A Chrome extension that saves web pages as clean, readable files and tracks your reading progress across ongoing stories.
⚠️ Alpha Version: This extension is in active development. While I use it extensively daily, you may encounter bugs or incomplete features. If you find any issues or have suggestions, please report them here.
- One-click content download - Save any web page as a clean, readable file with Alt+G or the floating clipboard button
- Story tracking - Track your reading progress across ongoing web serials and stories
- Bulk grabbing - Download entire stories or selected chapter ranges automatically
- Queue management - Process multiple stories simultaneously with pause/resume controls
- Site-specific extraction - Custom logic for 50+ sites, plus WebToEpub parser fallback for 500+ additional sites
- Content cleaning - Removes ads, navigation, and other clutter
- File naming - Consistent naming pattern with chapter numbers and story titles
- Epub creation - Embedded WebToEpub-Folio for converting web stories to epub format
For users comfortable with developer mode who want the latest features and bug fixes:
Latest Development Release: https://github.com/crybx/Grabby/releases/tag/latest-dev
- Download the ZIP file from the latest-dev release
- Extract the ZIP file to a folder
- Open Chrome and navigate to
chrome://extensions/ - Enable "Developer mode" in the top right corner
- Click "Load unpacked" and select the extracted folder
For users who prefer automatic updates and standard installation:
Grabby on the Chrome Web Store
Easiest installation with automatic updates, but may be behind on bug fixes due to store review process (reviews can take up to a week).
For developers or those who want to modify the extension:
- Clone this repository:
git clone https://github.com/crybx/Grabby.git - Open Chrome and navigate to
chrome://extensions/ - Enable "Developer mode" in the top right corner
- Click "Load unpacked" and select the repository folder
Note: The development build and source versions will have different extension IDs than the store version, so they can be installed alongside each other.
- Keyboard shortcut: Press
Alt+Gon any page- To customize or update: Go to
chrome://extensions/shortcutsin your browser - You may need to set or change the shortcut if it conflicts with another extension or a previous development version of Grabby
- To customize or update: Go to
- Floating button: Use the clipboard icon (
) that appears in the top-right corner of web pages - Extension popup: Click the Grabby icon in your toolbar, then click the clipboard icon in the popup
- Click the Grabby icon and select "Open Story Tracker"
- Add stories you want to track
- Your reading progress updates automatically when you grab chapters
- Use the queue system to check multiple stories for new chapters (if autoNav is supported for the sites)
- Navigate to any chapter of a story
- Click "Start Bulk Grab" from the extension popup
- Choose how many chapters to grab
- Grabby will automatically navigate and download chapters (if autoNav is supported for the site)
- Navigate to any webpage or story you want to convert
- Click "Create Epub" from the extension popup
- Use the embedded WebToEpub-Folio interface to:
- Parse and extract content from supported websites
- Customize metadata, cover images, and formatting
- Generate epub files for e-readers
- Access WebToEpub-Folio fork features
*Note: Bulk grabbing and automatic new chapter checking require site-specific configuration. (More details below.) These features are available for sites with navigation support. Single-page grabbing works on any webpage and epub creation does not require navigation support.
Grabby works on any webpage - even local files opened in your browser. It uses a multi-tiered extraction approach:
Grabby includes custom extraction logic for specific sites:
- Fiction platforms (Webnovel, Tapas, Syosetu, etc.)
- Fan fiction sites (AO3, FanFiction.com, etc.)
- Fan translation sites
- Various web serial hosts and blogs (WordPress)
- See website-configs.js for the full list.
When no custom support exists, Grabby uses WebToEpub's parser library for additional sites including community-maintained parsers for both popular and niche sites.
For sites with navigation support, look for ones with autoNav: { enabled: true } in their configuration.
For other webpages, Grabby extracts the main text while removing ads and navigation. This works for:
- News articles and blog posts
- Documentation and wikis
- Local HTML files (useful for grabbing Chrome's automatic Google Translate translations)
- Most text-heavy webpages
- Saves content locally - All grabbed content is saved to your downloads folder
- No data collection - Grabby does not collect, transmit, or store any user data or browsing information
- No external servers - Everything happens locally in your browser
- Respects access restrictions - Grabby only accesses pages exactly as your browser sees them:
- If you need to be logged in to view content, you still need to be logged in
- If content is behind a paywall, you still need proper access
- Grabby does not circumvent any access restrictions or paywalls
Grabby requests these Chrome permissions:
- activeTab - To access the current tab's content when you trigger a grab
- alarms - To schedule bulk grab operations
- cookies - To access login-protected content and handle site authentication (epub creation)
- declarativeNetRequest - To handle complex site interactions (epub creation)
- downloads - To save grabbed content to your computer
- scripting - To inject content extraction scripts
- storage - To save your story tracking data and extension settings
- tabs - To manage tab operations for bulk grabbing and epub creation
- unlimitedStorage - For large epub files and story tracking data
- webRequest - To monitor and modify network requests for content extraction (epub creation)
To contribute or customize Grabby, check the Development Setup Guide for instructions on:
- Setting up your development environment
- Adding support for new websites
- Understanding the codebase structure
- Running tests and linting
If you find Grabby useful, consider supporting the project:
Grabby, a browser extension that saves web pages as clean, readable files
and tracks your reading progress across ongoing stories.
Copyright (C) 2024 crybx
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.