Published: June 6, 2025
Over the last few months, a number of highly anticipated changes have landed in the Chrome Web Store and extensions platform. Let's take a look...
Highlights
Google I/O
In Go faster and reach further with Chrome Extensions our product managers Hafsah and David give an overview of what's new and coming for Chrome Extensions and the Chrome Web Store.
In The future of Chrome Extensions with Gemini in your browser, Sebastian explores the incredible potential in combining Gemini and Chrome extensions with in-depth samples.
See all of the talks in this playlist, including Practical built-in AI with Gemini Nano in Chrome from Thomas.
You can also join us in Bengaluru and Berlin later this year—we'd love to see you there.
userScripts.execute method
The User Scripts API lets extensions register user scripts to run on a given page. These are similar to content scripts, but with extra customization of the environment they run in, and support for running code provided by the user. You can now execute user scripts at any point using the userScripts.execute() method, instead of needing to register a script ahead of time to run on the next page load. There are more changes to come, too (see Upcoming Features).
Cancel review
Have you ever submitted your extension to the Chrome Web Store, and then realised you needed to make one more change? Previously, you had to wait for the current submission to be reviewed before you could make a new one. This isn't ideal—we heard you! You can now cancel a pending submission and immediately submit a new one.
Verified CRX uploads
You can now choose to generate a private key that all future uploads to the Chrome Web Store must be signed with. After providing the corresponding public key in the Developer Dashboard, any uploads not signed by the private key will be rejected. This is an additional security measure that can be used to ensure only you can upload new releases, even if your account or publishing workflow is compromised. Learn more in Verified uploads in the Chrome Web Store.
Test account credentials
We just launched support for including test instructions in the Developer Dashboard. This means that if your extension has behaviors that rely on an account, or something that is gated behind a paywall, you can provide credentials to our review team. This can help us during the featured badge nomination process. Test account credentials are not a requirement to be featured, but can make it easier for us to fully evaluate your submission, so do include them if it makes sense.
Policy updates
We've made a series of Chrome Web Store policy updates, including some general updates and changes to our affiliate ads policy. See the full set of policies on our Program Policies page.
Deprecations
Removing the --load-extension flag
The --load-extension flag lets you load an unpacked extension from the command line. However, it was commonly abused to load malicious and unwanted software into the browser. To address this, we are removing the flag in Chrome 137 and providing alternatives for any use cases including testing that still need this capability.
As part of this work, we contributed improvements to Puppeteer to make it easier to load extensions. We're also working with the community to update other popular tools and testing libraries.
Upcoming features
Changes to User Scripts API toggle
When we launched the User Scripts API, we received a lot of feedback about the requirement for users to enable developer mode and the mechanism for detecting if the API was available. We're working on some changes including introducing a new toggle to enable the API. Learn more in Enabling chrome.userScripts is changing.
Community updates
WECG March meetup
We met with other members of the W3C WebExtensions Community Group, including community members and representatives from Firefox, Edge and Safari at Mozilla's office in Berlin. This was a great week of talking about future additions to the platform as well as continued work to make sure extensions work consistently across browsers. Read the full minutes.
Svelte London talk
Oliver Turner gave a talk at Svelte London about his experience building browser extensions. There are some nice tips and tricks in here and it's a great watch for both new and experienced extension developers.
New videos
Extensions are neat
Patrick published a new episode of the "Extensions are neat" series looking at various types of extensions available for users.
Whack-a-mole
Oliver recently made a demo whack-a-mole game. And, by popular demand, published a video looking at how it was built.
New extensions menu
We're working on an experimental new extensions menu in Chrome. Join Oliver to take a look at the new menu along with some new APIs launching alongside it.