Install by loading unpacked

Before you start

What you need

A Chromium-based browser — Chrome 88 or newer, or a current Edge or Brave — and the extension's source. The extension is unpacked developer code, not a packaged .crx, so you point the browser straight at the folder.

Load it unpacked

1. Download or clone github.com/Flozad/svg-downloader. If you downloaded a ZIP, unzip it somewhere you won't delete — the browser reads the files from that folder every time it loads the extension.
2. Open the extensions page: chrome://extensions in Chrome, edge://extensions in Edge, or brave://extensions in Brave.
3. Enable Developer mode using the toggle in the top-right corner. Without it, Load unpacked stays hidden.
4. Click Load unpacked and select the extension folder inside the repository — the one that holds manifest.json, not the repository root.
5. Pin the extension from the puzzle-piece menu, open any page with icons, click the SVG Downloader button and save one file to confirm it works.

Edge and Brave

Both are Chromium browsers, so the extension runs unchanged. The only difference is the address you open in step two — edge://extensions or brave://extensions — and both keep the same Developer mode toggle and Load unpacked button. Everything else in these docs applies identically.

Keeping it around

An unpacked extension stays installed as long as its folder stays put. If you move or delete the folder, the browser drops the extension on the next launch — just reload it from the same steps. To update, pull the latest repo and click the reload icon on the extension's card.

What it can touch

There are four permissions, all narrow by design. activeTab and scripting read the current page's DOM, and only when you open the popup. downloads writes files to your downloads folder when you save. storage keeps your preferences. It has no background access to other tabs and makes no network calls of its own beyond fetching SVG assets the page already references. The full breakdown is in the FAQ and the privacy policy.

Installed? Head to Usage to learn the popup, or jump to a task in the guides.