The workflow
Use the extensions I rely on in Chrome (for example 1Password) inside bb's built-in desktop browser, both in the personal profile and in automation tabs controlled by the Browser Automation plugin.
Steps: open a page in the bb browser (personal profile, cookies imported from Chrome via Settings → Browsers) → the site expects a browser extension (password manager autofill, consent tool, internal SSO helper) → there is no way to load one, so the page behaves differently than in Chrome, and an agent driving the tab through the Browser Automation plugin cannot use the extension either.
What happens today
bb 0.43.3 has the pieces for a signed-in browser context: cookie import from Chrome, Firefox, Safari and others into the personal or an automation profile (#3366), personal tabs handed to automation with --allow-personal, and a CDP endpoint over the acquired tab lease.
What is missing is any way to load an unpacked or Web Store extension into these Electron sessions. The desktop main process does not call Electron's session.extensions API, and there is no setting or CLI flag for it. Sites that depend on an extension therefore behave differently in bb than in Chrome, and agents that drive the bb browser cannot use them.
What you would expect
- Settings → Browsers: pick extension directories (unpacked) or Web Store IDs to load into the personal profile, with the same choice per automation profile.
- CLI/SDK parity:
bb browser extensions list|add|remove --profile personal|automation:<id> and bb.sdk.experimental_desktopBrowsers.extensions.
- Extensions loaded this way should be visible to controlled tabs (CDP lease) the same way they are to the user.
Context and alternatives
Workaround today: drive the user's real Chrome instead of the bb browser (Claude in Chrome tools, or the Codex Chrome extension), which loses the in-app preview, the thread-owned tabs and the automation profile isolation.
Prior art: the ChatGPT desktop app added Chrome extension support to its built-in browser in September 2026 (OpenAI Help Center, "Using the built-in browser in the ChatGPT desktop app": the browser "supports richer sign-in, autofill, password management, extensions, downloads, and navigation"). Electron supports loading Chrome extensions via session.extensions.loadExtension with the documented MV2/MV3 subset.
Related: #3366 (cookie import), #2929 (in-app browser signed out), #1667 (Claude Code browser control). Searched open and closed issues for "extension", "chrome extension", "load extension": no existing request for this.
Environment: bb 0.43.3, macOS (Darwin 25.6), Electron desktop app.
AGENT GENERATED
Checks
The workflow
Use the extensions I rely on in Chrome (for example 1Password) inside bb's built-in desktop browser, both in the personal profile and in automation tabs controlled by the Browser Automation plugin.
Steps: open a page in the bb browser (personal profile, cookies imported from Chrome via Settings → Browsers) → the site expects a browser extension (password manager autofill, consent tool, internal SSO helper) → there is no way to load one, so the page behaves differently than in Chrome, and an agent driving the tab through the Browser Automation plugin cannot use the extension either.
What happens today
bb 0.43.3 has the pieces for a signed-in browser context: cookie import from Chrome, Firefox, Safari and others into the personal or an automation profile (#3366), personal tabs handed to automation with
--allow-personal, and a CDP endpoint over the acquired tab lease.What is missing is any way to load an unpacked or Web Store extension into these Electron sessions. The desktop main process does not call Electron's
session.extensionsAPI, and there is no setting or CLI flag for it. Sites that depend on an extension therefore behave differently in bb than in Chrome, and agents that drive the bb browser cannot use them.What you would expect
bb browser extensions list|add|remove --profile personal|automation:<id>andbb.sdk.experimental_desktopBrowsers.extensions.Context and alternatives
Workaround today: drive the user's real Chrome instead of the bb browser (Claude in Chrome tools, or the Codex Chrome extension), which loses the in-app preview, the thread-owned tabs and the automation profile isolation.
Prior art: the ChatGPT desktop app added Chrome extension support to its built-in browser in September 2026 (OpenAI Help Center, "Using the built-in browser in the ChatGPT desktop app": the browser "supports richer sign-in, autofill, password management, extensions, downloads, and navigation"). Electron supports loading Chrome extensions via
session.extensions.loadExtensionwith the documented MV2/MV3 subset.Related: #3366 (cookie import), #2929 (in-app browser signed out), #1667 (Claude Code browser control). Searched open and closed issues for "extension", "chrome extension", "load extension": no existing request for this.
Environment: bb 0.43.3, macOS (Darwin 25.6), Electron desktop app.
Checks
> AGENT GENERATED.