading.
Each tile tries Google's favicon service first, then DuckDuckGo's, then falls back to a letter chip. If you're behind a network that blocks those services, set an emoji on the link's settings — emoji icons don't make a network request.
The Reddit widget says my subreddit is empty.
Three usual suspects: the subreddit is genuinely empty under the current sort + score filter, you typo'd the name (the widget validates against Reddit's 3–21 alphanumeric+underscore rule), or the sub is private / quarantined (the anonymous JSON endpoint can't see it).

Privacy & data

What gets sent to your servers?
Almost nothing. The AI Inbox sends a small slice of PR / issue metadata via our Edge Function. Pro cloud sync mirrors your layout to a Supabase row. Everything else is direct from your browser to the relevant API. Full breakdown here.
How can I audit what butter does with my data?
The privacy page enumerates every outbound request the extension makes, what's in each payload, and where every byte of stored data lives. If you want a per-page-load view, the Network tab in Chrome's DevTools will show every request firing in real time — the extension is just web code talking to public APIs (and our Edge Functions for the AI features), so nothing is hidden.
How do I delete my data?
Local data: uninstall the extension or clear chrome.storage from the extension's page. Pro cloud sync data: turn cloud sync off and delete your butter account from Settings → Account. Stripe data: stays with Stripe under their privacy policy.

Browsers & install

Does it work on Firefox?
Firefox is on the roadmap — the codebase is cross-browser ready, and a Firefox build will ship once the Add-ons store submission is approved. For now the Chrome Web Store version is the supported install path.
Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi?
Any Chromium browser that can install Chrome Web Store extensions should work. We test against Chrome itself; reports from other Chromium browsers are welcome but not guaranteed.

Didn't find it? The Privacy & data page covers the long version of anything sync-or-storage-related, and each widget's own page has its own "Heads up" section for the gotchas specific to it. If you genuinely can't find an answer, email us from inside the extension and we'll add it here.