Using Extgroups
Everything the popup and the manage page do, and the few things Chrome decides for you.
Using the popup from the keyboard
- The cursor starts in the search box: type to narrow the list.
- Press ↓ to move onto the first switch, ↑ and ↓ to move between switches, ↑ from the first to go back to the search box.
- Press Space or Enter to switch the one you are on. Typing a letter takes you back to the search box with the letter in it.
Making and editing groups
- Open the manage page from the gear in the popup, or from Extension options in chrome://extensions.
- Press New group, type its name, and tick the extensions that belong in it.
- Rename by editing the name; reorder with the arrows; delete with Delete group and then confirm.
Undoing a group action
- After any group action, the last line of the popup shows what happened and an Undo button.
- Undo puts back exactly the extensions that action changed. The last ten actions are kept, newest first.
Turning a group on for a site
- In the manage page, open Site rules and press Add a rule. The first time, Chrome asks whether the extension may see your tabs' addresses.
- Pick the group, and type the sites — localhost, 127.0.0.1:3000, or *.example.com for a domain and all its subdomains.
- Open one of those sites: the group turns on and the page reloads once. Close the last tab on it: after a few seconds, what the rule turned on turns off again.
Reloading your developer builds
- Pick the Dev group in the popup. It holds every unpacked build in this Chrome profile, worked out from Chrome's own list.
- After a build, press Reload developer builds. Each developer build that is on goes off and on again, which runs its new code.
- That reloads code only. A change to manifest.json — permissions, content security policy, the name — still needs the reload button on that extension in chrome://extensions.
Your groups on another computer
Groups, locks and site rules are kept in Chrome's own sync storage, so with Chrome sync turned on they follow your Chrome profile to your other computers. The list of what you have installed is never stored, so it is never synced.
An extension from the Chrome Web Store has the same id on every computer, so its place in your groups lines up by itself. An unpacked developer build takes its id from the folder it was loaded from: it only lines up on another computer if it is loaded from the same path there, or if its manifest.json pins a key.
“Extension disabled by Extgroups” in chrome://extensions
From Chrome 155, chrome://extensions labels an extension that another extension switched off, and names the one that did it — so the extensions this one turns off read “Extension disabled by Extgroups”. Nothing is wrong: it is Chrome saying who flipped the switch.
Turn it back on from the popup, from the group it belongs to, or with its own switch in chrome://extensions.
Firefox and other browsers
It works in Chrome, and in Edge and Brave, which run Chrome's extension system. It does not work in Firefox: Firefox lets one extension switch another on or off only when the other one is a theme, so every switch here would have nothing to act on. Safari has no way to do it at all.
Keeping an extension off one website
Turning an extension off switches it off everywhere in Chrome, not on one site. To stop an extension on a single website, use Chrome's own control: open chrome://extensions, choose Details on that extension, and set its site access — or right-click its toolbar icon while you are on the site.
Still stuck?
Write to support or mail support@deftfoundry.com directly. Say which extension and what you were doing — it is one person reading, and that is usually enough to answer in one round.