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I've always thought that some cool insights could be drawn from examining a person's browser history, so I went ahead and built this chrome extension. It overri

I've always thought that some cool insights could be drawn from examining a person's browser history, so I went ahead and built this chrome extension. It overrides the default history page with a better ui for searching and filtering, plus I've included an analytics page that provides some neat information about your browsing habits such as top sites and a category breakdown of your history. My friend suggested open sourcing this project because nobody wants to give an extension access to their history for obvious reasons. The extension has no tracking, no database, no user accounts, etc so its totally private for a user. Just figured some people might be interested in having the analytic of how they spend their time on the web. Hope some people find this interesting!

petercooper 6y ago
The extension has no tracking, no database, no user accounts, etc so its totally private for a user. I, and I suspect most others, really appreciate knowing that. I think adding something along these lines to the Chrome Web Store description would really help as I imagine most people, even those who are not privacy conscious, might be skittish about any potential for their history to leak out.
- millertime802 6y ago
  Great idea! Thanks :)
tfsh 6y ago
I've been wanting to draw insights from my browsing history for a while, in particular; how my browsing history habits have changed over the course of months - to years. Unfortunately Chrome clears your history after n months which is a pain as I've enjoyed looking at other history visulation tools offered on the web store but am constantly disappointed by the lack of data Chrome provides. Something I've been thinking about doing for a while is to create a history backup to a user controlled service (probably my VPS with an exposed API and pub key authentication), this could provide a seamless layer of access to help facilitate long term visualizations.
ErikBjare 6y ago
That's really cool, I've been building ActivityWatch (https://activitywatch.net https://activitywatch.net) that shares similar goals. It's an open-source "screen time" that stores everything locally, and supports (optionally) using a browser extension to gather browsing data.
- mikestaub 6y ago
  I love ActivityWatch! I especially like the VSCode extension as it shows me which files I spend the most time in.
- millertime802 6y ago
  Nice! It looks really cool and definitely more useful than what I've built haha. I'll check it out!

petercooper 6y ago

The extension has no tracking, no database, no user accounts, etc so its totally private for a user. I, and I suspect most others, really appreciate knowing that. I think adding something along these lines to the Chrome Web Store description would really help as I imagine most people, even those who are not privacy conscious, might be skittish about any potential for their history to leak out.

millertime802 6y ago
Great idea! Thanks :)

tfsh 6y ago

I've been wanting to draw insights from my browsing history for a while, in particular; how my browsing history habits have changed over the course of months - to years. Unfortunately Chrome clears your history after n months which is a pain as I've enjoyed looking at other history visulation tools offered on the web store but am constantly disappointed by the lack of data Chrome provides. Something I've been thinking about doing for a while is to create a history backup to a user controlled service (probably my VPS with an exposed API and pub key authentication), this could provide a seamless layer of access to help facilitate long term visualizations.

ErikBjare 6y ago

That's really cool, I've been building ActivityWatch (https://activitywatch.net https://activitywatch.net) that shares similar goals. It's an open-source "screen time" that stores everything locally, and supports (optionally) using a browser extension to gather browsing data.

mikestaub 6y ago
I love ActivityWatch! I especially like the VSCode extension as it shows me which files I spend the most time in.
millertime802 6y ago
Nice! It looks really cool and definitely more useful than what I've built haha. I'll check it out!