Load Time Tracker

Version 1.2.0 • June 9, 2025

Measure, visualize & optimize your page-load performance—live, right from your browser toolbar.

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📖 Overview

Load Time Tracker is a lightweight Chrome extension crafted for developers and QA teams to monitor real-world page-load durations. With one click, you can track any site, see a live badge timer as your page loads, and review historical aggregates over the last hour, day, week, month, and year. All data is stored locally—no external servers or third-party analytics.

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✨ Key Features

• One-click tracking: Add the current domain to your watch list with the “＋” button in the popup.
• Live badge timer: See a millisecond-precision timer counting up on your extension icon while the page loads.
• Accurate final measurements: Captures precise load durations via the Performance Timing API, with a timestamp fallback.
• Sliding-window aggregates: Automatically compute total load time over the last hour, day, week, month, and year; windows reset at each rollover.
• Per-site insights: In the popup, view for each domain:
  • Now: live or most recent load duration (aggregates across multiple tabs for the same domain).
  • Avg: average load time across recorded loads.
  • Reloads: total number of logged load events.
  • H / D / W / M / Y: total load time over sliding windows (Hour, Day, Week, Month, Year).
• Global totals: Combined H/D/W/M summary for all monitored domains.
• Favicon scraping: Displays each site’s real favicon (harvested from <link rel="icon">).
• Automatic pruning: Logs older than 1 year are cleared to keep storage usage minimal.
• Robust multi-tab handling:
  • Tracks multiple tabs for the same domain independently.
  • Automatically stops tracking when the last tab for a domain is closed.
• Dead tab cleanup: Automatically clears stuck counters for tabs that no longer exist.
• Privacy-first storage: Everything lives in chrome.storage.local under your profile.

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🚀 Installation

You can install Load Time Tracker in two ways:

Option 1: Install from the Chrome Web Store

1. Visit the Chrome Web Store page.
2. Click Add to Chrome.
3. The Load Time Tracker icon will appear in your toolbar—click to open the popup and start tracking.

Option 2: Manual Installation

1. Download the latest release ZIP (application.zip) from this repository’s Releases.
2. Unzip the file to a local folder.
3. In Chrome, navigate to chrome://extensions and enable Developer mode.
4. Click Load unpacked and select the application/ folder.
5. The Load Time Tracker icon will appear in your toolbar—click to open the popup and start tracking.

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📂 Directory Structure

YourRepo/
├── application/         # Chrome extension source files
│   ├── background.js    # Service worker: navigation event handlers & logging
│   ├── content.js       # Content script: favicon scraping
│   ├── manifest.json    # Extension manifest (MV3)
│   ├── popup.html       # Popup UI markup
│   ├── popup.css        # Popup styles
│   ├── popup.js         # Popup logic: live loop & UI rendering
│   ├── icon-48.png      # Toolbar icon
│   └── icon-128.png     # Store/install icon
├── docs/                # GitHub Pages (privacy policy)
│   └── privacy.html     # Hosted privacy policy
├── application.zip      # Packaged extension for releases
└── README.md            # This documentation

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⚙️ Usage

1. Click the toolbar icon and press ＋ to add the current site’s domain.
2. Refresh the page—observe the live badge timer increment in real time.
3. Open the popup to see:
   • Now: current in-flight or last load duration (aggregates across all tabs for the same domain).
   • H / D / W / M / Y: total load time over sliding windows.
   • Avg and Reloads counts per domain.
4. Remove a site by clicking the × next to its entry—this deletes all associated logs.

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🛠 Development

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/YourUser/YourRepo.git
   cd YourRepo/application

2. Open Chrome’s Extensions page (chrome://extensions) in Developer mode.
3. Click Load unpacked and select this directory.
4. Modify source files as needed, then click Reload under the extension entry.
5. Use the browser DevTools console under Service Worker (background.js) or Popup to debug.

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🛡 Privacy & Security

• Local-only storage: All timing data and favicons are stored in chrome.storage.local.
• No external sharing: No data is transmitted beyond your browser.
• Minimal permissions:
  • storage
  • webNavigation
  • activeTab
  • scripting
  • Host access to <all_urls> for pages you choose to track.

See our full Privacy Policy for details.

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub.

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

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© 2025 Nikkolas Diehl. All rights reserved.