modcore Timeline

What is modcore Timeline?

modcore Timeline is your personal activity log for browser extensions. It keeps a chronological record of everything that happens with your extensions - when they're installed, updated, enabled, disabled, or removed—giving you a complete audit trail of changes to your browser setup.

Unlike cloud-based solutions, Timeline stores everything locally on your computer. Your extension activity history never leaves your device, ensuring complete privacy while giving you powerful tools to track, search, and manage your extension lifecycle.

Keyboard Shortcuts

For efficient navigation without reaching for your mouse:

• Alt + F: Jump to search box

• Alt + G: Toggle filter panel

• Alt + R: Reset all filters

• Alt + C: Clear all history (with confirmation)

• Alt + S: Open Settings

• Alt + H: Open Help

• Alt + < or Alt + >: Navigate between pages

Important Limitations

Tracking requires an active background worker. Chromium browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, etc.) suspend extension background processes after periods of inactivity to save memory. If you leave your browser open for extended periods without interacting with modcore Extension Manager, Timeline may miss some events. This is a browser limitation that cannot be bypassed.

Uninstalled extensions lose their identity. When you remove an extension, Chrome deletes its metadata. Timeline preserves the event record but shows "Unknown" for the extension name and icon, since that information is no longer available from the browser.

History begins when you enable tracking. Timeline cannot retroactively capture events that occurred before activation. If you disable tracking and re-enable it later, you'll have a gap in your history during the disabled period.

Technical Notes

For developers and system administrators interested in implementation details:

Storage Architecture

Timeline uses chrome.storage.local for persistence, ensuring data remains device-bound and survives browser restarts. The storage schema separates configuration (extensionHistorySettings) from activity data (extensionActivityHistory), allowing independent management of settings and records.

Event Capture Mechanism

The service worker registers listeners for chrome.management events (onInstalled, onUninstalled, onEnabled, onDisabled, onUpdated). These fire for all extensions system-wide, not just modcore EM itself. The onUpdated handler performs differential permission analysis, comparing oldPermissions against current permissions to detect granular permission changes rather than treating all updates identically.

Data Structure

Each history record follows this schema:

{

  timestamp: number,      // Unix epoch milliseconds

  eventType: string,      // Enum: installed|uninstalled|updated|permissions_updated|enabled|disabled

  extensionId: string,    // Chrome extension ID

  extensionName: string,  // Human-readable name (may be "Unknown" for uninstalled)

  extensionVersion: string,

  details: string         // Human-readable context, especially for permission changes

}

Performance Considerations

The frontend implements debounced search (200ms) to prevent filtering lag on large datasets. Virtual scrolling is not implemented; instead, pagination limits DOM node creation. The default 25 logs per page balances readability with render performance. For users with 10,000+ records, compact mode combined with increased logs-per-page (50-100) provides better UX than standard view.

Quota Management

Chrome's storage.local has undefined but finite limits (typically 5-10MB). Timeline's pruning mechanisms prevent quota exceeded errors. The record limit setting (default 1,000) assumes average record size of ~200 bytes, keeping storage well under 1MB even with verbose permission details.

Privacy Guarantees

No fetch(), XMLHttpRequest, or external messaging occurs in the Timeline module. Data exfiltration would require explicit user action (export to file) or compromise of the Chrome extension storage sandbox. The "Learn more" link in settings directs to documentation, not analytics endpoints.