How to pick a ChatGPT Chrome extension without regretting it

Straight up: we make one of these. So rather than ranking rivals we have not tested and cannot keep current, here is how to evaluate any of them, what the categories actually do, and what to check before you click add.

Check permissions before features

Do this first, every time, and it takes fifteen seconds.

An extension that runs on ChatGPT can read the page. That means your conversations, including anything you have pasted into them. That is not sinister, it is how extensions work, and it is exactly why the permission list matters.

On any Chrome Web Store listing, look for the permissions section.

Two more signals worth ten seconds each. When was it last updated, and does the developer have a real website. ChatGPT's interface changes often, and an extension untouched for a year is probably broken. An anonymous developer with no site and no support address is a support problem waiting to happen.

The categories, and what they are for

Most ChatGPT extensions do one of five things. Work out which problem you have before browsing.

Getting large content in. For when the document is longer than ChatGPT will take. These split it into pieces and feed them in. Useful if you regularly hit the limit and pointless if you never do. This is the category ours is in.

Prompt management. Saved prompts, templates, snippets you use constantly. Worth it if you type the same instructions daily, and clutter if you do not.

Exporting conversations. Saving a chat as markdown, PDF, or a shareable page. Genuinely useful if you need a record and mildly annoying otherwise.

Search and organisation. Finding an old conversation, adding folders and tags. The value scales with how many chats you have. At forty it is transformative, at four it is noise.

Interface changes. Wider columns, different fonts, keyboard shortcuts. Pure preference, and the lowest risk of the five, since they mostly restyle rather than read.

Install one at a time

The habit that saves the most trouble.

Extensions that modify the same page can conflict, and when something breaks with four installed you have no idea which one did it. Add one, use it for a week, then add the next.

It also settles the question that browsing cannot: whether you actually use it. Most extensions people install are unused within a fortnight.

Ours, described plainly

FileUploadGPT is in the first category. It reads a file in your browser, splits it into pieces ChatGPT will accept, and sends them in order with the instruction that stops ChatGPT answering before the last one arrives.

What it needs: access to chatgpt.com and chat.openai.com. Nothing else.

What it does with your file: reads it in your browser. Nothing is sent to us, because there is no server to send it to.

What it does not do: help with video, audio, or scanned PDFs, because there is no text in those to send. It also cannot raise any of ChatGPT's limits, since nothing running in a browser can.

Mobile, since it comes up constantly

Chrome on Android and iOS does not support extensions. Not ours, not any of them.

This is a limitation of mobile Chrome and there is no way around it. If you are reading this on a phone and want any extension discussed here, you need a laptop or desktop. Send yourself the link and it will be there when you get to a computer.

A short checklist

1. What is the actual problem you keep hitting?
2. Does the permission list match that problem, or ask for far more?
3. Does the privacy policy say where your content goes?
4. Updated in the last few months?
5. Install one. Give it a week. Then consider the next.

Step two eliminates most of the bad ones on its own.