🚀 Chrome App Launcher Lite

A lightweight, customizable Chrome Extension that lets you create and manage a beautiful grid of website shortcuts — similar to a mini app launcher.

Chrome App Launcher Lite allows you to:

• Quickly access your favorite websites
• Add, edit, and delete shortcuts
• Open links in current tab, new tab, or incognito
• Automatically fetch favicons
• Export and import your launcher configuration

✨ Features

📦 Default App Collection

Preloaded with popular platforms including:

• Google Services – Google, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, YouTube
• Social Media – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit
• AI & Development – OpenAI (ChatGPT), GitHub, Stack Overflow
• Productivity & Tools – Notion, Trello, Slack

You can fully customize this list.

🎨 Smart Icon System

• Automatically loads website favicons from:

  • Google Favicon Service
  • DuckDuckGo Icons
  • Clearbit Logos

• If favicon fails → generates:

  • A dynamic colored background
  • A smart fallback text icon (e.g., "GH" for GitHub)

🖱 Context Menu Actions

Right-click or use the menu button (⋮) on any shortcut:

• Open in current tab
• Open in new tab
• Open in incognito window
• Edit shortcut
• Delete shortcut (with confirmation dialog)

➕ Add / Edit Shortcuts

• Validates URL format
• Automatically adds https:// if missing
• Restricts to http/https protocols only
• Generates fallback initials automatically

📁 Import / Export

• Export shortcuts as launcherLinks.json
• Import your saved configuration anytime
• Perfect for backup or transferring between browsers

💾 Storage Support

• Uses chrome.storage.local when running as extension
• Falls back to localStorage when running in a normal browser environment

🧠 How It Works

Core Architecture

The script is wrapped in an IIFE:

(function () {
   ...
})();

This prevents global namespace pollution.

Main Data Structure

launcherLinks = [
  {
    name: "Google",
    url: "https://google.com",
    fallback: "GOO"
  }
]

Each shortcut object contains:

• name
• url
• fallback (icon text)

Rendering Flow

1. Load links from storage
2. Generate cards dynamically
3. Fetch favicon
4. Apply fallback if needed
5. Save updated state

🔒 Security Considerations

• URL validation using new URL()
• Restricts to http and https
• No inline external scripts
• Controlled incognito window creation (Chrome only)

🛠 Installation (Developer Mode)

1. Open Chrome
2. Go to chrome://extensions/
3. Enable Developer mode
4. Click Load unpacked
5. Select your project folder

📊 Strengths of the Project

• Clean modular structure
• Well-separated functionality
• Smart favicon fallback system
• Chrome extension compatible
• Lightweight (no external dependencies)
• Good user validation

⚠ Potential Improvements in Code

1. Import JSON should validate structure before replacing state
2. renderGrid() calls saveLauncherLinks() every render (can be optimized)
3. Could debounce favicon loading
4. Add error handling for malformed import files
5. Consider using event delegation for better performance

🏷 License

MIT License (Recommended)

👨‍💻 Author

Pro-Bandey
Lightweight Web Shortcut Manager for Chrome