1 min read

Use Bookmarklets on Chrome on Android

Paul Kinlan

Paul Kinlan

Lead of Chrome DevRel

I love Bookmarklets, they let you quickly customise web sites in a lighter way than a Chrome extension, and for the longest time (5 years), I thought it wasn't possible to run Bookmarklets on Chrome on Android.

It turns out, I was wrong. You just can't run them the traditional way.

The way that most people access Bookmarks on Android doesn't let you run a Bookmarklet, i.e, via "Select Bookmarks" in the main menu;

Accessing Bookmarklets via the menu

And then then picking their bookmark from the list of bookmarks

A List of bookmarks

This is because Chrome on Android seems to have no knowledge of the current page the user is on, and therefore can't execute JavaScript against that page.

I was today years old when I learnt that you can find bookmarks via the Address Bar, and they keep the context of the current page. This means that you can run Bookmarklets.

Accessing Bookmarks in Chrome via the address bar

Voila.

Now that I know you can use bookmarklets via the address bar, this opens up a lot of options for slightly deeper customisation on Android than what is possible today.

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