Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?
In addition to the money argument raised in another comment, the Apple development experience is a major annoyance when all you need is a couple lines of JS.<p>I have an extension idea; it&#x27;s literally a single line of JS. However, to get it into Safari, I need to create a (useless, and empty) Mac app with a specific configuration in Xcode that&#x27;ll allow it to appear in the &quot;extensions&quot; list in Safari. Then I need to deal with all the signing &amp; App Store distribution stuff if I actually want to distribute it.<p>The money isn&#x27;t even an issue (I have a developer license for other reasons - creating <i>actual</i> apps), it&#x27;s just the annoyance and insane barrier of entry when the majority of extensions don&#x27;t need anything but JS.<p>There&#x27;s also the issue of how Safari discovers extensions and what actually causes your extension to appear in its list. Is it opening the associated &quot;app&quot;? Not always as I&#x27;ve had trouble with that before - the app is compiled, it&#x27;s open, but the extension is nowhere to be seen in Safari&#x27;s preferences. It mysteriously self-resolved after some more trial and error. Updating the extension&#x27;s JS while developing is also unclear. Does it happen upon app recompile? App relaunch? Who knows - I gave up before even reaching this stage - this whole process is bullshit.<p>The whole idea that browser extensions are &quot;apps&quot; is stupid and annoying. They should be separate, and while apps install on your OS, browser extensions install in your browser. They should have their own file format (openable directly by Safari, with optional code signature checks) and their own Store (a website within Safari). At least that would solve the problem above - you open an extension file in your browser and it installs in your browser - no ambiguity there. To update you open a new file (which overwrites the previous one based on a potentially signed Bundle ID or similar) and it updates.<p>The worst is that they had all of the above already and then decided to shit all over it about 2 years ago (in addition to removing much-needed APIs that allowed uBlock Origin to work and replaced it with something way less powerful).