Ghostchars for Chrome
The same engine as this website, one right-click away — in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Opera. Free, and it collects nothing.
- Free
- No data collected
- No site access at install
Not in the Chrome Web Store yet
It is built, and it is being prepared for the Chrome Web Store; once it is submitted, Chrome’s review takes as long as it takes. This page carries the install button the moment the listing is live, and there is nothing to sign up for in the meantime.
Use the cleaner here insteadThree ways to use it
In order of how much access each one needs. The first needs none at all.
The popup
Paste text, press Clean, copy the result — exactly what this site does, in a panel over whatever you were reading. It cannot see the page behind it, it needs no permissions, and it is unlimited.
Clean as you paste
Switch it on for a site you paste into a lot and cleaned text lands instead of the text you copied, with a small note saying what was removed. It is off everywhere until you turn it on, one site at a time, and turning a site off hands the permission back to Chrome.
Every permission, and why
This is the complete list from the manifest. Nothing else is requested, at install or afterwards.
| Permission | What it is for |
|---|---|
| activeTab | Read and replace the selected text in the tab where you chose "Clean selection with Ghostchars". Granted by that click, for that tab only. |
| contextMenus | Adds the single "Clean selection with Ghostchars" item, shown only when text is selected. |
| scripting | Runs the read, replace or copy in the active tab, and registers the clean-as-you-paste script on origins you have granted. |
| storage | Stores the twelve cleaning switches, the list of sites you opted in to, whether you chose the "everywhere" switch, the local weekly free-clean count and — only if you activate a licence — a random id for this browser and the signed licence itself. All in your browser. Nothing else is stored, and none of it is transmitted. |
| clipboardWrite | Puts your own cleaned text back on your clipboard: from the right-click menu when the selection is somewhere it cannot be written back into, and from the popup, which cleans and copies in one move. |
| optional_host_permissions: https://*/*Optional site access | Not requested at install. The settings page asks for one site when you turn that site on, or for all https sites in a single prompt if you choose the "everywhere" switch, and hands the permission back when you turn it off. Activating a licence asks for ghostchars.com for the length of that one request. |
What it cannot do
- It cannot clean inside Google Docs as you paste. Docs draws its editor on a canvas and never fires a paste event an extension can see. The popup and the right-click menu both work there, and the settings page says the same thing.
- It does not detect, score or estimate whether text was written by an AI, and it makes no claim about what any detector will say afterwards.
- It does not read your pages, your history or your clipboard in the background. Nothing runs on a site you have not switched on.
- It leaves a paste that carries a file — a screenshot, an attachment — entirely to the browser, so nothing you pasted goes missing.
- Its own interface is English for now, which is why the menu item quoted on this page is in English. The engine treats every language identically; only the interface is untranslated.
Privacy
No data is collected. No account, no telemetry, no analytics. Your text is processed in your browser and never leaves your device — not a word of it, not a hash of it, not a count of what was in it. The extension makes exactly one network request, and only if you ask for it: pressing Activate sends the licence key you typed, a random id for this browser and the word "extension" to ghostchars.com, and a signed licence comes back. Never in the background, never on a timer, never at install, and never with your text.
Questions people actually ask
Which browsers does it work in?
Chrome 116 and later, and the Chrome-family browsers built on it: Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Opera. A Firefox port comes when it is trivial, and Safari arrives inside the Mac app rather than as a separate extension.
What does the extension send?
One thing, and only when you ask for it: press Activate on the settings page and it sends the licence key you typed, a random id for this browser and the word "extension" to ghostchars.com. That is the whole of it — no analytics, no error reporting, no update pings of its own, no remote configuration, no remote fonts, images or scripts, and never your text. Every other byte it runs is inside the extension package.
Does clean-as-you-paste work in Google Docs?
No, and not because we did not try: Docs draws its editor on a canvas and never fires a paste event an extension can see. Use the popup or the right-click menu there — both work.
Is the extension free?
Yes, and the free part is a description of the product rather than a trial. The popup and the right-click menu are unlimited, forever, on every site. Clean-as-you-paste is free for 20 cleans a week — a paste with nothing to clean is not a clean and costs nothing — and the settings page always shows the count and the day it resets. One payment of $24 lifts that, and nothing is taken away when the week’s count runs out: your paste goes in exactly as your browser would have pasted it.