BROWSER EXTENSIONS

9 articles, every claim sourced

An extension is the most privileged thing you install in a browser and the least examined. The useful skill is not finding good extensions; it is reading a permission list and a privacy declaration well enough to reject the bad ones yourself.

START HEREBrowser Extensions That Keep Your Data On Your Machine- it shows how to verify a local-storage claim rather than trusting one.

Manifest V3 changed which extensions can exist at all. Several roundups still recommend tools that no longer run on Chrome, and ours did too until we checked every entry against its store listing.

9 of 9 articles
Title card reading "OneTab vs Simple Tab Groups: Close Tabs or Just Hide Them?"
September 6, 20268 MIN READ

OneTab vs Simple Tab Groups: Close Tabs or Just Hide Them?

Both promise to fix a full tab strip on Firefox, and they do it in opposite ways. OneTab closes every tab and replaces them with a list. Simple Tab Groups keeps every tab running and hides the ones you are not using, through a Firefox-only API Chrome does not have. Compared on memory, switching windows, and what survives a browser restart.

READ ARTICLE →
Title card reading "Session Buddy vs Tab Session Manager: Polished or Open"
September 3, 20268 MIN READ

Session Buddy vs Tab Session Manager: Polished or Open

Both take a snapshot of every open window so a crash cannot cost you your tabs. Session Buddy is a polished, Chrome-only, closed app with a million users. Tab Session Manager is open source, runs on Firefox and Edge too, lets you set the auto-save interval, and can sync through your own Google Drive. Compared on storage, automation, what you can read, and how each one came through the Manifest V3 cutover.

READ ARTICLE →
Title card reading "Manifest V3 Weakened Chrome Ad Blockers. What Else It Changed"
August 30, 202610 MIN READ

Manifest V3 Weakened Chrome Ad Blockers. What Else It Changed

Manifest V3 is three changes, not a hundred. Background pages became service workers that sleep after thirty seconds. The blocking network API became a rules list with a fixed ceiling, which is why the full uBlock Origin no longer runs on Chrome. And extensions can no longer load code from the web. Here is which of your extensions each change touches, and what Firefox, Brave and Edge decided to do instead.

READ ARTICLE →
Title card reading "Chrome Extension Permissions: What the Prompt Leaves Out"
August 27, 202613 MIN READ

Chrome Extension Permissions: What the Prompt Leaves Out

Chrome shows you warnings, not permissions, and the two are different lists. More than forty permissions produce no line at all, one permission can hide another's line entirely, and the most alarming sentence in the box usually comes from the most ordinary thing an extension can ask for. Including our own extension's list, where eight of the thirteen permissions never reach the box.

READ ARTICLE →