Chrome Extensions
Chrome Extensions
21 articles in this category
Browsing in bursts? Your history should group itself like you do.
Browsing in bursts? Your history should group itself like you do. I do not browse in a straight line. I doubt most people do. I browse in bursts. A burst of research before building a feature. A burst of comparison before choosing a tool. A burst of debugging when something breaks. A burst of reading when one article...
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I replaced chrome://history — here's why I skipped the AI everyone else would've reached for
I replaced chrome://history — here's why I skipped the AI everyone else would've reached for If you tell someone you are building a smarter browser history page, the AI idea arrives almost immediately. Summarize my tabs. Ask my history questions. Name my sessions. Turn yesterday's browsing into a neat report. It is an...
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Local-first, deterministic, and still smarter than chrome://history
Local first, deterministic, and still smarter than chrome://history I like tools that are boring in the right places. That might sound like a strange way to describe a browser history replacement, but it is exactly how I think about Browser Memory. The product should feel useful. It should help me return to sessions,...
6 min readRead more
What if Chrome's history page understood sessions?
What if Chrome's history page understood sessions? I kept asking myself one question while building Browser Memory: What if Chrome's history page understood sessions? Not in a complicated way. Not as a full productivity dashboard. Just enough to know that the seven pages I opened while debugging one problem belonged...
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No AI, no cloud, no account: rethinking what smart means in a browser extension
No AI, no cloud, no account: rethinking what smart means in a browser extension When I started building Browser Memory, I kept running into the same assumption: If a browser extension organizes your history, it should probably use AI. I get why that idea appears so quickly. Browser history is full of context. A model...
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I stopped re-Googling things I'd already found — here's what I built instead
I stopped re Googling things I'd already found — here's what I built instead There is a special kind of frustration in searching for something you already found. Not something similar. Not a replacement. The exact page. You remember seeing it. You remember it helped. You might even remember what you were working on...
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Your browser history should remember your day, not just your URLs
Your browser history should remember your day, not just your URLs Most browser history pages are technically honest and emotionally useless. They tell you what happened. They do not help you understand what the day was. That was the irritation that kept pulling me back to Browser Memory. Chrome already keeps a record...
7 min readRead more
Browser Memory: sessions, not just a list of URLs
Browser Memory: sessions, not just a list of URLs The first time I seriously looked at Chrome's history page as a product builder, I realized something simple: It remembers the wrong unit. Chrome remembers visits. I remember sessions. A visit is one page. A session is the reason that page existed in the first place....
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I built a Chrome History replacement with zero AI, on purpose
I built a Chrome History replacement with zero AI, on purpose The easiest pitch for Browser Memory would have been the obvious one: "AI for your browser history." It almost writes itself. Summarize your browsing. Ask questions about your past tabs. Let a model name your research sessions. Turn every messy trail into a...
8 min readRead more
Chrome's history page is a junk drawer. I gave mine a memory instead.
Chrome's history page is a junk drawer. I gave mine a memory instead. I have lost the same useful page more times than I want to admit. Not because I forgot how to search. Not because the page disappeared. Usually it was still there, buried somewhere inside , sitting between a login redirect, a docs page I opened by...
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How I Check Whether a Chrome Extension Is Asking for Too Much Access
How I Check Whether a Chrome Extension Is Asking for Too Much Access I used to install Chrome extensions the way most people install them: I saw a useful feature, checked a few reviews, clicked install, and moved on. That sounds normal because it is normal. Extensions are supposed to feel lightweight. A screenshot...
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What I Learned Publishing My First Chrome Extension
What I Learned Publishing My First Chrome Extension Publishing my first Chrome extension felt different from pushing a normal web app. With a web app, I can deploy quietly, refresh the page, fix something, deploy again, and pretend the first version never happened. A Chrome extension feels more public. There is a...
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The Hardest Part of Explaining Browser Permissions to Normal Users
When I started building Extension Permission Monitor, I thought the hardest part would be technical. I expected the difficult work to be learning Chrome APIs, reading installed extensions, calculating risk scores, handling edge cases, and making the dashboard fast enough to feel useful. Those parts mattered. But they...
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How I Built Extension Permission Monitor
I did not start Extension Permission Monitor because I wanted to build a security product. I started it because my own browser felt messy. I had too many Chrome extensions installed, and the uncomfortable part was not the number. It was the uncertainty. I could recognize some of the icons, but I could not explain what...
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Why Chrome Extension Permissions Are So Hard to Understand
The hardest part of Chrome extension permissions is not that the words are technical. The hardest part is that the words do not map cleanly to what normal people are trying to understand. A user does not really care whether a permission is called , , , , or . They care about something simpler: What can this extension...
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How to Audit Your Chrome Extensions in 5 Minutes
Most people do not need a complicated browser security routine. They need a small habit they will actually repeat. That is how I think about auditing Chrome extensions now. Not as a dramatic security cleanup. Not as a paranoid weekend project. Just five minutes every now and then to ask a simple question: What...
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I Had 22 Chrome Extensions Installed. I Had No Idea What Half of Them Could Do.
I did not realize how many Chrome extensions I had installed until I opened the extensions page and counted them one by one. Twenty two. That number bothered me more than I expected. Not because twenty two extensions is automatically dangerous. Some of them were tools I used every day. Password manager. Screenshot...
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OAuth in a Chrome Extension Is Not the Same as in a Web App
I underestimated OAuth in a Chrome extension because I had done OAuth in web apps before. That confidence lasted about one afternoon. In a normal web app, the shape is familiar: 1. Send the user to an authorization URL. 2. The provider redirects back to your domain. 3. Your server receives an authorization code. 4....
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Building an App-Store UI for My Chrome Extensions with Next.js
At some point, having multiple Chrome extensions starts to feel less like a portfolio and more like a shelf full of tools with no labels. That was the problem I ran into. I had been building small browser products: meeting reminders, permission monitoring, license utilities, and a few experiments that were still...
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Injecting a UI Overlay Into Every Webpage Without Breaking Any of Them
The first version of my overlay worked beautifully on a blank test page. That was the trap. I had a simple reminder panel for a Chrome extension. The extension needed to show a full page meeting reminder on top of whatever tab I was already using. Not a quiet notification in the corner. Not a calendar popup that...
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Why Permission Design Is a Product Feature
Permissions are not just a technical detail. They are one of the first product decisions a user sees. That is especially true for browser extensions. A landing page can be polished, the icon can look trustworthy, and the feature can solve a real problem. But if Chrome shows a permission warning that sounds broader...
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