geolocation

Use this permission when your extension's core functionality depends on knowing the user's location.

Examples:

• A weather extension that shows local forecasts.
• A "nearby places" extension that finds restaurants or points of interest.
• An extension that customizes content based on the user's country or region.

This permission may trigger a warning on installation.

{
  "name": "My Local Weather Extension",
  "version": "1.0",
  "manifest_version": 3,
  "permissions": [
    "geolocation"
  ]
}

Why is it risky?

GPS-grade coordinates are sensitive personal data: they can reveal a user's home address, workplace, daily routine, and travel history. An extension with this permission can call the geolocation API silently, without the per-page prompt that ordinary websites must show. Combined with network access, it can quietly upload location to a remote server.

The browser still surfaces a location-active indicator, and the user can revoke the permission per-extension from chrome://extensions, but the underlying capability is high-trust. Use it only when location is genuinely required for the extension's core feature.

This example gets the user's current position and logs it. This code can be run in a service worker or a popup script.

// popup.js, options.js, content script, or an offscreen document
// (NOT a service worker — service workers don't have navigator.geolocation)

function logUserLocation() {
  if (navigator.geolocation) {
    navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(
      (position) => {
        const { latitude, longitude } = position.coords;
        console.log(`User's location:`);
        console.log(`  Latitude: ${latitude}`);
        console.log(`  Longitude: ${longitude}`);
      },
      (error) => {
        console.error(`Error getting location: ${error.message}`);
      }
    );
  } else {
    console.log("Geolocation is not supported by this browser.");
  }
}

logUserLocation();