How to Monitor Requests Made by a Google Chrome Extension

Softhints -

If you're debugging/analyzing a Chrome extension or just want to monitor its network activity, here are a few ways to do it:

1 Using Chrome DevTools

  1. Open Chrome
  2. click on Menu (or type chrome://extensions)
  3. Extensions
  4. Manage Extensions
  5. Enable Developer mode - top right
  6. Find your extension and click service worker (or "service worker" → Inspect)
  7. In the DevTools window that opens, go to the Network tab
  8. You'll now see all HTTP requests made by the extension in real time

This is the most straightforward way to monitor requests from background scripts.

P.S. You can perform some actions in order to check the requests done by this Chrome extension.

2 Monitor Content Script Requests

If the extension injects content scripts into webpages:

  1. Open the target webpage
  2. Open DevTools (F12) → Sources tab
  3. Look for extension scripts by name (get the name from chrome-extension://...)
  4. Put breakpoint and debug or
  5. Use the Network tab to observe requests

3 Use the webRequest API (for developers)

If you’re building the extension yourself, you can log or modify requests:

chrome.webRequest.onBeforeRequest.addListener(
  function(details) {
    console.log('Request:', details);
  },
  {urls: ["<all_urls>"]},
  ["blocking"]
);

Note: Requires "webRequest" and "webRequestBlocking" permissions in manifest.json.

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