Reverse engineering Google Chrome extension

And I started looking and I’ve found another extension, but then another question arises: “How to look into a of a Google Chrome extension” 🤔

So in order to do it we need a few things:

The first thing is to find the extension ID, you can do it in a few ways

Open the extension’s chrome store page:

Press enter or click to view image in full size

at the end of the URL you can see it

The other way that you can see it is in the manage extensions page in chrome:

For me personally this is the quicker and easier way of doing it, either way the important things is to get what you need.

Now after the ID is know you need to navigate the folder where all the chrome extensions are for is:

/home/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions

when inside the folder of the extension choose the current version and open it, inside of it should be the source for the extension.

Having such access to the extension code, you can make changes to customized it more or extended it in the way you need(or “take” inspiration from it, like me)

Either way it’s a good thing to know where you can find it.

Conclusion

It's a great way to "peek" behind the curtains for the extensions you use often. Go break an extension apart to see how the things are done the proper way.