Extensions in two clicks

Open Extensions, choose a profile in the toolbar, and you get eleven cards. Each one carries a name, a version, a category and the folder name the app expects on disk.

The list ships inside the app, so the screen works before you sign in. Every entry carries the store id the Install button uses, and the official mark sits only on cards published by the extension's own author.

The Install button does the whole job: it takes the store id from the catalog and asks the store for the archive. The app stops downloading at 80 MB, so an endless answer cannot fill your disk.

Then the app checks the file before it lets anything move. It recomputes the extension id from the public key inside the archive, and that id has to equal the one you asked for.

1. 1

   Signature first

   A missing signature, a bad signature or a mismatched id stops the install.

2. 2

   Name second

   The name you see is the real one: the app compares the manifest name with the catalog name and skips the translated form.

3. 3

   Manifest V3 or nothing

   A manifest that is not third generation stops the install with a plain reason instead of a green result.

4. 4

   The store id is kept

   The app writes the author key from the archive into the manifest when the archive carries one, and then a wallet dialog looking for the known id finds it.

5. 5

   The swap is reversible

   The app renames the old folder aside and removes it only once the new one is in place.

If an extension has a store id and its files are not on this computer, Enable downloads and unpacks them first, then switches it on for the selected profile.

A green Enabled is never allowed to mean nothing. A second badge on the card says what state the files themselves are in.

• Files found

  The folder is in place and its manifest is third generation, so this extension loads when the profile starts.

• Files missing

  There is no such folder inside the extensions directory. For a catalog card, Enable fixes that itself.

• Files too old

  The folder is there and the manifest is the old standard. Your profile would not load it, so this is a third state and deliberately not a green one.

• The ceiling in view

  The toolbar shows how many extensions this profile has on and the ceiling of 50, so you do not learn the limit from a refusal.

The profile remembers an extension you switched on by folder name, in a file on this computer. When you are signed in the change to a catalog extension also goes to your account, so an extension you turned on at work is on at home on the same profile, while the choice of your own extension, added by link, by file or by hand, stays on this computer.

If that send fails you see the failure instead of a green Done, because on the second machine the choice would simply not exist.

Tick profiles in the list or press Select all, then Extensions in the bar above the list. The window lists the catalog extensions and your own ones on this computer, says for each how many of the selected profiles already have it on, and gives two buttons: Switch on for all and Switch off for all. A catalog extension that is not on this computer yet is downloaded first by the first button.

The result stays in the same window in words: how many were switched on, how many already had it, which profiles hit the limit of 50 extensions and which ones the account did not take, by name. The profile history gets an entry with the extension name.

• Profiles open on the built-in engine get it right away

  The open profile's session is rebuilt the same way as at launch: the extension script runs on the page after it reloads, with no profile restart.

• Profiles open in ARMANOS Browser get it at the next launch

  An open ARMANOS Browser window does not switch extensions on the fly, so the bulk window names those profiles.

• One request to the account per batch

  The choice of a catalog extension goes to your account in one request, not one per profile, so a large batch does not run into the request rate limit and loses no profiles.

• The same rights as for one profile

  In the account a team member changes extensions on the profiles they have access to. The account does not take the rest, the window names them, and on this computer the choice is saved for them.

Manifest V3 is the only standard that loads, at install and again at launch. Chromium 153 does not run the older one at all.

Silence would be worse than the refusal. Measured with a Manifest V2 folder handed to the engine: the browser started, the profile was marked running, the success notification arrived, and not a single page ever loaded.

So the app skips such a folder before launch, and a notification names the folder, the profile and the reason. Every card in the catalog is a third generation build, and every one of them you really can install from the store.

A folder name arrives from your local choice and from your account, and it then becomes part of a path. That path never leads outside the extensions folder, so no one can slip your profile a foreign folder through a name.

On the built-in engine your profile takes these folders with file access turned off, because an extension with file access could read your other profiles' cookie and login databases. On ARMANOS Browser the profile takes the same folders as a list, and only what you enabled loads.

• Switching off removes the extension when the list arrived

  On the built-in engine an extension you switch off is removed from the profile without restarting the app.

• A network blip unloads nothing

  If the account list could not be fetched, what you enabled stays enabled: that answer means at least these rather than exactly these.

• Up to 50 per profile

  Beyond that the switch refuses and says why, instead of accepting a choice it would quietly ignore at launch.

ARMANOS carries a built-in engine, ordinary Electron, used when ARMANOS Browser is not installed or cannot start. Store extensions load there and their scripts on pages run, but an extension has no button or window of its own, so a wallet or anything else you open from the toolbar cannot be used there.

Blocking is the one part the app can carry itself, and it does. It takes the rules of the blocker you installed from that extension's own folder and runs them.

The Extensions screen warns when the built-in engine is selected on the Engine screen, in all 22 languages. Choosing ARMANOS Browser without having installed it is the same case: your profile still starts on the built-in engine.

The extensions folder is printed on the screen with a button that opens it. Drop an unpacked extension into a folder named exactly as the badge on its card, then start the profile again.

For anything outside the eleven cards there is a link box: paste a Chrome Web Store link and the rest goes exactly as it does for a catalog card. The extension gets its own card, titled from its manifest, because files with no switch would just sit there.

Delete removes the folder, clears the choice from every profile that had it, and tells you how many that was, and when you are signed in, switching off a catalog extension reaches your account as well.

A downloaded extension file goes in through Install from a file (.crx or .zip).

In an open ARMANOS Browser profile you can press Add to Chrome in the Chrome Web Store, as in an ordinary browser. Once the profile closes, the Extensions screen lists what is installed inside it and where it came from.

The store extensions of the app update themselves. Every five hours one request asks the store, and a new version is installed when the profiles that hold it are closed.