Chrome Extension Support
- Loading extensions
- Supported Extensions APIs

Chrome Extension Support

Electron supports a subset of the Chrome Extensions API, primarily to support DevTools extensions and Chromium-internal extensions, but it also happens to support some other extension capabilities.

Note: Electron does not support arbitrary Chrome extensions from the store, and it is a non-goal of the Electron project to be perfectly compatible with Chrome’s implementation of Extensions.

Loading extensions

Electron only supports loading unpacked extensions (i.e., .crx files do not work). Extensions are installed per-session. To load an extension, call ses.loadExtension:

const { session } = require('electron')
session.loadExtension('path/to/unpacked/extension').then(({ id }) => {
  // ...
})

Loaded extensions will not be automatically remembered across exits; if you do not call loadExtension when the app runs, the extension will not be loaded.

Note that loading extensions is only supported in persistent sessions. Attempting to load an extension into an in-memory session will throw an error.

See the session documentation for more information about loading, unloading, and querying active extensions.

chrome.extension.lastError

The following methods of chrome.extension are supported:

chrome.extension.getURL
chrome.extension.getBackgroundPage

`chrome.runtime`

The following properties of chrome.runtime are supported:

chrome.runtime.lastError
chrome.runtime.id

The following methods of chrome.runtime are supported:

chrome.runtime.getBackgroundPage
chrome.runtime.getManifest
chrome.runtime.getPlatformInfo
chrome.runtime.getURL
chrome.runtime.connect
chrome.runtime.sendMessage

The following events of chrome.runtime are supported:

chrome.runtime.onStartup
chrome.runtime.onInstalled
chrome.runtime.onSuspend
chrome.runtime.onSuspendCanceled
chrome.runtime.onConnect
chrome.runtime.onMessage

`chrome.storage`

Only chrome.storage.local is supported; chrome.storage.sync and chrome.storage.managed are not.

`chrome.tabs`

The following methods of chrome.tabs are supported:

chrome.tabs.sendMessage
chrome.tabs.executeScript

Note: In Chrome, passing -1 as a tab ID signifies the “currently active tab”. Since Electron has no such concept, passing -1 as a tab ID is not supported and will raise an error.