Install guide

PrivacySecure is distributed as an unpacked Chromium extension. Chrome Web Store listing is planned; for now, loading the zip directly takes less than a minute.

Supported browsers

• Google Chrome 116+
• Microsoft Edge 116+
• Brave, Opera, Arc, and most Chromium-based browsers
• Firefox is on the roadmap (MV3 port)

Install in 5 steps

1. Download the zip from the button above and extract it to a folder you'll keep — the browser loads it from disk, so don't delete the folder after install.
2. In your browser, go to chrome://extensions/ (or the equivalent for Edge / Brave / Opera).
3. Enable Developer mode — the toggle is in the top-right corner of the extensions page.
4. Click Load unpacked and pick the folder you extracted in step 1. Pick the folder that contains manifest.json, not its parent.
5. Pin the PrivacySecure icon to the toolbar (click the puzzle icon, then the pin next to PrivacySecure). Open web.whatsapp.com and click the toolbar icon.

Keyboard shortcuts

Default bindings (rebind at chrome://extensions/shortcuts):

• Alt+Shift+B — toggle all enabled categories
• Ctrl+Shift+1 — toggle display pictures
• Ctrl+Shift+2 — toggle contact names
• Ctrl+Shift+3 — toggle last-message preview
• Unbound by default — toggle chat messages

Redeeming a referral code

If you arrived via a /r/<code> link, that code is shown on the invitation page. Open the PrivacySecure desktop app and paste it during licence activation — your friend will be credited bonus days after you've been active for a week.

Updating

Come back here and grab the latest zip, then click the reload button on the PrivacySecure card in chrome://extensions/. The installed version is shown on the extension card.

Uninstalling

In chrome://extensions/, click Remove on the PrivacySecure card.

Verify the download (optional but recommended)

Each build publishes a SHA-256 fingerprint. If you want to confirm that the zip you downloaded matches the one we published (not a man-in-the-middle replacement), compute the hash locally and compare to the value below.

Compute the hash of your download:

# Windows PowerShell
Get-FileHash privacysecure-extension-*.zip -Algorithm SHA256

# macOS / Linux
shasum -a 256 privacysecure-extension-*.zip