Chrome Extension Guides

Chrome Extension Guides & Tutorials

Guides on extension safety, browser privacy and the Chrome settings that are easy to lose track of. Each one is written against the current Chrome stable release and gives the exact menu path, flag or file involved rather than a general list of suggestions.

Featured Guides

• Fixing Chrome extensions that stopped working — Each common error message and the fix that matches it, including the corrupted-extension warning and extensions that vanish after a Chrome update.
• Chrome dark mode, end to end — The appearance setting, the OS-level theme Chrome inherits, the Android toggle, and the force-dark flag, plus what the flag does to sites that already ship a dark theme.
• Recovering bookmarks that disappeared — Identify which of the four causes you have, then recover from the backup file Chrome overwrites shortly after each launch.
• Choosing a tab manager — What separates a tab manager from a tab suspender, and which permissions each category genuinely needs.
• Password generation in the browser — Which generators run locally, and why length beats character-class complexity.

Permission Explainers

Understand exactly what each Chrome extension permission means and why it matters:

• tabs — Read your open tab URLs and titles. Required for tab managers but a privacy risk in other extensions.
• all_urls / <all_urls> — Access every website you visit. The most powerful and most dangerous permission.
• cookies — Read and modify browser cookies, including authentication tokens.
• storage — Store data locally. Generally safe, but verify the extension is not exfiltrating stored data.
• history — Read your full browsing history, including URLs and visit timestamps.
• clipboardRead — Read text from your clipboard, which may contain passwords or sensitive data.

Explore More

• Best Chrome Extensions — Curated, safety-reviewed lists by category
• Safest Extensions — Extensions ranked by safety score and minimal permissions
• Developer Extensions — DevTools additions for people who debug in the browser
• JSON Formatters — For API responses that arrive as one unbroken line
• YouTube Extensions — Playback, download and interface changes, with the permissions each one requires
• Blog — Shorter step-by-step fixes for specific Chrome problems
• Free Online Tools — Browser-based utilities, no install and no account
• claude mcp add, flag by flag — Every flag on the command that registers an MCP server with Claude, and the scope that silently loses the server you just added