Use Bookmarklets on Chrome on Android

This content originally appeared on Modern Web Development with Chrome and was authored by Paul Kinlan

<p>I love Bookmarklets, they let you quickly customise web sites in a lighter way than a Chrome extension, and for the longest time (5 years), I thought it wasn't possible to run Bookmarklets on Chrome on Android.</p> <p>It turns out, I was wrong. You just can't run them the traditional way.</p> <p>The way that most people access Bookmarks on Android doesn't let you run a Bookmarklet, i.e, via "Select Bookmarks" in the main menu;</p> <figure><img src="https://paul.kinlan.me/images/2020-05-21-use-bookmarklets-on-chrome-on-android-0.jpeg" alt="Accessing Bookmarklets via the menu"></figure> <p>And then then picking their bookmark from the list of bookmarks</p> <figure><img src="https://paul.kinlan.me/images/2020-05-21-use-bookmarklets-on-chrome-on-android-1.jpeg" alt="A List of bookmarks"></figure> <p>This is because Chrome on Android seems to have no knowledge of the current page the user is on, and therefore can't execute JavaScript against that page.</p> <p>I was today years old when I learnt that you can find bookmarks via the Address Bar, and they keep the context of the current page. This means that you can run Bookmarklets.</p> <figure><img src="https://paul.kinlan.me/images/2020-05-21-use-bookmarklets-on-chrome-on-android-2.jpeg" alt="Accessing Bookmarks in Chrome via the address bar"></figure> <p>Voila.</p> <p>Now that I know you can use bookmarklets via the address bar, this opens up a lot of options for slightly deeper customisation on Android than what is possible today.</p>

This content originally appeared on Modern Web Development with Chrome and was authored by Paul Kinlan