I'm trying to set a keyboard shortcut to active/deactivate my Chrome extension that I'm developing. The Chrome extension just consists of a "content_script" that runs on certain sites. I want it to fully activate/deactivate the extension, like if I were to disable it via Chrome://extensions.
In my search for answers, I saw a lot of suggestions to add "_execute_browser_action" to my manifest.json, but I think this command requires a listener that needs to be set up in background.js (correct me if I'm wrong). I want to avoid a background.js if possible, as I want to keep this extension short and sweet.
Here is my manifest.json:
{
"manifest_version": 2,
"name": "foo",
"description": "foo",
"version": "0.1.0",
"commands": {
"_execute_browser_action": {
"suggested_key": {
"default": "Ctrl+Shift+8"
}
}
},
"content_scripts": [{
"js": ["./dist/bundle.js"],
"matches": [ ...certain sites... ]
}],
"icons": {
"16": "/icons/logo16.png",
"32": "/icons/logo32.png",
"48": "/icons/logo48.png",
"128": "/icons/logo128.png"
}
}
With this manifest.json, the shortcut shows up in Chrome://extensions/shortcuts, but the shortcut does nothing. When I press the combination, nothing happens. Even when I refresh the page, reload extension, re-bundle, restart Chrome, etc.
How should I go about adding this keyboard shortcut?
Also, I'm using Babel/Webpack, if that helps.
I ended up solving my own issue. Updating here in case it helps anyone else.
It turns out a background.js was exactly what I was looking for. My background script sets a chrome.storage API field, triggered by browserAction, which my content_script then ingests to toggle it on/off. Then the page is refreshed to update the page html. (Inspiration taken from here)
background.js:
var x = true
enableBrowserAction()
function disableBrowserAction() {
chrome.storage.local.set({enabled: false})
}
function enableBrowserAction() {
chrome.storage.local.set({enabled: true})
}
function updateState() {
if (x == false) {
x = true
enableBrowserAction()
} else {
x = false
disableBrowserAction()
}
chrome.tabs.reload()
}
chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(updateState)
manifest.json (with only the necessary fields):
{
"manifest_version": 2,
"browser_action": {},
"commands": {
"_execute_browser_action": {
"suggested_key": {
"default": "Ctrl+Shift+8"
}
}
},
"permissions": [
"storage"
],
"background": {
"scripts": ["background.js"]
},
"content_scripts": [{
"js": ["./dist/bundle.js"],
"matches": [ ...certain sites... ]
}]
}
content_script (entry for bundle.js):
import ServiceHandler from './ServiceHandler.js'
chrome.storage.local.get('enabled', data => {
if (data.enabled) {
const sh = new ServiceHandler()
sh.execute()
}
})