Hide Icons displayed on address bar in Chrome Extension

Question

I am developing a chrome extension. When I install it one of its icon is displayed in address bar. I want that icon should not be displayed after installation.

Answer 1

Starting with Chrome 49 (see the announcement and detailed description) all extension icons are displayed in the browser toolbar:

[...] each extension the user has installed has a persistent UI surface. By default, this will be in the toolbar to the right of the omnibox (where browser actions are now), and the user can choose to hide ("overflow") these actions in the Chrome menu.

The reason for this is to protect our users. We've heard too frequently that many users are unaware of the extensions they have installed, whether this is due to sideloading, installation by phishing, or simply the user forgetting how many and which are installed. Unfortunately, extensions consume computing resources, and may have significant security, privacy, and performance impacts. Because of this, we've decided we need to increase user visibility.

What this means for your extension:

• If the extension has a browser action: Nothing! (Apart from the slightly different hide/overflow functionality.)
• If the extension has a page action: The extension will be given a persistent icon in the toolbar. On pages where the extension's page action wouldn't normally be visible, the action will be greyed out, indicating that it doesn't want to act. On pages it does want to act, it will be fully-colored.
• If the extension has no action: Similar to page actions, the extension will be given a persistent icon in the toolbar. It will be shown with the greyed-out look all the time.

Displaying the action persistently, even in the cases of a previously hidden page action or an extension with no action, is necessary because the presence of an action doesn’t always correlate with the extension acting. We also can’t show the action conditionally on, e.g., a per-tab basis, because there are many actions that are not correlated with any tab. In order to ensure users are aware of the extensions they have installed that could be affecting their browser, we need to ensure each extension is visible.

We've done our best to limit the functionality this breaks, and hope you understand the trade-off between developer inconvenience and user benefit. Thank you for understanding as we keep our users safe!

An end user of your extension may manually hide the icon either by adjusting the overall toolbar width (click the space between addressbar and toolbar and drag) or by rightclicking an icon and selecting Hide or Show: