Chrome Extension Hot Reloader

Watches for file changes in your extension's directory. When a change is detected, it reloads the extension and refreshes the active tab (to re-trigger the updated scripts).

Here's a blog post explaining it (thanks to KingOfNothing for the translation).

Features

• Works by checking timestamps of files


• Supports nested directories


• Automatically disables itself in production


• And it's under a 40 lines of code!

How To Use

1. Drop hot-reload.js to your extension's directory.




2. Put the following into your manifest.json file:

    "background": { "scripts": ["hot-reload.js"] }

Also, you can simply clone this repository and use it as a boilerplate for your extension.

Installing From NPM

It is also available as NPM module:

npm install crx-hotreload

Then use a require (or import) to execute the script.

Limitations

• Does not work with Manifest Version 3, as Chrome has recently removed the APIs essential for working with file system from background scripts: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65975659/how-do-i-get-access-to-all-the-files-in-the-extension-in-chrome-extension-manife/65976345 :(