Track What Your Chrome Apps & Extensions Are Doing With Your Information

What is a browser these days without all those handy extensions and add-ons? Pretty boring if you ask me! Browser extensions have become a major part of the browsing experience and off a quick easy was to enhance your browser capabilities, functionality, looks and even feel.

However, some extensions ask for broad permissions that allow access to sensitive data such as browser cookies or history. Some may even go well beyond that! For those that have always wondered what information their Google Chrome add-ons and extensions access, we now have an easy tool that will give us just that!

Last year, Google introduced the Chrome Apps & Extensions Developer Tool, which provides an improved developer experience for debugging apps and extensions. The newest version of the tool, which became available today, will allow any geek or power user that wants full details on any of their installed Chrome apps or extensions to see the precise actions that they performing.

Once you’ve installed the Chrome Apps & Extensions Developer Tool, it will start locally auditing your extensions and apps as you use them. For each app or extension, you can see historical activity over the past few days as well as real-time activity by clicking the “Behavior” link. The tool highlights activities that involve your information, such as reading website cookies or modifying web sites, in a privacy section. You can also search for URLs to see if an extension has modified any matching pages.

For developers, if you’re debugging an app or extension, you can use the “Realtime” tab to watch the stream of API calls as an extension or app runs. This can help you track down glitches or identify unnecessary API calls.

Source: Official Chromium Blog