Need an event to know that the user has just turned on/off developer mode

[BlackGlory]

The current User Scripts API requires developer mode (pretty bad), however extensions can't create relevant event listeners, which leads to a bad user experience.

[hrg...@gmail.com]

At the very least we need something similar to chrome.extension.isAllowedFileSchemeAccess or chrome.extension.isAllowedIncognitoAccess

That would improve the situation slightly, but it's still a problem because in addition to asking the user to grant a permission (the userScripts permission), the user must also follow instructions on how to enable a checkbox that's hidden somewhere in the browser's UI. This is a terrible user experience.

[wOxxOm]

https://crbug.com/1502421

[Joe Floe]

Hi,

My related question: which policies impact ability of user to enable Developer Mode on extensions page?

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi all,

Definitely agree with the feedback - I brought this up to the team and I think we were generally open to providing a method/event. We'll make sure to keep the bug updated (thanks wOxxOm for filing that).

At the moment, the best option is to provide your own onboarding API using the code in our docs to detect if developer mode is enabled: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/userScripts/#developer-mode-for-extension-users

My related question: which policies impact ability of user to enable Developer Mode on extensions page?

The one that jumps to mind is DeveloperToolsAvailability which I believe can disable it: https://chromeenterprise.google/intl/en_uk/policies/#DeveloperToolsAvailability 

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB