Album Filter (Chrome Extension)

Album Filter is a Chrome extension that adds in-page text filtering for long, paginated album lists.

It currently supports Facebook photo albums, where you can try it right now. You can also try it on our test page: Album Filter Playground.

Why

On long album lists, browser page search (Cmd/Ctrl + F) only works on albums currently loaded in the DOM. Album Filter is designed to make finding albums faster by adding filtering controls directly in the page flow.

How It Works

• Click the extension icon to open/close the in-page Album Filter panel.
• Type a query to filter loaded albums by title.
• Click Auto-load to keep loading additional album batches, then Stop to stop.
• Click Rescan to re-read albums already present in the DOM.
• Press Esc while focused in the filter input to close the panel.

Query Behavior

• Unquoted query: split into words, all words must appear in title (order-independent).
• Quoted query ("..." or '...'): exact phrase match in title.

Example:

• my birthday matches titles that contain both words anywhere.
• "my birthday" matches titles that contain that exact phrase.

While Filtering Is Active

• An inline notice appears near the Albums area (Album Filter: active...).
• Newly loaded non-matching cards may briefly appear dim before being hidden.
• While Auto-load is active, the panel shows a warning that page scroll/jumps may occur.

Product Direction

Current Support

• Facebook album pages (https://www.facebook.com/<user>/photos_albums) - first PoC target

Principles

• Generic architecture for site-specific adapters
• Facebook support first
• Additional sites can be added over time when they need the same capability

How to Install

Public version

Install public version from Chrome Web Store: Album Filter.

The Web Store listing may lag behind the latest code due to review time.

Development mode

1. Clone or download this repository.
2. Open Chrome and go to chrome://extensions.
3. Enable Developer mode.
4. Click Load unpacked.
5. Select the project folder.

Packaging for Chrome Web Store

• Create upload zip: npm run package
• Bump patch + package: npm run package:patch
• Check changes since the recorded public release: npm run release:status
• After uploading the exact ZIP, record its commit and SHA-256: npm run release:record-submission
• After that version is confirmed live, record publication: npm run release:record
• See the Chrome Web Store release workflow.

Album Filter Playground

Use Album Filter Playground to test long-list and auto-load behavior locally.

Playground deployment uses a test-gated GitHub Actions workflow. See deployment setup for required secrets and the Netlify setting needed to prevent independent builds from bypassing tests.

Engineering and QA process

• Contributing guide: setup, verification, documentation, and review expectations
• Changelog: user-visible changes by published Web Store version
• Test guide: automated coverage, limitations, focused commands, traces, and manual checks
• GitHub Actions workflow and deployment guide: test-gated playground publishing
• Bug-reporting guide: report form, severity, lifecycle, regression evidence, and release verification
• Chrome Web Store release workflow: packaging, review, publication, and release bookkeeping

Notes

• Album Filter is not affiliated with or endorsed by Meta/Facebook.
• This project focuses on user-triggered, in-browser filtering workflows.
• There is currently no options page; behavior is controlled from the in-page panel.
• Privacy policy: PRIVACY.md