Installation guide
Install browserfog in Chrome
About 60 seconds, no Chrome Web Store required (yet). The extension is distributed as a signed MV3 zip you load as an unpacked extension. Source code is on GitHub.
Download the extension
A single zip containing the manifest + content scripts + background worker + popup UI. About 6 MB.
Download browserfog-chrome.zipExtract the zip
Right-click the file and choose Extract All
(Windows) or double-click (macOS). Save the unzipped folder
somewhere you'll keep it — for example
Documents/browserfog-extension/.
manifest.json
at the top level. If Chrome later says
"Could not load manifest", you have the file one level
too deep — open the inner folder and load that.
Open Chrome Extensions
Paste this into the Chrome address bar and press Enter:
On the top-right of that page, toggle Developer mode on. Three new buttons appear in the top-left: Load unpacked, Pack extension, and Update.
Load unpacked
Click Load unpacked and select the folder you extracted in step 2. The extension card appears immediately, named "Private Web Memory + Security Intelligence".
Pin the icon to your toolbar
Click the puzzle-piece icon in the Chrome toolbar, find browserfog in the dropdown, and click the pin next to it. The icon stays in your toolbar from now on — that's the button you click to save the current page.
Pair the extension to your account
- 1. Sign in (or sign up) at app.browserfog.com.
- 2. Go to app.browserfog.com/devices → click Connect a browser. A 6-character code appears.
- 3. Click the browserfog icon in your Chrome toolbar → paste the code → click Pair.
- 4. Within a few seconds the device shows up on the Devices page with a "Last seen" timestamp.
Save your first page
Visit any page you want to remember — a ChatGPT thread, a GitHub issue, a Hacker News story, a documentation page — and click the browserfog icon in the toolbar. Click Save. Within a few seconds the record appears at app.browserfog.com, encrypted on your device before it ever leaves the browser.
If anything weird happens
- "Could not load manifest"
-
You selected a folder one level too high. Open the folder
and pick the subfolder containing
manifest.json. - Extension icon looks greyed out
- The content script attaches at next page navigation — reload the tab once after pairing.
- Save button does nothing
- Check the Devices page — the pairing may have expired. Generate a new code.
- "Vault locked" when you click Save
- Sign in to app.browserfog.com and unlock the vault. The extension picks up the key from the paired session.