6 ms·

I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections

136 points by trungpv1601 2y ago

franze 2y ago
I found it more trustworthy to code my own extensions via ChatGPT. These are the last 2 ones. I pretty much dont care if people use them, as the mostly fulfill my own usecases. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/comparative-chatgpt-searc/npdkpocndhogcfnmfgnhojcipnnbogfb https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/comparative-chatgpt... https://thisismy.franzai.com/ https://thisismy.franzai.com/ The cost of (small) software is fast approaching 0, and it can be faster now to code your own solution, instead of looking for one that nearly mostly fulfills your usecases.
- richrichardsson 2y ago
  > I found it more trustworthy to code my own extensions I used to have a ton of little single use extensions that I barely ever used but thought at the time of installation, ”that could be useful one day". Then I started noticing I was liking really random shit on Facebook. That immediately ceased when I uninstalled all but Bitwarden, Leechblock and uBlock Origin. I will never install another random 3rd party extension again
  - collinvandyck76 2y ago
    Which of your single use extensions was causing you to like things on Facebook?
    - aragonite 2y ago
      Not the GP, but just last week Google automatically removed a single use extension (https://readermode.io https://readermode.io) from my browser after flagging it as malware (as I recall the extension updated itself a day before the removal). The extension has also been taken down from the Chrome web store (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode/llimhhconnjiflfimocjggfjdlmlhblm https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode/llimhhc...) though Google hasn't provided any details about what it was doing that led to the removal.
      - nomilk 2y ago
        I think the asymmetry in payoffs explains this, since a bad actor who baits and switches their extension could do massive damage to users. So google try to catch this behaviour and inevitably have some false positives (extensions labelled malware that actually aren't). The cost of a false positive is annoyance. The cost of real malware getting through could be your bank balance.
        hackinthebochs 2y ago
        Automatic extension updates is a stupid practice. The attack surface for a legit extension is minimal, while being huge for a malware update. I'm against almost all automatic software updates in general, but browser extensions take the cake for having an obscene cost/benefit ratio. Chrome won't even let you turn it off. Personally I extract and load all my extensions in developer mode.
        jjeaff 2y ago
        the alternative is leaving software eternally insecure as people will not update them. and of those that will, 99.99% (probably not an exaggeration) will not have the interest, time, or ability to review code changes before updating.
        hackinthebochs 2y ago
        There are some core technologies that should be updated automatically as the cost/benefit is well in favor of updates (by default, but with an option to turn it off). But the fact that we're at the point of all software updating automatically with zero acknowledgement that there is even a cost associated with it is a huge problem. Ostensibly a security practice but now serves as a means for software distributors to extract the maximum value from their users. The pendulum is well overdue for a swing back towards the middle.
      - amelius 2y ago
        I heard (on HN) that often an extension changes owners just before turning bad. Curious if that was the case here.
    - cynicalsecurity 2y ago
      Tons of them. Custom download page, to avoid seeing the old ugly Chrome'a download shelf at the bottom of the screen.
      - JadeNB 2y ago
        > Tons of them. Custom download page, to avoid seeing the old ugly Chrome'a download shelf at the bottom of the screen. Just to make sure—you seem to be replying to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42493152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42493152, which currently says: > Which of your single use extensions was causing you to like things on Facebook? Are you saying tons of your single-use extensions caused this Facebook liking, and a custom download page was one of them? Or was this meant to be a response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42492881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42492881? (Or maybe something's wrong with parent links today. For me, on the main page, they are now turning into anchored links that don't seem to go where intended, which wasn't happening yesterday.)
    - richrichardsson 2y ago
      I can't answer that question I'm afraid. I disabled somewhere in the region of 5-10 extensions and it would have required more effort than I cared to exert to figure out which was the culprit. This means that I can't categorically state an extension was to blame, but there was a strong correlation between my removing them and the spurious likes stopping.
  - antihero 2y ago
    I remember this happening when an extension got sold and then stole my Instagram cookies. Absolutely tonnes of likes of weird shit.
- polotics 2y ago
  Haha exactly! Except I didnt bother to publish mine on chromewebstore, it's just on gitlab: https://gitlab.com/natural_aliens/geminiwrap_plugin https://gitlab.com/natural_aliens/geminiwrap_plugin ...it makes Gemini-Chat voice dictation a bit more useful. My other one, the remove-youtube-shorts, is almost an one-liner, so I didnt even publish it it's too trivial I think. Everyone just make your own!
  - franze 2y ago
    Yeah, creating the marketing screenshots and filling out the publishing form takes longer nowadays then coding the actual extension.
    - polotics 2y ago
      Also if anyone wants to uses an extension I would much rather they make the minuscule effort to create a local folder, put the files in there, and load the extension's folder with the chrome extension mgr. Maybe even they can peek at the source code... I really don't see why I'd have to push my name, address, email etc on some google storefront and submit myself to spam reviews at the big "google-internet" party in the cloud.
    - oefrha 2y ago
      I was updating my Chrome Web Store extensions to MV3 the other day. Had to fill a fair bit of new stuff. Then one dead simple extension I haven’t touched in a decade got its update rejected due to “description provided is insufficient to understand the functionality of the item”, even though anyone who bothered to seek it out absolutely would have no trouble understanding what it does (according to analytics on the dashboard, there are a grand total of ~20 active users and a couple hundred throughout its lifetime), never mind what those lay reviewers think. The review process is really dumb.
  - dsauerbrun 2y ago
    I'm gonna need the remove youtube shorts one
    - 2y ago
- amelius 2y ago
  I'm too scared to download extensions, so I use bookmarklets (on Firefox). But I like your suggestion of using ChatGPT to write extensions.
  - RustySpottedCat 2y ago
    Tampermonkey scripts with chatgpt is even faster. Adding a functionality to a website just by pasting the site's html in chatgpt and in 2min I get what I need.
    - DaSHacka 2y ago
      Making a simple tool for a site or two is the perfect use case for a userscript manager like TamperMonkey/ViolentMonkey (FOSS alternative), I think making your own extension is somewhat overkill Easier to share with others, too
- croes 2y ago
  Your cost but not the cost.
- adamredwoods 2y ago
  Interesting that extensions are not seen as trustworthy. I installed a third-party one for work, and it kept opening up the developers website which was blocked by our firewall. Why try to do a web action the user didn't request? It devolves trust.
RadiozRadioz 2y ago
Any plans to support FireFox extensions?
- trungpv1601 2y ago
  Yes. I'm working on it
dizhn 2y ago
Not a good day to have Honey in the list :)
- nomilk 2y ago
  Was curious so just searched. Apparently Honey would try to get the best coupon codes on the web, but they started partnering with businesses to give (say) 10% off via a Honey-specific discount code (e.g. HONEY10), but Honey would ignore other (possibly greater) discounts, thus lulling users into a false sense of security that they were getting the best deal when they often weren't.
  - shreddit 2y ago
    It’s even worse. They steal from other promoters. Say you watch a LTT video and use one of their affiliate links. If you have honey installed they will replace the link with their own affiliate link and cash the promotion bonus without any promotion by themselves.
    - CodesInChaos 2y ago
      Of the three bad things they've been accused of, I'd consider that by far the least. Selling tracking data is an invasion of privacy. Deliberately not showing better discounts violates their core value proposition. Replacing deferral links doesn't hurt the user, and isn't much different from blocking ads.
      - 369548684892826 2y ago
        As a user that might use referral links to support the youtube channel, I do feel in an indirect way this does hurt the user
  - microbass 2y ago
    And, they highjacked referral links, ensuring they got referral commission, not the original referrer.
  - 2y ago
anonymous344 2y ago
I used to use extensions in the chrome, but then I noticed that my dev server private urls were being botted. Only way for them to get leaked was virus, google or some extension. For me it seemed like the Window Resizer -addon was leaking every url I visited. And it's not the only addon that seem to use google analytics. wtf?
ned99 2y ago
I like the UI. Neat.
- trungpv1601 2y ago
  Shout-out to FluxUI.dev
cynicalsecurity 2y ago
The less of Chrome extensions, the better.
arthuryuzbashew 2y ago
[dead]
hieunc229 2y ago
Interesting extension
- trungpv1601 2y ago
  Thanks Hieu
deanc 2y ago
What UX library did you use here? It looks like bootstrap but isn't (as far as I can tell).
- vallode 2y ago
  Looks like the website is built with Laravel[1] using Livewire[2] (Alpine JS on the front-end) and the UI library used is Flux[3]. [1]: https://laravel.com/ https://laravel.com/ [2]: https://livewire.laravel.com/ https://livewire.laravel.com/ [3]: https://fluxui.dev/ https://fluxui.dev/
- trungpv1601 2y ago
  Shout-out to FluxUI.dev
vermayash8 2y ago
Interesting, I find it useful. A couple of features you could think about: 1. Is there a feature to create a "pull request" to the collection maintainer to propose adding some extensions to their collection? Otherwise, there would be several public shared collections for the same use-case and it may become scattered. 2. I'd like to be able to favorite / like / star a collection, and that to be used as a signal to search results ranking. Another adjacent domain to expand could be Tampermonkey scripts.
- trungpv1601 2y ago
  Thank you for the feedback. I will add it to the roadmap.
demaga 2y ago
Neat site. Nice to see my extension that I just published a couple of days ago here! It doesn't even have any users yet. How did you obtain this info? Is there an API for that? https://webextension.net/chrome/extension/epjjmfojjmbgignfnkhgnbhkjdanmlfp/geoguessr-stats https://webextension.net/chrome/extension/epjjmfojjmbgignfnk...
2Gkashmiri 2y ago
Please promote Firefox extensions. Chrome and Google are on a dangerous trajectoryin ruining peoples lives. Please dont be part of the problem in promoting chrome / chromium
- trungpv1601 2y ago
  Yeah. I'm working on it
- JadeNB 2y ago
  > Please promote Firefox extensions. Chrome and Google are on a dangerous trajectoryin ruining peoples lives. Unfortunately, Firefox is on a trajectory of "imitate what Chrome's doing." I certainly no longer trust Mozilla as I once did. They're probably better than Google, but they've made it clear they're going to make decisions for market share over respecting their historical ideals.
seanwilson 2y ago
For what it's worth, if you create a new profile for Chrome extensions, they won't have access to your regular browser profile. I do this for web developer extensions that typically need a lot of powerful permissions. So I have a Chrome profile that's full of web developer extensions, so they're isolated from private and security sensitive stuff like email and banking. Similarly, you can do this by installing Chrome Beta or Chrome Canary for use with different extensions you don't want to take a risk with.
- nomilk 2y ago
  I've often wondered what chrome extensions have access to. Is it completely safe to install untrustworthy extensions so long as the user profile is a new one? Also, I have a wonderful one-liner [1] aliased in ~/.zshrc (opens chrome with a new user profile with one command) open -n -a "Google Chrome" --args --user-data-dir=$(mktemp -d) [1] https://superuser.com/a/1652648/928461 https://superuser.com/a/1652648/928461
bl4kers 2y ago
Userscripts > extensions
sneak 2y ago
Browser extensions are a major security risk and you should not install any that you wouldn’t trust with your login cookies on every site you visit.
popoxdev 2y ago
Nice work I find it useful since I like to use a few extensions for development. Do you have any insights over the market share for extensions between Chrome and Firefox. I'm developing an extension and I don't know if it's worth to maintain both versions?
- trungpv1601 2y ago
  For me, your Focus Chrome extension is enough. No need to overthink about making both versions. Chromium has huge opportunities including Chrome, Brave, Opera...

136 points by trungpv1601 2y ago

I found it more trustworthy to code my own extensions via ChatGPT. These are the last 2 ones. I pretty much dont care if people use them, as the mostly fulfill my own usecases. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/comparative-chatgpt-searc/npdkpocndhogcfnmfgnhojcipnnbogfb https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/comparative-chatgpt... https://thisismy.franzai.com/ https://thisismy.franzai.com/ The cost of (small) software is fast approaching 0, and it can be faster now to code your own solution, instead of looking for one that nearly mostly fulfills your usecases.

richrichardsson 2y ago
> I found it more trustworthy to code my own extensions I used to have a ton of little single use extensions that I barely ever used but thought at the time of installation, ”that could be useful one day". Then I started noticing I was liking really random shit on Facebook. That immediately ceased when I uninstalled all but Bitwarden, Leechblock and uBlock Origin. I will never install another random 3rd party extension again
- collinvandyck76 2y ago
  Which of your single use extensions was causing you to like things on Facebook?
  - aragonite 2y ago
    Not the GP, but just last week Google automatically removed a single use extension (https://readermode.io https://readermode.io) from my browser after flagging it as malware (as I recall the extension updated itself a day before the removal). The extension has also been taken down from the Chrome web store (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode/llimhhconnjiflfimocjggfjdlmlhblm https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode/llimhhc...) though Google hasn't provided any details about what it was doing that led to the removal.
    - nomilk 2y ago
      I think the asymmetry in payoffs explains this, since a bad actor who baits and switches their extension could do massive damage to users. So google try to catch this behaviour and inevitably have some false positives (extensions labelled malware that actually aren't). The cost of a false positive is annoyance. The cost of real malware getting through could be your bank balance.
      - hackinthebochs 2y ago
        Automatic extension updates is a stupid practice. The attack surface for a legit extension is minimal, while being huge for a malware update. I'm against almost all automatic software updates in general, but browser extensions take the cake for having an obscene cost/benefit ratio. Chrome won't even let you turn it off. Personally I extract and load all my extensions in developer mode.
        jjeaff 2y ago
        the alternative is leaving software eternally insecure as people will not update them. and of those that will, 99.99% (probably not an exaggeration) will not have the interest, time, or ability to review code changes before updating.
        hackinthebochs 2y ago
        There are some core technologies that should be updated automatically as the cost/benefit is well in favor of updates (by default, but with an option to turn it off). But the fact that we're at the point of all software updating automatically with zero acknowledgement that there is even a cost associated with it is a huge problem. Ostensibly a security practice but now serves as a means for software distributors to extract the maximum value from their users. The pendulum is well overdue for a swing back towards the middle.
    - amelius 2y ago
      I heard (on HN) that often an extension changes owners just before turning bad. Curious if that was the case here.
  - cynicalsecurity 2y ago
    Tons of them. Custom download page, to avoid seeing the old ugly Chrome'a download shelf at the bottom of the screen.
    - JadeNB 2y ago
      > Tons of them. Custom download page, to avoid seeing the old ugly Chrome'a download shelf at the bottom of the screen. Just to make sure—you seem to be replying to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42493152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42493152, which currently says: > Which of your single use extensions was causing you to like things on Facebook? Are you saying tons of your single-use extensions caused this Facebook liking, and a custom download page was one of them? Or was this meant to be a response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42492881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42492881? (Or maybe something's wrong with parent links today. For me, on the main page, they are now turning into anchored links that don't seem to go where intended, which wasn't happening yesterday.)
  - richrichardsson 2y ago
    I can't answer that question I'm afraid. I disabled somewhere in the region of 5-10 extensions and it would have required more effort than I cared to exert to figure out which was the culprit. This means that I can't categorically state an extension was to blame, but there was a strong correlation between my removing them and the spurious likes stopping.
- antihero 2y ago
  I remember this happening when an extension got sold and then stole my Instagram cookies. Absolutely tonnes of likes of weird shit.
polotics 2y ago
Haha exactly! Except I didnt bother to publish mine on chromewebstore, it's just on gitlab: https://gitlab.com/natural_aliens/geminiwrap_plugin https://gitlab.com/natural_aliens/geminiwrap_plugin ...it makes Gemini-Chat voice dictation a bit more useful. My other one, the remove-youtube-shorts, is almost an one-liner, so I didnt even publish it it's too trivial I think. Everyone just make your own!
- franze 2y ago
  Yeah, creating the marketing screenshots and filling out the publishing form takes longer nowadays then coding the actual extension.
  - polotics 2y ago
    Also if anyone wants to uses an extension I would much rather they make the minuscule effort to create a local folder, put the files in there, and load the extension's folder with the chrome extension mgr. Maybe even they can peek at the source code... I really don't see why I'd have to push my name, address, email etc on some google storefront and submit myself to spam reviews at the big "google-internet" party in the cloud.
  - oefrha 2y ago
    I was updating my Chrome Web Store extensions to MV3 the other day. Had to fill a fair bit of new stuff. Then one dead simple extension I haven’t touched in a decade got its update rejected due to “description provided is insufficient to understand the functionality of the item”, even though anyone who bothered to seek it out absolutely would have no trouble understanding what it does (according to analytics on the dashboard, there are a grand total of ~20 active users and a couple hundred throughout its lifetime), never mind what those lay reviewers think. The review process is really dumb.
- dsauerbrun 2y ago
  I'm gonna need the remove youtube shorts one
  - 2y ago
amelius 2y ago
I'm too scared to download extensions, so I use bookmarklets (on Firefox). But I like your suggestion of using ChatGPT to write extensions.
- RustySpottedCat 2y ago
  Tampermonkey scripts with chatgpt is even faster. Adding a functionality to a website just by pasting the site's html in chatgpt and in 2min I get what I need.
  - DaSHacka 2y ago
    Making a simple tool for a site or two is the perfect use case for a userscript manager like TamperMonkey/ViolentMonkey (FOSS alternative), I think making your own extension is somewhat overkill Easier to share with others, too
croes 2y ago
Your cost but not the cost.
adamredwoods 2y ago
Interesting that extensions are not seen as trustworthy. I installed a third-party one for work, and it kept opening up the developers website which was blocked by our firewall. Why try to do a web action the user didn't request? It devolves trust.

RadiozRadioz 2y ago

Any plans to support FireFox extensions?

trungpv1601 2y ago
Yes. I'm working on it

dizhn 2y ago

Not a good day to have Honey in the list :)

nomilk 2y ago
Was curious so just searched. Apparently Honey would try to get the best coupon codes on the web, but they started partnering with businesses to give (say) 10% off via a Honey-specific discount code (e.g. HONEY10), but Honey would ignore other (possibly greater) discounts, thus lulling users into a false sense of security that they were getting the best deal when they often weren't.
- shreddit 2y ago
  It’s even worse. They steal from other promoters. Say you watch a LTT video and use one of their affiliate links. If you have honey installed they will replace the link with their own affiliate link and cash the promotion bonus without any promotion by themselves.
  - CodesInChaos 2y ago
    Of the three bad things they've been accused of, I'd consider that by far the least. Selling tracking data is an invasion of privacy. Deliberately not showing better discounts violates their core value proposition. Replacing deferral links doesn't hurt the user, and isn't much different from blocking ads.
    - 369548684892826 2y ago
      As a user that might use referral links to support the youtube channel, I do feel in an indirect way this does hurt the user
- microbass 2y ago
  And, they highjacked referral links, ensuring they got referral commission, not the original referrer.
- 2y ago

anonymous344 2y ago

I used to use extensions in the chrome, but then I noticed that my dev server private urls were being botted. Only way for them to get leaked was virus, google or some extension. For me it seemed like the Window Resizer -addon was leaking every url I visited. And it's not the only addon that seem to use google analytics. wtf?

ned99 2y ago

I like the UI. Neat.

trungpv1601 2y ago
Shout-out to FluxUI.dev

cynicalsecurity 2y ago

The less of Chrome extensions, the better.

arthuryuzbashew 2y ago

[dead]

hieunc229 2y ago

Interesting extension

trungpv1601 2y ago
Thanks Hieu

deanc 2y ago

What UX library did you use here? It looks like bootstrap but isn't (as far as I can tell).

vallode 2y ago
Looks like the website is built with Laravel[1] using Livewire[2] (Alpine JS on the front-end) and the UI library used is Flux[3]. [1]: https://laravel.com/ https://laravel.com/ [2]: https://livewire.laravel.com/ https://livewire.laravel.com/ [3]: https://fluxui.dev/ https://fluxui.dev/
trungpv1601 2y ago
Shout-out to FluxUI.dev

vermayash8 2y ago

Interesting, I find it useful. A couple of features you could think about: 1. Is there a feature to create a "pull request" to the collection maintainer to propose adding some extensions to their collection? Otherwise, there would be several public shared collections for the same use-case and it may become scattered. 2. I'd like to be able to favorite / like / star a collection, and that to be used as a signal to search results ranking. Another adjacent domain to expand could be Tampermonkey scripts.

trungpv1601 2y ago
Thank you for the feedback. I will add it to the roadmap.

demaga 2y ago

Neat site. Nice to see my extension that I just published a couple of days ago here! It doesn't even have any users yet. How did you obtain this info? Is there an API for that? https://webextension.net/chrome/extension/epjjmfojjmbgignfnkhgnbhkjdanmlfp/geoguessr-stats https://webextension.net/chrome/extension/epjjmfojjmbgignfnk...

2Gkashmiri 2y ago

Please promote Firefox extensions. Chrome and Google are on a dangerous trajectoryin ruining peoples lives. Please dont be part of the problem in promoting chrome / chromium

trungpv1601 2y ago
Yeah. I'm working on it
JadeNB 2y ago
> Please promote Firefox extensions. Chrome and Google are on a dangerous trajectoryin ruining peoples lives. Unfortunately, Firefox is on a trajectory of "imitate what Chrome's doing." I certainly no longer trust Mozilla as I once did. They're probably better than Google, but they've made it clear they're going to make decisions for market share over respecting their historical ideals.

seanwilson 2y ago

For what it's worth, if you create a new profile for Chrome extensions, they won't have access to your regular browser profile. I do this for web developer extensions that typically need a lot of powerful permissions. So I have a Chrome profile that's full of web developer extensions, so they're isolated from private and security sensitive stuff like email and banking. Similarly, you can do this by installing Chrome Beta or Chrome Canary for use with different extensions you don't want to take a risk with.

nomilk 2y ago
I've often wondered what chrome extensions have access to. Is it completely safe to install untrustworthy extensions so long as the user profile is a new one? Also, I have a wonderful one-liner [1] aliased in ~/.zshrc (opens chrome with a new user profile with one command) open -n -a "Google Chrome" --args --user-data-dir=$(mktemp -d) [1] https://superuser.com/a/1652648/928461 https://superuser.com/a/1652648/928461

bl4kers 2y ago

Userscripts > extensions

sneak 2y ago

Browser extensions are a major security risk and you should not install any that you wouldn’t trust with your login cookies on every site you visit.

popoxdev 2y ago

Nice work I find it useful since I like to use a few extensions for development. Do you have any insights over the market share for extensions between Chrome and Firefox. I'm developing an extension and I don't know if it's worth to maintain both versions?

trungpv1601 2y ago
For me, your Focus Chrome extension is enough. No need to overthink about making both versions. Chromium has huge opportunities including Chrome, Brave, Opera...