Bookmarks Reel

About

Visual Bookmarks: Private Local Gallery
Transform your static bookmarks into a living, visual history. This Manifest V3 extension automatically captures and manages a local gallery of your bookmarked sites, allowing you to browse your saved content through a responsive, searchable grid without compromising your privacy.

How it Works
Unlike other "visual bookmark" tools, this extension operates entirely on your device. It utilizes a background runner to capture screenshots, processes them using a bundled WebAssembly (WASM) filter, and encodes them as JPEGs for high-quality, low-footprint storage.

Smart Background Captures: Runs while your browser is idle to ensure no impact on performance. By default, it processes small batches (3 bookmarks every 60 minutes) only after the browser has been idle for 60 seconds.

Instant Queueing: Automatically queues a capture the moment you save a new bookmark.

On-Visit Updates (Opt-in): Optionally update a bookmark’s thumbnail while you browse its domain, keeping your gallery current with the pages you visit most.

Interactive Gallery: A powerful popup interface featuring a responsive grid with advanced search, sorting, and column controls. Hover over any card to cycle through the historical screenshots saved for that specific bookmark.

Privacy & Security First
This extension is built with a "Zero-Knowledge" architecture. Your data never leaves your machine.

Local Storage: All screenshots and settings are stored strictly in chrome.storage.local. Nothing is ever transmitted to a developer server or third party.

Minimal Permissions: The <all_urls> permission is optional. It is only requested when you first trigger a capture, ensuring you stay in control of what the extension can access.

Sensitive Content Protection: Features a built-in login-page heuristic and a user-editable exclusion list (pre-filled with common webmail, banking, and cloud domains) to prevent capturing authenticated or sensitive information.

Transparent Requests: Outbound requests are limited to the bookmarked URLs themselves (to take the capture) and Google’s public favicon service.

Optimized Performance
Resource Management: Capture batches are designed to be "set and forget," utilizing a single, unfocused background window to prevent window flicker and focus-stealing.

Automated Maintenance: Storage is bounded. The extension automatically prunes the oldest captures and performs hourly cleanups to stay within your configured storage cap.

Note on Capture Behavior:
To comply with Chrome’s windowing standards, a small, unfocused window will briefly appear in the bottom-right corner of your primary display during capture cycles. This window is reused across batches to minimize visual disruption while you work.