How to build an chrome extension like Google Hangouts

Question

The Google Hangouts extension has a panel that shows up outside of the Chrome UI.

It is sort of like a notification but not. I don't see anything in the Extension Developer Docs that describes an API to make this work. Is this a Google-specific hack they're doing? Is there something in the experimental APIs that I'm missing?

Related: [How does extension chat for google create the panel window?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11614493/how-does-extension-chat-for-google-create-the-panel-window "How does extension chat for google create the panel window?") — Rob W, Oct 25 '13 at 08:37

abraham · Answer 1 · 2015-08-11T14:21:53.123

22

It is an options of chrome.windows.create. Make sure you set type to panel.

chrome.windows.create({ url: 'https://mobile.twitter.com/', type: 'panel' });

panel may not be supported on all platforms and you may have to specifically enable panels in Chrome Flags chrome://flags/#enable-panels.

edited Aug 11 '15 at 14:21

answered Feb 28 '12 at 18:32

abraham

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I didn't enable `panel`, but `hangouts` manage to create one anyway. – satoru Jun 30 '13 at 08:35
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Some of the Google extensions do panels automatically on some platforms. – abraham Jul 01 '13 at 19:10
@satoru what do you mean with "I didn't enable panel"? – cprcrack Jan 23 '15 at 16:20
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There is an experimental flag in chrome you can flip that enables panels for non-whitelisted extension. – abraham Jan 23 '15 at 16:36
I see, it's `enable-panels` (chrome://flags/#enable-panels). So that means you cannot really create panels without the user enabling this flag, right? – cprcrack Jan 23 '15 at 21:18
Correct. (Last i checked) – abraham Jan 23 '15 at 21:38
it has been 4 years. is there a way now? – Vikas Bansal May 05 '16 at 08:42
I don't believe much has changed. – abraham May 06 '16 at 16:12
@VikasBansal Nope, and an extension is still less powerful than an app. – Derek 朕會功夫 Jul 17 '16 at 06:43

How to build an chrome extension like Google Hangouts

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