Browser extensions

This article lists some browser extensions available for Firefox and/or Chromium.

Installation

Firefox extensions can be installed from addons.mozilla.org and managed at about:addons.

Chrome extensions can be installed from the Chrome Web Store and managed at chrome://extensions/.

Additionally, a few Firefox extensions can be found in the official repositories and some more in the AUR.

To simplify maintenance, this article does not link store pages or AUR packages of extensions. Readers are advised to obtain extensions through the linked official websites if no package is available.

Privacy

Tip: It is not recommended to install all the privacy extensions. It can be counterproductive as they conflict with each other, and neither does it increase security whatsoever.

Content blockers

uBlock Origin — A lightweight, efficient blocker which is easy on memory and CPU. It comes with several filter lists ready to use out-of-the-box (including EasyList, Peter Lowe's, several malware filter lists). The lead developer of uBlock forked the project and created uBlock Origin. As of July 2015, most of the development is being done on uBlock Origin and the codebases are deviating substantially.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/ || firefox-ublock-origin, Chromium

Adblock Plus — Was a popular extension to block ads. Now that it is not blocking some ads on purpose [1], it may be a better idea to use a different blocker like uBlock Origin.

https://adblockplus.org/ || firefox-adblock-plus, Chromium

Advanced control

uMatrix — Now abandoned fork of HTTP Switchboard. Lets you selectively block Javascript, plugins or other resources and control third-party resources. It also features extensive privacy features like user-agent masquerading, referring blocking and so on. It effectively replaces NoScript and RequestPolicy. See the old HTTP Switchboard wiki for different ways how to use it.

https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix || firefox-umatrix^AUR, Chromium

ScriptSafe — Gives users control of the web and more secure browsing while emphasizing simplicity and intuitiveness. Due to the nature of this extension, this will break most sites! It is designed to learn over time with sites that you allow.

https://github.com/andryou/scriptsafe || Firefox, Chromium

NoScript — Disables JavaScript and Flash on any website not specifically whitelisted by the user. This extension will protect you from exploitation of security vulnerabilities by not letting anything but trusted sites (e.g: your bank, webmail) serve you executable content. Once installed, you can configure settings for NoScript by either clicking its icon on the toolbar or right clicking a page and navigating to NoScript. You will then have the option to enable/disable scripts for the current page, as well as any third party scripts that the page is linking to. Alternatively, you can choose to enable scripts temporarily for that session only. Be aware that a lot of modern websites use scripts for layout purposes, hence content may look different. For example, failed rendering due to missing fonts might occur on websites that load fonts at runtime via scripts, which were blocked by NoScript.
Warning: By default, NoScript allows JavaScript from some corporations you might not like. It will affect your privacy. To change this, in NoScript, click Options > Per-site Permissions and set to UNTRUSTED all the sites that you do not trust. Tor Browser, when using in the safer modes (where NoScript is used), already protects you.

https://noscript.net/ || firefox-noscript

ScriptBlock — Similar to NoScript, which is a Firefox add-on. Both extensions stop a website from executing any kind of JavaScript. However, ScriptBlock is a much simpler design thus it is easier to use. It blocks JavaScript by default. You can allow and temporary allow JavaScripts. Once you allow them to run, it lets all the JavaScripts run on that page so you might want ScriptBlock to work in conjunction with Privacy Badger. It is also worth checking its default whitelist, which might be permissive to you.

https://github.com/compvid30/scriptblock || Chromium

Cookie AutoDelete — Deletes cookies as soon as the tab closes. Supports automatic and manual cookie cleaning modes. (Support for clearing LocalStorage was added in version 2.1, but only for Firefox versions 58+. The same release added support for first party isolation, but only for Firefox versions 59+).

https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete || Firefox, Chromium

Vanilla Cookie Manager — A cookie whitelist manager that automatically removes unwanted cookies. Cookies can be used for authentication, storing your site preferences or anything else that can be saved as text data. Unfortunately, they can also be used to track you. You could turn off cookies completely or just shut off third-party cookies. But that would also keep out useful cookies that many web apps rely upon to work (like Google Mail or Calendar). With Vanilla, you can select which cookies you want to keep on a whitelist. All unwanted cookies are deleted automatically (or manually if you prefer).

https://github.com/laktak/vanilla-chrome || Chromium

Automatic tracker blockers

Privacy Badger — Monitors third-party trackers loaded with web content. It blocks trackers once they appear on different sites. It does not block advertisements in the first place, but since a lot of ads are served based on tracking information, these are blocked as well. For more information on the mechanism, see its FAQ.

https://www.eff.org/privacybadger || firefox-extension-privacybadger^AUR, Chromium

Disconnect — Aims to stop 2,000 third-party sites from tracking the user. It encrypts data sent to popular sites and claims to loads web pages 27 percent faster. Disconnect shows its users, in real time, how many tracking attempts from Google, Twitter, Facebook, and more are stopped. It categorizes tracking attempts into advertising, analytical, social, and content, which makes it easy to monitor how one is being tracked. Disconnect can also stop side-jacking, which utilizes stolen cookies to steal personal data. It is easy to use and well supported. Firefox gained a feature based on the Disconnect list; see Firefox/Privacy#Tracking protection.

https://disconnect.me/ || Firefox, Chromium

Noise generators

AdNauseam — A lightweight browser extension that blends software tool and artware intervention to fight back against tracking by advertising networks. AdNauseam works like an ad-blocker (it is built atop uBlock-Origin) to silently simulate clicks on each blocked ad, confusing trackers as to one's real interests.

https://adnauseam.io/ || Firefox, Chromium

TrackMeNot — Periodically issues randomized search-queries to popular search engines and helps you hide your real ones in a cloud of 'ghost' queries.

https://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/ || Firefox, Chromium

Redirection

LibRedirect — A browser extension that redirects popular sites to alternative privacy friendly frontends

https://github.com/libredirect/browser_extension || Firefox, Chromium

Miscellaneous

Decentraleyes — Protects you against tracking through "free", centralized content delivery. It prevents a lot of requests from reaching networks like Google Hosted Libraries, and serves local files to keep sites from breaking. Complements regular content blockers.

https://decentraleyes.org/ || firefox-decentraleyes, Chromium

LocalCDN — Decentraleyes fork with support for more libraries and features

https://localcdn.org/ || Firefox

CanvasBlocker — Blocks or fakes the JS-API for modifying <canvas> to prevent Canvas-Fingerprinting. Firefox has a built-in anti-fingerprinting feature that can be enabled by setting privacy.resistFingerprinting to true in about:config.

https://github.com/kkapsner/CanvasBlocker/ || Firefox

Privacy Settings — Provides a toolbar panel for easily altering the browser's built-in privacy settings.

https://add0n.com/privacy-settings.html || Firefox, Chromium

Website customization

Websites can be augmented using user style sheets and JavaScript userscripts.

Stylus — User style sheets manager, fork of defunct Stylish.

https://add0n.com/stylus.html || firefox-stylus^AUR, Chromium

Violentmonkey — Open source userscript manager.

https://violentmonkey.github.io/ || Firefox, Chromium

Tampermonkey — Proprietary userscript manager.

https://tampermonkey.net/ || Firefox, Chromium

Dark Reader — Inverts brightness of web pages and aims to reduce eyestrain while browsing the web.

https://darkreader.org/ || firefox-dark-reader, Chromium

Toggle Website Colors — Replaces colors with user selected ones.

https://github.com/M-Reimer/togglewebsitecolors || Firefox

Keyboard shortcuts

There are various extensions providing vi-style keyboard shortcuts.

Vimium — Allows mouse-less browsing, has an experimental Firefox version.

https://github.com/philc/vimium || Firefox, Chromium

Vim-Vixen — Vim-based browsing experience for Firefox.

https://github.com/ueokande/vim-vixen || Firefox

Saka Key — Allows mouse-less browsing, focused on accessibility.

https://key.saka.io/^{[dead link 2024-07-30 ⓘ]} || Firefox, Chromium

Krabby — Allows mouse-less browsing, inspired by Kakoune.

https://krabby.netlify.app || Chromium, Firefox

Tridactyl — Replace Firefox's control mechanism with one modelled on Vim.

https://github.com/cmcaine/tridactyl || firefox-tridactyl

wasavi — Can transform textareas into Vi editors.

https://github.com/akahuku/wasavi || Firefox, Chromium

VimFx — Vim keyboard shortcuts for Firefox. Requires the LegacyFox shim. VimFx is a bootstrapped extension and thus works in contexts that WebExtensions can't (about: pages)

https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx || legacyfox^AUR, Firefox

Edit text with external text editor

Extensions to edit <textarea>s with native text editors:

Textern — Add-on for editing text in your favorite external editor, requires Python script, available as firefox-extension-textern-native-git^AUR.

https://github.com/jlebon/textern || Firefox

withExEditor — View source, selection, and edit text with the external editor, requires Node.js.

https://github.com/asamuzaK/withExEditor || Firefox, Chromium

GhostText — Use your text editor to write in your browser. Everything you type in the editor will be instantly updated in the browser (and vice versa). Has plugins for Vim, Emacs, Neovim and Visual Studio Code.

https://github.com/GhostText/GhostText || Firefox, Chromium