Source
r/gnome•
Asynchronis

How can I install GNOME extensions using a Flatpak browser?

Question

So Flatpak runs programs in containers, which are insulated from the OS. This is good but in this case I need Firefox to communicate with the OS’s messaging service in order for the browser extension to work from extensions.gnome.org

Looking at the Gitlab for the browser extension and for the gnome-chrome-shell package, it doesn’t appear that the maintainers are interested in helping facilitate Flatpak browsers and the Software app and Extensions app maintainers are not interested in the extra workload of implementing the feature of extension cataloguing and updating.

Does anyone have any suggestions for making this work? I understand flatseal can be used to grant additional permissions to Firefox but I don’t know which.

Is there a non-hacky way to do this?

Would be grateful for any help! Thanks a lot!

Posted Jan 7, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC · edited

1112
icannixitGNOMie•

Yup, I feel ya. I use this standalone app to install extensions

https://github.com/ekistece/GetExtensions

6
AsynchronisOPGNOMie•

This is fantastic, exactly what I need until the different maintainers figure things out

1
icannixitGNOMie•

Also, check this out:

https://reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/s0ea9a/extension_manager_browse_and_install_shell/

1
AsynchronisOPGNOMie•

This looks great, thanks for sharing!

1
FlatAdsGNOMie•

https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/issues/655

3
AsynchronisOPGNOMie•

Thanks for posting. Glad to know the Flatpak and Snap people are thinking about it but it looks like only a proposal at this point?

1
FlatAdsGNOMie•

Yes, but it will likely be a priority for Ubuntu since they want to ship Firefox as a snap.

3
alvaroburns•

An idea https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/is-it-a-good-idea-to-replace-the-default-firefox-with-the-flatpak-one/30370/9

2
AsynchronisOPGNOMie•

Thanks! I’ll look into get-extensions!

1
that_leafletGNOMie•

You can install them manually.

  1. Find and download extension from the site, choosing your gnome version

  2. Extract the folder into ~.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions

  3. Open the metadata.json in the extension folder and copy the UUID (which looks like an email)

  4. Rename the folder to that UUID

  5. Log out, log back in

  6. Activate extension in Gnome Extensions program

2
AsynchronisOPGNOMie•

Thanks, this is a great way of doing it!

2
TerryMcginniss•

This is a new project that have just hit the frontpage of this sub: github.com/mjakeman/extension-manager

2
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1