Feed Anchor

Your feed stays where you left it.
A Chrome extension that stops social feeds from auto-refreshing when you switch back to the tab.

Add to Chrome →

Why

Some sites reload the feed whenever you return to the tab. If you were halfway through a post, or kept a tab open to read later, it's gone. Feed Anchor makes the page think you never left, so nothing triggers the refresh.

Supported sites

Site	Status
LinkedIn	✅ Supported
X (Twitter)	✅ Supported

More platforms are planned. See CONTRIBUTING.md to add one.

Install

Install from the Chrome Web Store, then:

1. Click Add to Chrome.
2. Pin it: click the puzzle-piece icon next to the address bar, then the pin next to Feed Anchor.

Done. Open LinkedIn or X, and your feed will stay put when you switch tabs.

Install manually from a release

1. Download: go to the latest release and click feed-anchor-x.x.x.zip under Assets.
2. Unzip it: double-click the downloaded file. You'll get a folder. Move it somewhere it can stay (like Documents). If you delete it, the extension stops working.
3. Open the extensions page: type chrome://extensions in the address bar and press Enter.
4. Turn on Developer mode: the switch in the top-right corner.
5. Click "Load unpacked" (top-left) and choose the folder from step 2.

A manual install doesn't update itself. Repeat these steps to get a new version.

For developers: install from source

1. Clone this repo.
2. Open chrome://extensions and turn on Developer mode.
3. Click Load unpacked and select the src/ folder.

How it works

Sites usually refresh on return by listening for the Page Visibility API and window focus events. On supported sites Feed Anchor:

1. Reports the tab as always visible and focused. inject.js runs in the page's own context at document_start and overrides document.hidden, document.visibilityState and document.hasFocus().
2. Stops the events. It catches visibilitychange and window-level focus/blur events before the site's listeners see them. Focus events on inputs and other elements are left alone.
3. Keeps the tab loaded. It marks supported tabs as not auto-discardable, so Chrome's Memory Saver doesn't unload them in the background.

The popup switch turns all of this off and on live. When it's off, the page sees the real visibility and focus values again and tabs can be discarded normally.

src/
  manifest.json   Manifest V3
  sites.js        list of supported sites
  inject.js       page-context script (visibility/focus overrides)
  bridge.js       passes the on/off setting to inject.js
  background.js   Memory Saver protection, OFF badge
  popup.html/js   the popup UI

Privacy

There is no data collection, network requests, analytics or remote code. The only thing stored is the on/off setting, in local extension storage. See PRIVACY.md.

Permissions

Permission	Why
storage	Saves the on/off setting on your device.
Access to supported sites (linkedin.com, x.com)	Runs the scripts above and keeps those tabs from being discarded.

Development

scripts/package.sh            # build dist/feed-anchor-<version>.zip for the store
scripts/build-icons.sh        # regenerate src/icons from assets/*.svg
scripts/build-store-assets.sh # regenerate store screenshots and promo tile

The scripts need macOS or Linux with Google Chrome (used headless to render images), zip and jq.

License

MIT

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Feed Anchor is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by LinkedIn Corporation or X Corp. LinkedIn is a trademark of LinkedIn Corporation. X is a trademark of X Corp.