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One Keystroke to Audit Any Page: Installing the jwatte.com Browser Extension

One Keystroke to Audit Any Page: Installing the jwatte.com Browser Extension

The friction I kept running into while auditing sites was this: I'd be on a competitor's page, think "I should run this through the Mega Analyzer," and have to copy the URL, open a new tab, find the tool, paste the URL, click Run. Thirty seconds of keyboard-and-mouse mashing per audit. Forty sites in a sprint and that adds up.

So I shipped a Browser Extension. Install it once. Hit Ctrl+Shift+A (or Cmd+Shift+A on macOS) on any page. Pick which tool you want to route the URL through. Done.

What it does

The extension is small by design — under 20 KB, no background service worker, no telemetry. When you invoke it, it pops a short list of every audit / utility / generator on jwatte.com. Pick one; a new tab opens with the current page's URL already pasted into the tool's input field.

Tools it can route to include:

Installing it

There's a "Load unpacked" install path for Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Vivaldi. Detailed steps live on the Browser Extension page itself — they change occasionally as the browsers tweak their developer flags, and the tool page is the source of truth.

The short version:

  1. Download the extension folder from the download link on the tool page.
  2. Open chrome://extensions (or edge://extensions).
  3. Toggle Developer mode in the upper-right corner.
  4. Click Load unpacked and select the folder you downloaded.
  5. Pin the extension to the toolbar so the keyboard shortcut is reliable.

Firefox support is on the list but not shipped yet — the shortcut system works slightly differently and needs an MV3 compatibility layer I haven't written.

Why there's no Chrome Web Store listing (yet)

Getting a Chrome Web Store listing takes about 2–6 weeks and requires publishing a privacy policy tailored to the extension's capabilities. Mine does nothing privacy-sensitive — it reads the URL of the active tab when you press the keyboard shortcut and does nothing else — but the review process still wants boilerplate. Shipping the extension as a source-available "load unpacked" is faster and keeps the permissions minimal.

When I ship a Chrome Web Store version, I'll update the install instructions on the tool page.

What's in the source

The extension is small enough to read end-to-end:

  • manifest.json — MV3 manifest, declares the activeTab permission only (no host permissions, no background scripts, no web accessible resources beyond the popup HTML)
  • popup.html — the list of tools, styled to match jwatte.com
  • popup.js — reads the active tab's URL, constructs the target tool URL, opens in a new tab
  • No third-party dependencies

If you want to audit it before installing, the source is in the download bundle. The only permission requested is activeTab, which is the least-privileged URL-reading permission Chrome offers and is only granted for the moment you press the shortcut.

Ways I actually use it

  • Competitive research. Mid-scroll on a competitor's blog post, Ctrl+Shift+A → Mega Analyzer. Score comparison before I close the tab.
  • Client site triage. Clicking through a client's site in review mode; if a page looks off, the shortcut routes it straight to the relevant audit tool.
  • Own-site debugging. After a deploy I walk through the top 10 pages of my own sites using the extension to catch regressions.
  • Blog research. If I'm writing a post that references a specific page, the extension gets me the audit-adjacent data (heading count, schema types, performance gauge) without breaking my writing flow.

Related tools


This extension is provided as-is for educational and personal productivity use. It transmits no data to any server. Load-unpacked extensions can be removed from Chrome at any time via the extensions management page.

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J.A. Watte is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. This site conforms to WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 Level AA guidelines.

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Last updated: April 2026