My expertise of the Chrome Extension submission course of
I began constructing the Assembly Dolphin Chrome Extension again in April and initially, the submission course of was actually fairly intimidating. Just like a visa software course of (which I’ve accomplished many in my lifetime), it’s fairly the black field with little to no info on how the overview is completed, when the overview is completed and what occurs if it’s rejected.
As somebody who walked the stroll, I need to share my experiences and provide you with a couple of key insights into what I’ve learnt!
The preliminary account setup
The very first thing you want is a Developer Account. There’s no approach round it and you’ll have to pay the $5 charge. I presume this can be a approach for Google to weed out the casuals.
I extremely counsel to enter as a lot info as you’ll be able to. Right here’s extra on the account setup process.
How lengthy does the overview take?
My first overview took 3 days to finish, any subsequent bundle replace was executed inside at some point and outline updates nearly instantaneously. This was a lot decrease than the weeks I’ve seen talked about in several boards so I used to be pleasantly stunned.
Snippet of Permission justification
As described within the official article https://developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/review-process/ the overview time extremely depends upon the permissions you requested and as mine had been comparatively few (solely host permissions on Google Calendar URL, storage and tabs permissions), it went via fairly rapidly. Nonetheless, I want there’s a grading or report or progress bar to show some high-level perception as to why my submission went via.
Personally, I believe it’s largely automated checking as a result of variety of requests Google should get a day.
What’s a Testing bundle?
Initially, I didn’t understand how lengthy the overview course of was so I wished to permit a few of my buddies and tremendous customers to check modifications earlier than I formally launch it to scale back some friction.
Making a take a look at is nearly the identical. The one distinction is altering the identify and outline (appending TESTING or BETA) and setting the visibility of your addon to approved testers.
For me although, I made a decision to not proceed utilizing this because it will get fairly complicated for my testers. They successfully have 2 variations of the addon put in and ensuring they’re on the right one has been tough. The overview course of is brief sufficient that it’s not too large of a problem even when there’s something mistaken (for now).
What occurs to the customers once I replace the extension?
All extensions are auto-updated. There’s nearly no approach for a person to disable this simply … the one approach is to duplicate the extension code and cargo it as an area extension and nobody would really do that. What this implies although is that each one modifications are made silently to all of your customers as Chrome is restarted.
It might be fairly a shock to customers particularly should you make a giant change like I did within the update. A great way to tell your customers is to mix chrome.runtime.OnUpdateAvailable and chrome.tabs.create(<INSERT weblog URL>) .
Can I roll again my replace?
Folks make errors and I’ve up to date an extension solely to search out out I’ve a critical bug afterwards! A simple out can be to roll again. Sadly, Chrome doesn’t supply such a characteristic. The one approach to do that is to re-update your bundle with a brand new model quantity. That is suboptimal because the overview course of will begin once more however it’s what it’s. That is additionally why I’d all the time archive your packages.
What’s within the Developer Dashboard statistics
I do take pleasure in wanting on the statistics supplied within the developer dashboard. It gives a superb high-level clarification of the variety of customers and impressions. Nevertheless, typically I discover that it doesn’t replace correctly. On days once I bodily see a buddy set up it, the numbers don’t go up. You may as well seize occasions of your extension as you do with GA4 however I’ve not tried this but.
Last ideas
Submitting an extension is less complicated than I believed and fortunately I’ve had no rejections up to now.
I’d love Google to implement a rollback characteristic or a Historical past characteristic in order that customers can keep on an older model in the event that they favored.
I’m presently attempting to get my OAuth Consent app verified so you’ll be seeing an article on that hopefully within the close to future.