Privacy blur

Automatically protects open webpages when you step away from your computer.

Privacy blur automatically covers webpages when you step away or stop interacting, helping keep on-screen information out of casual view. Use it when working with confidential documents, personal or customer information, email, messages, internal systems, or other sensitive webpages. Privacy blur runs locally on your device. It contains no advertising or analytics and does not send your settings or webpage information to external APIs or servers. KEY FEATURES ■ Multiple automatic protection triggers You can enable and combine the following triggers: • No mouse, keyboard, scroll, or touch activity on the current webpage • No mouse or keyboard activity on the computer • The pointer leaves the webpage • Focus moves from Chrome to another window or application • You switch to another tab Page-inactivity timers can be set from 1 second to 7 days. Computer-inactivity timers can be set from 15 seconds to 7 days. Delays after pointer exit or window focus loss can be set from 0 seconds to 7 days. After protection starts, you can choose whether activity automatically restores the page or whether protection remains until it is manually removed. ■ Five protection styles • Smoke and blur • Black screen • White screen • Focus mode, which keeps only the area around the pointer visible • A custom local background image You can adjust blur strength, dimming, grayscale, background color, text color, the protection message, and the visible radius used by focus mode. Custom backgrounds support JPG, PNG, and WebP images up to 2 MB. Images are stored only on your device. ■ Protected-screen controls Choose one of three control layouts: • Centered guidance • Unlock button only, displayed in the lower-right corner • No on-screen controls When no controls are displayed, protection can be removed through the extension popup or another available extension control. When password protection is not enabled, you can also hold the Alt key to temporarily view the page without fully removing protection. ■ Tab protection and unlock scope Privacy blur can protect multiple eligible open tabs. For manual or activity-based unlocking, choose whether to: • Unlock all tabs together • Unlock only the current tab When “current tab only” is selected, other tabs remain protected until you interact with or unlock them. ■ Scheduled protection Set the days of the week, start time, and end time during which webpages remain protected regardless of activity. Schedules that continue past midnight are supported. ■ Per-site controls • Exclude the current website from automatic protection • Add or remove excluded domains in Advanced Settings • Pause automatic protection for 1 minute to 7 days • Resume monitoring immediately while paused ■ Persistent element masking Select names, amounts, messages, images, or other webpage elements that should remain blurred on a specific website. Elements can be selected from the extension popup or the right-click menu. Saved masks can be reviewed and removed individually in Advanced Settings, or cleared for an entire website. ■ Optional unlock password Require a password before a protected page can be restored. • 4–12 half-width alphanumeric characters • Letters-only and numbers-only passwords are supported • Require the password every time or configure a re-entry grace period • Grace periods from 1 second to 7 days • After five failed attempts, choose no lockout, a 5-minute lockout, or a 10-minute lockout • Verify the current password before changing it or turning password protection off • Password reset option if the password is forgotten Passwords are not stored in plaintext. Privacy blur stores a PBKDF2-SHA-256 hash with a random salt locally on your device. Password information is excluded from exported settings files. While password protection is enabled, activity-based automatic unlocking, Alt-key temporary viewing, and focus mode are unavailable. This prevents ordinary mouse or keyboard activity from restoring the protected page. Password reset can be performed without the current password. It removes the saved password and unlocks all tabs while preserving the other settings. ■ Additional controls • Turn Privacy blur on or off • Test Protection button for checking the current appearance • Keyboard shortcut for manual protection and unlocking • Windows and Linux: Alt+Shift+L • Mac: Command+Shift+L • Japanese, English, or system-language display • Settings import and export • Reset all settings to their defaults • Quick controls in the popup and full configuration in Advanced Settings BEFORE YOU INSTALL • Chrome internal pages, the New Tab page, and the Chrome Web Store cannot be protected because Chrome does not allow extensions to run on those pages. • Privacy blur protects webpages only. It does not lock the operating system or other applications. Use your operating system’s screen lock for high-security situations. • The optional unlock password is a convenience feature for preventing casual unlocking while you are away. It cannot prevent someone from disabling or removing Privacy blur through Chrome’s extension management page. • Saved element masks may stop matching if a website changes its page structure. • If a protection overlay from an older version remains after automatic protection is turned off, reload the affected webpage.