Leroader

Auto-reload browser tabs on a timer: per-site rules, a touch-friendly interval picker and a dark UI.
Built for Brave and Chrome (Manifest V3).

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Contents

• Screenshots
• Features
• Install
• Using Leroader
  • Which tabs reload
  • Site rules
  • Behaviour options
• Permissions and privacy
• Limitations
• Development
• Project structure
• License

Screenshots

Toolbar popup: switch it on, pick an interval, choose which tabs reload

Settings page: default interval, scope, behaviour, site rules and live countdowns

Features

• One switch. On means tabs reload on schedule. Off means nothing runs at all: no timers and no background work.
• No typing needed. Pick any interval from 5 seconds to 5 hours with a snapping slider, −/+ buttons or quick-pick chips.
• Three reload scopes: only the visible tab, all tabs, or only tabs that have a site rule.
• Site rules. Give a whole site, a path, or one exact page its own interval, or set it to never reload. Add a rule in one tap from the popup ("This site" / "This page") or from the list of open tabs in settings.
• Live countdowns on the toolbar badge, in the popup ring and on the settings page, with a "reload now" button for each tab.
• Hard reload option that bypasses the cache, like Shift + Reload.
• Keyboard shortcut: Alt+Shift+R turns auto reload on or off from anywhere. You can change it in the browser's shortcut settings.
• Easy on resources. Sleeping (discarded) tabs are never woken up, and timers count from when a page finishes loading, so a slow page never piles up reloads.

Install

Leroader isn't in a web store yet. To load it unpacked:

1. Download or clone this repository.
2. Open the extensions page: brave://extensions in Brave, chrome://extensions in Chrome.
3. Turn on Developer mode (top right).
4. Click Load unpacked and select the project folder (the one with manifest.json).
5. Pin Leroader to the toolbar so the countdown badge is visible.

To update after pulling changes, click the reload icon on Leroader's card on the extensions page.

Using Leroader

1. Click the toolbar icon and flip the switch on.
2. Choose an interval. With Default selected, the interval applies to every tab without a site rule.
3. Choose which tabs reload (see below).
4. To give the current site its own interval, tap This site or This page before picking the interval. Tap Default to remove that rule again.

Click the sliders icon in the popup to open the full settings page.

Which tabs reload

The scope decides which tabs reload. A site rule only decides how often a tab reloads, or that it never does.

Scope	What reloads	Site rules
Visible (default)	The tab you're looking at in each window. Minimized windows are skipped. Switching tabs restarts the countdown.	Change the visible tab's interval. They never make background tabs reload.
All tabs	Every open web tab, except sleeping (discarded) tabs.	Each matching tab uses its rule's interval.
Rules only	Only tabs whose page matches a site rule, including background tabs.	Required: tabs without a rule never reload.

A rule set to Never reload excludes matching pages in every scope.

Site rules

Match	Covers	Example rule → matches
Whole site	The domain and all its subdomains (www. is ignored)	example.com → example.com/a, app.example.com/b
Path & below	One path and everything under it	example.com/dash → /dash, /dash/live, /dash?x=1, but not /dashboard
Exact page	One exact address, including the query string	example.com/status?env=prod

• When several rules match a page, the most specific one wins: exact page, then path, then whole site.
• Each rule has its own interval, an on/off switch, and a Reload on a timer / Never reload action.
• You can add rules from the popup, by tapping an open tab in settings, or by typing an address. An address with a path becomes a page rule; a bare domain becomes a site rule.

Behaviour options

Option	Default	What it does
Hard reload	Off	Skips the cache on every reload (like Shift + Reload).
Countdown badge	On	Shows the time left on the toolbar icon for the current tab.
Keyboard shortcut	Alt+Shift+R	Turns auto reload on or off. Use Change to open the browser's shortcut settings.

Permissions and privacy

Permission	Why it's needed
tabs	Read tab addresses to match site rules, and reload tabs.
storage	Save your settings and rules locally.
alarms	Wake the timer loop back up if the browser suspends the background worker.
favicon	Show site icons next to rules and open tabs.

Leroader has no host permissions, injects no scripts into pages, and makes no network requests. Settings are stored in chrome.storage.local on your device. Nothing is collected or sent anywhere.

Limitations

• Browser pages (brave://, chrome://, the Web Store, other extensions) can't be reloaded by extensions. They're skipped.
• Only http(s):// and file:// pages reload.
• The countdown badge shows the active tab of each window. Background timers are listed on the settings page.
• Reloading a page with an unsaved form discards what you typed, just like a manual reload. Use a Never reload rule for pages like that.

Development

There's no build step: the extension runs straight from the source folder as plain ES modules.

# Unit tests: rule matching, scopes, formatting (Node 20+)
node --test tests/shared.test.mjs

# End-to-end: loads the extension into a real browser and counts actual reloads
npm i -D playwright
node tests/e2e.mjs                  # Playwright Chromium, headless
HEADED=1 node tests/e2e.mjs         # watch it run
BROWSER=brave node tests/e2e.mjs    # your installed Brave (macOS), throwaway profile

The e2e test uses a temporary profile and a local test server, so it never touches your real browser profile. It checks every scope (including the visible-tab + site-rule case), the settings and popup UI, layout at four widths, and writes screenshots to tests/artifacts/.

Toolbar icons are generated by tools/make_icons.py.

Project structure

leroader/
├── manifest.json          Extension manifest (MV3)
├── background.js          Service worker: timers, reloads, badge
├── popup.html/.js/.css    Toolbar popup
├── options.html/.js/.css  Settings page
├── src/
│   ├── shared.js          Settings model, interval scale, rule matching, scope logic
│   ├── ui.js              UI components: switch, segmented control, interval picker, icons
│   └── ui.css             Shared styles and design tokens
├── icons/                 On/off toolbar icons (16–128 px)
├── docs/                  README screenshots
├── tests/
│   ├── shared.test.mjs    Unit tests
│   └── e2e.mjs            Real-browser end-to-end test
└── tools/make_icons.py    Icon generator

How it works: while auto reload is on, the service worker runs a one-second loop. Each tick asks planForTab() in src/shared.js whether a tab should reload and how often, then reloads tabs whose countdown has run out. A 30-second alarm restarts the loop if the browser suspends the worker. When auto reload is off, the loop and alarm stop completely.

License

Released under the MIT License.

Icons in the UI are from Lucide (ISC License).