Changes in background script files are not picked by the manifest V3 browser extension

[Vinod Kumar]

Hi,

 Any changes made in the background script files are not reflecting in the installed extension in the browser. We have to reload or update the extension from "chrome://extensions" page manually. How can I make the extension to load the latest background script files always?

[woxxom]

One workaround would be to use the new FileSystemObserver API to track changes or just periodically poll the file:// URL for your background script inside the offscreen document, for example, and when a change is detected send a message so that onMessage handler will call chrome.runtime.reload()

The problem is an inherent design flaw of ManifestV3, one of many, because the background script is now a service worker, which ideally should have improved performance (in 99.9999% of cases it didn't) or security (no change) or interoperability/similarity with the web platform code (there's none). The actual code of the service worker is stored in a special internal database, which is updated only when you install/update/reload the extension. This is also super inconvenient when you have tabs/popups of your extension open as reloading closes everything and you have to re-open and re-navigate everything. 

[Oliver Dunk]

As well as the methods wOxxOm mentioned, you can also run `chrome.runtime.reload()` in the service worker window. That's my personal go-to.

I do still want us to see CTRL / CMD + R come back to DevTools which isn't incompatible with the design of Manifest V3 and would make the experiences much more similar.

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

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[Vinod Kumar]

I have added chrome.runtime.reload() to reload the extension inside the service worker.

if(Condition to reload extension) {

    chrome.runtime.reload();

} else {

    importAllScripts();

}

To prevent background scripts from being imported while reloading the extension, the importScripts () code was moved into a function. But I am getting the following error related to WorkerGlobalScope. 

function importAllScripts() {

importScripts("backgroundscript1.js"); - Failing at this line with this error - Error handling response: NetworkError: Failed to execute 'importScripts' on 'WorkerGlobalScope': The script at '

importScripts("backgroundscript2.js");

importScripts("backgroundscript3.js");  

}

I found a bug related to postponed importscripts - https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40760920