GitHub Contributions Shade

Re-shade the GitHub contribution calendar using your own per-profile thresholds so one outlier day cannot flatten the year.

GitHub Contributions Shade re-shades the contribution calendar on GitHub profile pages using thresholds you choose for each profile, so a single unusual day cannot wash out the rest of the year. After installing, open the extension's options, add your GitHub username, and reload your GitHub tabs. It does nothing until you do. WHY GitHub paints each day of the contribution calendar in one of five shades, and it derives the cutoffs between those shades from the busiest single day in the window. That makes the whole calendar hostage to one number: a single outlier day rescales every other day on the graph. That is exactly what happened on the profile this extension was built for. One accidental day of 31 contributions, far above any other, pushed GitHub's top cutoff to roughly 24. Across the trailing 371 days, only 5 days reached the darkest shade while 160 sat at the lightest, even though the underlying activity was steady: just one day with no contributions, and the middle half of active days fell between 4 and 17 contributions. The data was fine; the cutoffs were wrong for it. This extension replaces GitHub's cutoffs with constants you set, so no single day can rescale the others. With cutoffs of 1, 7, 13 and 19, the same year spreads across the five shades as 1, 143, 83, 72 and 72 days. CONFIGURING Nothing changes until you add a username. To open the options page, click the puzzle-piece Extensions button in Chrome's toolbar, then the three-dot menu next to GitHub Contributions Shade, then Options. You can also find it under Details in chrome://extensions. Add the GitHub usernames you want re-shaded (the part after github.com/) and click Save. Each username gets four numbers, Lightest, Medium-light, Medium-dark and Darkest: the fewest contributions in a day that get that shade. The page shows the range each shade ends up covering as you type. A new row starts at: - Empty: no contributions - Lightest: 1 to 6 contributions - Medium-light: 7 to 12 contributions - Medium-dark: 13 to 18 contributions - Darkest: 19 or more contributions The numbers must be whole, at least 1, and each larger than the last. A good starting point is to hover over a few busy days to see their counts, set Darkest around a typical busy day rather than your single busiest, and space the others evenly below it. Profiles you have not listed keep GitHub's own shading. Saved changes show up right away in GitHub tabs opened since the extension was installed or last updated, and removing a username puts GitHub's shading back; reload any GitHub tabs that were already open before that. Settings are kept in Chrome's synced extension storage, so they follow you to other browsers where you are signed in to Chrome with sync turned on. HOW IT WORKS - It reads each day's contribution count from the tooltip GitHub already renders, works out which shade that count belongs to, and sets that shade on the day's square. - It does not override any colors. GitHub's own styles paint the square, so the light, dark, dimmed and colorblind themes all keep working exactly as before. - The screen-reader description of each day is updated along with its shade, so the two stay consistent. - Switching between year tabs on the profile, and moving between profiles, is handled automatically. WHERE IT RUNS The extension runs on pages at https://github.com/ so that it can find whichever profile you are viewing, but it only changes the calendar of profiles you have listed on the options page. It does nothing on any other website. PRIVACY - No data is collected, transmitted, sold or shared. - The only thing stored is your list of usernames and thresholds, in Chrome's own extension storage. Chrome syncs it through your Google account if you have Chrome sync turned on; it never goes to the developer or anyone else. - No network requests, no analytics, no cookies. - Permissions: access to github.com pages, and "storage" for your settings. - Everything happens inside the page you are already viewing, and the counts it reads are discarded when you leave. Privacy policy: https://github.com/albertyw/github-contributions-shade/blob/master/PRIVACY.md OPEN SOURCE The extension is open source under the MIT license. The source code is about 600 lines of TypeScript and is worth reading before installing anything that touches your browser: https://github.com/albertyw/github-contributions-shade Bug reports and questions: https://github.com/albertyw/github-contributions-shade/issues