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Minimalist Chrome/Firefox Extension Boilerplate with
React + Vite + TypeScript + TailwindCSS

This template repository is a side product of my Chrome Extension Supatabs.
If you tend to have tons of tabs open, or are a OneTab user, make sure to check it out here!
Supatabs is an example and showcase of what you can develop with this template. (anything you want, really 🚀)

Table of Contents

Intro

This boilerplate is meant to be a minimal quick start for creating chrome/firefox extensions using React, Typescript and Tailwind CSS.

It includes all possible pages such as new tab, dev panel, pop up, etc., as well as corresponding manifest settings by default. You will likely have to customize/delete some of the pages (see docs below).

You can build dist files for both Chrome and Firefox with manifest v3.

If you are looking for a React focused way to access the local storage, I also implemented a chrome local/sync storage hook. The hook works well with this template. Check it out here.

Features

Usage

Getting Started

Developing and building

This template comes with build configs for both Chrome and Firefox. Running dev or build commands without specifying the browser target will build for Chrome by default.

  1. Clone this repository or click "Use this template"
  2. Change name and description in manifest.json
  3. Run yarn or npm i (check your node version >= 16)
  4. Run yarn dev[:chrome|:firefox], or npm run dev[:chrome|:firefox]

Running a dev command will build your extension and watch for changes in the source files. Changing the source files will refresh the corresponding dist_<chrome|firefox> folder.

To create an optimized production build, run yarn build[:chrome|:firefox], or npm run build[:chrome|:firefox].

Load your extension

For Chrome

  1. Open - Chrome browser
  2. Access - chrome://extensions
  3. Tick - Developer mode
  4. Find - Load unpacked extension
  5. Select - dist_chrome folder in this project (after dev or build)

For Firefox

  1. Open - Firefox browser
  2. Access - about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox
  3. Click - Load temporary Add-on
  4. Select - any file in dist_firefox folder (i.e. manifest.json) in this project (after dev or build)

Customization

Adding / removing pages

The template includes source code for all of the extension pages (i.e. New Tab, Dev Tools, Popup, Side Panel etc.). You will likely have to customize it to fit your needs.

E.g. you don't want the newtab page to activate whenever you open a new tab:

  1. remove the directory newtab and its contents in src/pages
  2. remove chrome_url_overrides: { newtab: 'src/pages/newtab/index.html' }, in manifest.json

Some pages like the "Side Panel" don't work the exact same in Chrome and Firefox. While this template includes the source code for the side panel, it won't automatically be included in the dist file to prevent cross browser build warnings.

To include the side panel for Chrome add the following to the manifest.json:

{
  "manifest_version": 3,
  // ...
  "permissions": [
    "activeTab",
    "sidePanel" // <-- permission for sidepanel
  ],
  // ...
  "side_panel": {
    "default_path": "src/pages/panel/index.html" // <-- tell vite to include it in the build files
  },
  // ...
}

If you need to declare pages in addition to the manifest pages, e.g. a custom app page, create a new folder in the pages directory and add the corresponding .html, .tsx and .css files (see options/* for an example to copy). Then include the root html in the vite.config.base.ts file under build.rollupOptions.input like so:

// ...
build: {
   rollupOptions: {
      input: {
         app: resolve(pagesDir, "app", "index.html"),
      },
      output: {
         entryFileNames: (chunk) => `src/pages/${chunk.name}/index.js`,
      },
   },
}
// ...

Styling

CSS files in the src/pages/* directories are not necessary. They are left in there in case you want to use it in combination with Tailwind CSS. Feel free to delete them.

Tailwind can be configured as usual in the tailwind.config.cjs file. See doc link below.

Internationalization (i18n)

To enable internationalization set the localize flag in the vite.config.base.ts to true.

The template includes a directory locales with a basic setup for english i18n. Enabling i18n will pull the name and description for your extension from the english translation files instead of the manifest.

Follow the instructions in the official docs to add other translations and retrieve them in the extension.

If you don't need i18n you can ignore the locales directory until you need it, as it won't be copied into the build folder unless the localize flag is set to true.

Publish your extension to the CWS

To upload an extension to the Chrome store you have to pack (zip) it and then upload it to your item in the Chrome Web Store.

This repo includes a Github Action Workflow to create a optimized prod build and the zip file.

To run the workflow do the following:

  1. Go to the "Actions" tab in your forked repository from this template
  2. In the left sidebar click on "Build and Zip Chrome Extension"
  3. Click on "Run Workflow" and select the main branch, then "Run Workflow"
  4. Refresh the page and click the most recent run
  5. In the summary page "Artifacts" section click on the generated "vite-web-extension-chrome"
  6. Upload this file to the Chrome Web Store as described here

Tech Docs

Credit

Heavily inspired by Jonghakseo's vite chrome extension boilerplate. It uses SASS instead of TailwindCSS and is slightly a lot less minimalist in case you want to check it out.

Contributing

Feel free to open PRs or raise issues!