Private is a Chrome extension for data transparency and control. It bundles four tools into one popup: a privacy-settings panel, a browsing-data cleaner, a cookie manager, and a network monitor. Everything runs locally — no accounts, no servers, no tracking.
The idea grew out of a simple gap: the settings that actually determine how much of your browsing is visible to sites are buried inside Chrome, and they're toggled with zero feedback about what a change will do. Private surfaces those same switches and, before applying one, tells you exactly what it will change.
Four Tools, One Popup
1. Privacy settings
Reads and controls 13 Chrome privacy settings straight from chrome.privacy— third-party cookies, hyperlink auditing, referrers, Safe Browsing, network prediction, WebRTC IP handling, and more. Each toggle comes with an explanation of the consequence shown before it's applied.
2. Data cleanup
Clears any of 13 browsing-data types (cache, cookies, history, storage, passwords, …) and can auto-clear a selected set every time the browser starts.
3. Cookie manager
Browse, search, add, edit, and delete cookies for any domain. Cookie values are truncated in the table and can be edited through the same dialog used to add them.
4. Network monitor
A live log of the last 100 requests with expandable request and response headers, plus a one-click User-Agent blocker implemented with declarativeNetRequest.
Explain Before You Change
The defining detail is that no setting flips silently. Click a toggle and a confirmation dialog appears with the concrete effect — turning on third-party cookie blocking says it may break some logins; turning off referrer headers says sites can no longer see where you came from. Only the “Apply” button commits the change.
Architecture
Built on Manifest V3 with Vite and the @crxjs/vite-plugin. The popup is a small React app; the four feature pages are plain HTML and JavaScript served from the extension's public/ folder with no framework overhead. A single service worker handles every message type.
src/background/ service worker — privacy, data, cookie, network logic src/popup/ React popup launcher + live network feed src/types.ts shared message types public/ privacy, cleanup, cookies, network pages manifest.config.ts MV3 manifest
Privacy by Design
The network log lives in memory, holds at most 100 requests, and is discarded when the extension unloads. Nothing is persisted except two preferences (auto-clear config and the User-Agent toggle) in chrome.storage.sync. Cookies and network monitoring require you to explicitly grant optional host permissions before they touch any site. There are no analytics and no remote calls.
For the full breakdown of what is and isn't collected, see the privacy policy.
Open Source
The source is available on GitHub under a permissive license. Feature requests and issues are welcome.