CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-chrome-extension
user1689242
user1689242

Reputation: 513

Chrome says my extension's manifest file is missing or unreadable

I'm a new chrome extension developer, and I was going through the Chrome tutorial on making a "Hello World" extension, here's my code:

     {
      "name": "My First Extension",
      "version": "1.0",
      "manifest_version": 2,
      "description": "The first extension that I made.",
      "browser_action": {
       "default_icon": "icon.png"
      },
       "permissions": [
       "http://api.flickr.com/"
      ]
      }

When I went to load the unpacked extension it said the manifest file was missing or unreadable. Yes I have the image in a folder with it and it is correctly named manifest.json

Upvotes: 50

Views: 260331

Answers (13)

GuyFromChennai
GuyFromChennai

Reputation: 1385

While loading the unpack extension, select the build folder. it should work

Upvotes: -1

sitanosik
sitanosik

Reputation: 43

My issue was related to using the wrong path on one of the servers that was saved as an environmental variable. So manifest file was in fact missing there.

Upvotes: 0

Marko Nikolic
Marko Nikolic

Reputation: 31

Interesting for me the issue was that I copied from https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/manifest/

and I saved it with

{
  "manifest_version": 3,
  "name": "My Extension",
  "version": "1.0.1",
  "default_locale": "en",
  "description": "A plain text description"
}

Once i removed default_locale it worked.

Upvotes: 0

JWP
JWP

Reputation: 6963

Kind of dumb: But make sure manifest.json is not spelled mainifest.json.

Upvotes: 2

avimimoun
avimimoun

Reputation: 951

On Linux (fedora) I was able to solve the problem by changing the path to the folder.

By default, it selected ~/path-to-folder I thus forced it to use /home/user/path-to-folder

Upvotes: 1

Ahmed Mohamedeen
Ahmed Mohamedeen

Reputation: 389

In my case it was the problem of building the extension, I was pointing at an extension src (with manifest and everything) but without a build.

If you run into this scenario run npm i then npm build

Upvotes: 0

Shashank
Shashank

Reputation: 31

Kindly check whether you have installed right version of ChromeDriver or not . In my case , installing correct version helped.

Upvotes: 0

Manohar Reddy Poreddy
Manohar Reddy Poreddy

Reputation: 27395

Some permissions issue for default sample.

I wanted to see how it works, I am creating the first extension, so I downloaded a simpler one.

Downloaded 'Typed URL History' sample from
https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/examples/api/history/showHistory.zip

which can be found at
https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/samples

this worked great, hope it helps

Upvotes: 1

Sandeep Gupta
Sandeep Gupta

Reputation: 7250

If you are downloading samples from developer.chrome.com its possible that your actual folder is contained in a folder with the same name and this is creating a problem. For example your extracted sample extension named tabCapture will lool like this:

C:\Users\...\tabCapture\tabCapture

Upvotes: 1

kyoto
kyoto

Reputation: 111

I also encountered this issue.

My problem was that I renamed the folder my extension was in, so all I had to do was delete and reload the extension.

Thought this might help some people out there.

Upvotes: 11

user2547526
user2547526

Reputation: 71

Mine also was funny. While copypasting " manifest.json" from the tutorial, i also managed to copy a leading space. Couldn't get why it's not finding it.

Upvotes: 6

Livingston
Livingston

Reputation: 245

My problem was slightly different.

By default Eclipse saved my manifest.json as an ANSI encoded text file.

Solution:

  • Open in Notepad
  • File -> Save As
  • select UTF-8 from the encoding drop-down in the bottom left.
  • Save

Upvotes: 19

Jeremy
Jeremy

Reputation: 9030

Something that commonly happens is that the manifest file isn't named properly. Double check the name (and extension) and be sure that it doesn't end with .txt (for example).

In order to determine this, make sure you aren't hiding file extensions:

  1. Open Windows Explorer
  2. Go to Folder and Search Options > View tab
  3. Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types

Also, note that the naming of the manifest file is, in fact, case sensitive, i.e. manifest.json != MANIFEST.JSON.

Upvotes: 33

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