Gitignore Debugger uses Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which pages get used — that is the one thing it collects, and it sets Google's analytics cookies to do it. There are no accounts. What matters most is unchanged: the file paths and .gitignorerules you type are matched by JavaScript inside your own browser, and are never sent anywhere — not to us, and not to Google.
The rest of this page explains that in detail.
What information this site collects
The site is a single static page with no server-side code or database of its own. The one thing that collects information is Google Analytics 4, described in the Analytics section below, and it is limited to standard, aggregate usage measurement. Beyond that, this site does not:
- ask for or store your name, email address or any other personal detail
- create an account or a login for you
- use
sessionStorageor IndexedDB - create advertising profiles or track you across other websites
- embed third-party widgets, fonts, comment systems, chat boxes or social buttons
Aside from the Google Analytics cookies described below, the only browser storage this site's own code uses is localStorage, and only to remember which theme you picked — Light or Dark — so the page looks the same the next time you open it. That preference stays in your own browser: it is not sent to our server, and it is not used for tracking or analytics.
Your file paths and .gitignore content
This is the part that matters most, so it is worth being precise about how it works.
The matching engine is ordinary JavaScript, downloaded once along with the page and then run entirely inside your browser. When you pressDebug this file, the comparison happens on your own machine. The page makes no network request at that moment. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is logged, and nothing is written to disk.
What you type is held in the page's memory only, for as long as the tab stays open. Closing or reloading the tab discards it. Because the values sit in ordinary form fields, your browser may offer to autofill them again later — that is your browser's own behaviour rather than something this site controls, and you can clear it through your browser settings.
The practical consequence is that pasting a real .gitignorehere does not disclose it to us. We could not read it even if we wanted to, because it never leaves your computer.
Cookies
This site sets the cookies Google Analytics 4 uses to measure visits: the first-party _ga and _ga_<id> cookies, which store a randomly generated identifier so a returning visit can be told from a new one. These are analytics cookies only — they are not advertising cookies, and are not used to build a profile of you across other websites. Your theme choice is kept separately in localStorage, which is not a cookie. Aside from the analytics cookies, the site sets none.
Analytics
This site uses Google Analytics 4 (GA4), Google's website-analytics service, to see how many people visit and which pages they use. When a page loads, Google's gtag.js script runs in your browser and sends Google a page-view event — the page URL and title, the page that referred you, and general details your browser exposes anyway: an approximate location derived from your IP address, and your device type, browser and language. Google processes this on our behalf and gives us aggregate reports, and holds the underlying data under its own terms.
It is ordinary page-and-event analytics only. There are no heatmaps, no session recordings and no keystroke logging, so nothing you type into the debugger is captured — the file paths and rules stay in your browser, as described above. If your browser or an extension blocks Google Analytics, the tool works exactly the same without it.
Advertising
This site uses Google AdSense to display advertisements. AdSense is operated by Google LLC and loads its script frompagead2.googlesyndication.com. When an ad is served, Google may read or set cookies and similar identifiers on your device to decide which ad to show. These are governed by Google's privacy policy and its advertising settings, not by this site.
The file paths and .gitignore rules you type into the debugger are never shared with AdSense or any other advertising service. They are matched locally inside your browser and are never transmitted, as described above.
Third-party services
The third-party resources this page loads are Google Analytics (thegtag.js script from googletagmanager.com, which sends measurement data to google-analytics.com, as described above) and Google AdSense (the adsbygoogle.js script frompagead2.googlesyndication.com, as described in the Advertising section above). Beyond those two the page loads no third-party resources — the typefaces are ones already installed on your device, the icons are files served from this site, and there are no embedded videos, comment systems, chat widgets or social buttons.
The one thing outside this site's own code is hosting. Like any website, these files have to be served by a web server, and web servers commonly keep short-term access logs — typically the requesting IP address, the time, the file requested and the browser's user-agent string — for delivery and abuse prevention. That logging happens at the hosting layer; this site's code neither creates nor can read it. It never includes anything you typed into the tool, because that data is never transmitted in the first place.
Privacy questions and requests
Because this site collects no personal data, there is nothing held for us to look up, correct or delete on request. If you have a question about this policy, or you think something described on this page is inaccurate, please get in touch.
Contact: admin@ignoredebugger.com
Changes to this policy
If anything described above changes — if advertising, an account system or another form of data collection is added, or the Google Analytics setup changes — this page will be updated to describe it, and the date at the top will change with it. There is no mailing list, so re-reading this page is the only way to see revisions.