Frequently Asked Questions

How do I use ScriptSafe?

Browse the Internet as you normally would. If a site does not work, you will need to allow it. Click on the ScriptSafe icon in the toolbar and you’ll see what was blocked and various buttons for each.

You might find the Getting Started page helpful.

I’ve installed ScriptSafe and now every site I visit is broken. Why?

ScriptSafe by default adopts a “block first, ask later” approach. In other words, you need to give permission to sites to load by either adding them to your whitelist or allowing them for the session.

Allow? Trust? Deny? Distrust? What are these?

  • Allow = allow the current domain (e.g. docs.google.com)
  • Trust = allow the entire domain (e.g. www.google.com, docs.google.com, etc.)
  • Deny and Distrust are the same as above, except they block.

What is “Temp.”?

The Temp. button allows you to temporarily allow/block a domain for the current browsing session. These allowances/blockages will be forgotten when you exit your browser.

Why does *.googlevideo.com come pre-whitelisted? Are you in cahoots with Google?

The simple answer is because it helps make YouTube videos load properly.

YouTube videos are hosted on “[random characters].googlevideo.com” domains. Due to the popularity of YouTube and to save users from having to figure out regular expressions, *.googlevideo.com is the only pre-whitelisted domain to make ScriptSafe as user-friendly to the general public as possible.

To reiterate what I mentioned on the main ScriptSafe page: I will not accept requests for domains to be pre-whitelisted in return for monetary or personal gain.

I don’t want every site I visit to be blocked.

Set the Respect Same-Domain option to either “Strict” or “Loose“. More information on Options here. If you do this, I recommend you also enable the Paranoia Mode option for added security.

One step further is setting Default Mode to Allow.

I don’t want domains I’ve allowed to load on a page I don’t have whitelisted.

Enable the Paranoia Mode option.

How do I hide the “Rating” button in the panel?

Disable the Show Rating Button option.

I don’t want unwanted content providers to load even if I whitelist them

Set Unwanted Content Mode to “Strict“.

I don’t want to see social widgets/feeds/etc.

Enable the Antisocial Mode option. Note that this will also block Disqus.

Before I could see xyz.com to allow/block in the panel, but now it’s gone. What happened?

Most likely the case is you have another extension installed which modifies/blocks connection requests (i.e. uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger). Browsers assign different priorities to different extensions based on their age (e.g. last updated, last installed).

How do I backup my settings?

  1. Go to the ScriptSafe Options page
  2. Copy everything in the Export box at the bottom of the page
  3. Paste the contents into a text editor and save it (not Microsoft Word, as it may modify quotations)

How do I import or restore my settings?

  1. Go to the ScriptSafe Options page
  2. Copy/paste your saved settings into the Import box and click on the Import button

How do I install the latest version?

You’ll always be able to see what the latest version is here: https://github.com/andryou/scriptsafe/releases
Note: Legacy releases do not have WebRTC Protection and do not match the version on the Web Store.

You have the option of:

  1. Waiting for the latest version to be published on the browser addons website and automatically pushed to your machine
  2. Manually installing the latest version

If #2, please follow the below steps:

Manually installing ScriptSafe:

  1. Go to https://github.com/andryou/scriptsafe/releases and:
    1. Download the latest stable release (the non-legacy one if you want WebRTC Protection incorporated).
    2. If you want to help beta test or feel adventurous, you can download a ZIP of the latest and greatest code here: https://github.com/andryou/scriptsafe (click on Clone or download then Download ZIP)
  2. Extract the ZIP file to its own folder anywhere on your computer
  3. Copy and paste chrome://extensions into your browser address bar and press Enter
    • Make sure you have either removed or disabled the Addons Store version of ScriptSafe (for Chrome it is ID: oiigbmnaadbkfbmpbfijlflahbdbdgdf)
    • Note: you may want to save a copy of your existing ScriptSafe settings at this point (see “How do I backup my settings?” above)
  4. Enable “Developer Mode
  5. Click on Load unpacked extension, navigate to the folder you extracted ScriptSafe to in step #2 and click on OK
  6. (optional) Scroll down to ScriptSafe and enable “Allow in incognito

To update your local instance at any time, repeat the steps under “Manually installing ScriptSafe again but skip #4 and #6. Just ensure you click on the “Reload (CTRL + R)” link under ScriptSafe.