web-ext: Unable to open the Extensions page with --start-url when running in Chrome

Is this a feature request or a bug?

Bug

What is the current behavior?

Running an extension in Chrome with --start-url "chrome://extensions" (or "about:extensions") fails to open the Extensions page. (The extensions page is useful for inspecting your extension’s background page.)

Using --start-url to open about:debugging does work in Firefox.

Versions

Chrome 84 web-ext 5.0.0

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created 4 years ago
Reactions: 1
Comments: 29 (8 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Chrome extensions can open many chrome:-pages.

that’s true, and I just verified that chrome://extensions is one of those that can be opened successfully using chrome.tabs.create, and so one option to fix this in web-ext would be to special case the chrome://extension url (or any chrome url) in the chrome extension runner and make the companion extension that we install automatically to auto-reload the target extension able to call chrome.tabs.create for us.

rpl on Jul 31, 2020

Hi @caitmuenster, I saw this issue a few days ago and realized that it’s open for contribution. I would like to work on this bug and hopefully fix it if I may? 😃

kodergeek on Sep 16, 2021

Go for it, @CatWithNineLives! If you need any help, please tag [@]Rob–W in a comment.

caitmuenster on Aug 10, 2021

Hello @caitmuenster, I was looking for good-first-issues in the add-ons repositories and this one seemed ideal - may I work on it?

CatWithNineLives on Aug 10, 2021

Hello @caitmuenster , I was AFK for a bit, I’ve set up the environment, and I have gotten started with this issue yesterday.

DeepikaKaranji on Sep 15, 2020

Chrome extensions can open many chrome:-pages.

Rob--W on Jul 31, 2020