uistash · chrome extension

Save to UIStash.

Right-click any image on the web, choose Save to UIStash, and it lands in the Queue on your Mac, staged like a screenshot you dropped on the window. It is a developer install for now: the extension is not on the Chrome Web Store yet, so you load the folder into Chrome yourself, once, and it stays loaded. Chrome 114 or newer.

01 · Install

Five steps, once.

  1. Download the extension. uistash-extension.zip, 16 KB. Unzip it and keep the folder somewhere you will not delete: Chrome loads it from that path every time, so if the folder moves, the extension stops. When the Web Store listing is live, this step goes away.

  2. Open uistash. The app registers the capture bridge with Chrome when it launches, so this usually needs nothing from you. Running from a source checkout instead? Register the development host once:

    node browser-extension/scripts/install-dev-host.js

  3. Load it into Chrome. Open chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode top right, choose Load unpacked, and select the unzipped folder:

    uistash-extension

  4. Check the ID. Chrome should show:

    akdidfblkfjklimkcmfnmmeagjdefioo

    That exact ID is what the bridge allowlists. Any other one gets refused, and the popup says so rather than failing quietly.

  5. Right-click an image on any ordinary page and choose Save to UIStash. It should reach your Queue within a second. You get a badge and a notification either way: Added to Queue, or Open UIStash and try again. The toolbar popup tells you whether the app is running before you bother trying.

02 · Scope

What it takes, and what it does not.

It takes
PNG, JPG, animated GIF, and WebP, up to 25MB, as their original bytes. Data URLs and blob URLs. Images behind a login on the page you are already on.
It does not, yet
SVG, because imports accept raster today. CSS background images, because Chrome does not offer them as an image context reliably. Images behind a login on a different site, because uistash will not copy your cookies into its downloader. Batch capture and full-page screenshots.

03 · The connection

How it reaches the app.

The extension opens no port and reaches no service of ours. It hands the bytes to Chrome's Native Messaging, which starts a small local host that uistash allowlists by exact extension ID. The host reads a token written fresh on every launch and forwards one bounded message to the app on 127.0.0.1. Restarting uistash rotates that token, and removing the extension revokes Chrome's access outright.

There is no <all_urls> and no site access list. After your right-click, and only in that tab, it reads the image you selected if the page already owns those bytes. Anything else uistash downloads itself, without your cookies or referrer, capped at 25MB. No analytics, no account, no remote service. What it records stays on your disk: source URL, page URL and title, filename, type, and the moment you saved it.