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Comment by CodexArcana | Hacker News Reader

If your intentions are to only use the extension for yourself, why not just side load it?

side loaded extensions are not persisted every restart of the browser.

Chrome does keep side loaded extensions through restarts. Firefox doesn't unless you submit to Mozilla for signing. But once signed you can install from a file or even your own site.

I use firefox mainly and thought it was common behavior between the two

Mozilla's signing process isn't too bad, especially if your addon changes infrequently. Recommend trying it.

oh i actually have quite a few extensions that I made for my own use. i did make a small tab extension that I use every day that I did put in the app store for others. it's just a visual way to see what tabs you have open across all the windows and be able to switch to them or close them. super useful to my tab hoarding. links are in my bio

What do you like about your extension versus session buddy? I use session buddy all the time for the same reason for the same reason.

Does everything i wanted it to do and nothing more. I also made it because there were some hidden tabs sometimes that would play audio and I have a special section for tabs playing audio. I don't think that's as big a selling point anymore since autoplay can be disabled pretty reliably now but when I wrote it it was a big annoyance to me. In the end it's personal preference I guess. ~~link in bio if you want to try it out.~~

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabist/hdjegjggiog...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabist/

source: https://github.com/fiveNinePlusR/tabist

This was my experience as well and the reason I saw myself forced to use the web store. I think there was a time where it was not required, where side loading was ok, but then they changed it and I saw no other way to do it. IIRC there was an alternative way for enterprise users, but I never understood it.

That was around 5-7 years ago and I haven't checked if there was a new alternative, easier way to do it nowadays. I'm still using my extensions but have no need to modify them. Let's see what Manifest v3 has to tell me about this. I'll probably drop Chrome then.

Chrome allows permanent side loading, and without signing, if one enables dev mode from extensions page.

Firefox requires uploading to Mozilla for signing to side load permanently or host with them. Though you can self host once signed.

IME Firefox add-ons are approved almost instantly if your addon is not minified or downloading code to execute outside the package. Chrome approvals are always days.

> Firefox requires uploading to Mozilla for signing to side load permanently

Are you sure?

I’ve been sideloading extensions, signed or not, into /usr/lib/firefox/browser/extensions/ and they’ve been working fine.

When was the last time you installed a new extension that way?

Last time was a few weeks ago [0].

I’m also maintaining a couple AUR packages with Firefox extensions myself. They all use the same method for persistence. I’m wondering what kind of issues people are experiencing. Haven’t heard of any myself.

[0]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/firefox-extension-multi-a...

Wait, “load unpacked” doesn’t persist anymore?

It does

It persists for me as recently as three weeks ago. I think it still works fine.

Only for FF; Chrome allows side-loaded extensions to persist.

Are you sure?

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