Docs Chrome extension

Chrome extension

The Gretl extension surfaces every named service from the Chrome toolbar — open, restart, and stop them without leaving your browser. It talks to the daemon at http://127.0.0.1:11611; nothing leaves your machine.

Install

The extension is published in the Chrome Web Store, the Firefox Add-ons store, and the Edge Add-ons store under Gretl (publisher: gretl.dev). Same code, three stores.

You also need the desktop app. The extension is a thin client. Without the desktop app or CLI running, the daemon isn't there and the extension's popup will say "daemon offline".

Connecting to the daemon

The extension auto-discovers the daemon on first launch. If you've moved it off the default port, set the URL in the extension's options page or run:

gr ext config --url http://127.0.0.1:11611

The desktop app picks up the same setting from ~/.gr/config.toml.

Permissions

The extension requests the minimum set needed:

storage Persists your daemon URL, your favourites pin order, and which groups are collapsed.
tabs Used by the "Open in current tab" action and by the badge — we read the active tab's hostname to highlight a matching service in the popup.
host_permissions: http://127.0.0.1/*, http://localhost/* Required to call the daemon and to open localhost URLs. The extension never requests permissions for non-loopback hosts.
commands Registers the keyboard shortcuts below. None of them are bound by default on first install — you opt-in from chrome://extensions/shortcuts.

The extension does not request <all_urls>, cookies, history, webRequest, or any host permission outside of loopback. The popup and background worker make exactly one origin's worth of requests: http://127.0.0.1:11611.

Keyboard shortcuts

Configurable from chrome://extensions/shortcuts. Shown here with the macOS defaults; the Linux/Windows defaults swap for Ctrl.

Shortcut Action
P Open the popup with focus on the search field
O Open the most recently used service in a new tab
. Toggle the active tab's matching service (start/stop)
Navigate the popup list
Open the focused service
Toggle the focused service (start/stop)
Open in a new window
Copy the service URL

Badge & address-bar integration

The toolbar icon shows a small green dot when the daemon is reachable, amber when reachable but a service has crashed, red when offline. The number is the count of running services.

If you visit a localhost URL whose port matches a registered service, the address bar gets a green leaf. Click it for inline status / stop / restart — same actions as the popup.

Privacy

The extension does not phone home. There is no telemetry, no analytics, no remote config. The only network calls it makes are to 127.0.0.1:11611 (your daemon).

You can verify the source for any release: every store listing links to the corresponding tag in github.com/slowdutch/gretl-sdks, and reproducible-build instructions are in extension/BUILD.md.