Chrome extension buttons to gain hover cards detailing their permissions

Chrome is preparing to add hover cards to extensions that are pinned to your browser tool bar. These hover cards will let you know what types of permissions this extension requests and which permissions it has been granted for the URL you are currently in. Additionally, there will be a hover button beside it asking whether to grant permissions to any other installed extensions.

For comparison, below we’re including a screenshot of how the browser tool bar looks now and the tooltip that appears when you hover on the icon of a pinned extension. Below that is an animated GIF of what is currently available in Chrome Canary. As you can see, the tooltip has been replaced with a hover card. This new feature was spotted and reported on by u/Leopeva64-2 on Reddit, who constantly tracks these changes and shares them with the community.

However, the question that remains, at least for me, is what the usefulness of such a feature is. Sure, it will probably save you a click or two to investigate if a questionable browser extension has permissions over something it shouldn’t, but is that really worth sacrificing so much toolbar space? I am of the opinion that it’s getting pretty crowded up there.

As a feature that for now only appears in Canary, I’m hoping that if the plan is to bring this all the way to the Stable version, it gets significantly refined to the point where the hover card is not so large and prominent. Let us know in the comments if you think this is a necessary feature, or if you think that the Chrome toolbar is getting too busy.