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Community & Business Groups

WebExtensions Community Group

We will specify a model, permissions, and a common core of APIs for web browser extensions. By specifying the APIs, functionality, and permissions of WebExtensions, we can make it even easier for extension developers to enhance end user experience, while moving them towards APIs that improve performance and prevent abuse. Charter: https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/blob/main/charter.md

w3c/webextensions

Group's public email, repo and wiki activity over time

Note: Community Groups are proposed and run by the community. Although W3C hosts these conversations, the groups do not necessarily represent the views of the W3C Membership or staff.

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WECG public meeting on Sep 16, 2021

The next public meeting of the WebExtensions Community is scheduled for Sep 16, 2021. The group meets virtually every other week for one hour to discuss issues of interest. These meetings are supplementary to the ongoing conversations in the issue tracker.

Day: Thursday Sep 16, 2021
Time: 8 AM PDT / Thursday 3 PM UTC
To convert to your local time zone, see https://everytimezone.com/
Duration: 1 hour
Medium: Zoom (hosted by Mozilla)

See this post in the group’s mailing list for instructions on how to join the meeting.

After the end of each meeting, meeting notes are published in the _minutes directory in group’s repository. The README in that directory also contains a list of upcoming events.

WECG public meeting on Sep 2, 2021

The next public meeting of the WebExtensions Community is scheduled for Sep 2, 2021. The group meets virtually every other week for one hour to discuss issues of interest. These meetings are supplementary to the ongoing conversations in the issue tracker.

Day: Thursday Sep 2, 2021
Time: 8 AM PDT / Thursday 3 PM UTC
To convert to your local time zone, see https://everytimezone.com/
Duration: 1 hour
Medium: Zoom (hosted by Mozilla)

See this post in the group’s mailing list for instructions on how to join the meeting.

After the end of each meeting, meeting notes are published in the _minutes directory  in group’s repository. The README in that directory also contains a list of upcoming events.

WECG public meeting schedule

The WebExtensions Community group meets virtually every other week for one hour to discuss issues of interest to the group. These meetings are supplementary to the ongoing conversations in the issue tracker.

To accomodate attendees across the globe, the recurring meeting alternates between two time slots:

  • Thursday 8 AM PDT / Thursday 3 PM UTC
  • Thursday 11 PM PDT / Friday 6 AM UTC
  • To convert to your local time zone, see https://everytimezone.com/

See this post in the group’s mailing list for instructions on how to join the meeting.

After the end of each meeting, meeting notes are published in the _minutes directory in group’s repository. The README in that directory also contains a list of upcoming events.

WECG public meeting schedule

The WebExtensions Community group will be holding meetings every other week to discuss issues of interest to the group. These meetings are supplementary to the ongoing conversations in the issue tracker.

Day: Every other Thursday
Time: 08:00 – 09:00 Pacific Time
Duration: 1 hour
Medium: Zoom (hosted by Mozilla)

Organizers will send an email to the members mailing list that contains the meeting ID and password approximately 3 days before the meeting.

Forming the WebExtensions Community Group

We’re excited to announce the launch of the WebExtensions Community Group (WECG).

With multiple browsers adopting a broadly compatible model for extensions in the last few years, the WECG is excited to explore how browser vendors and other interested parties can work together to advance a common browser extension platform.

Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla are initiating this community group, and we welcome other browser makers, extension developers, and interested parties to join this effort!

What’s our goal

This community group seeks to align on a common vision for browser extensions and to work towards future standardization. Specifically, we plan to:

  • Make extension creation easier for developers by specifying a consistent model and common core of functionality, APIs, and permissions.
  • Outline an architecture that enhances performance and is even more secure and resistant to abuse.

Our work will be guided by a common set of HTML and W3C TAG design principles: user-centered, compatibility, performance, security, privacy, portability, maintainability, and well-defined behavior.

Using the existing extensions model and APIs supported by Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, and Safari as a foundation, we will start by working on a specification. We aim to identify common ground, bring implementations into closer alignment, and chart a course for future evolution.

What we’re not doing

We are not aiming to specify every aspect of the web extensions platform or existing implementations. We want browsers to keep innovating and shipping APIs that may serve as the basis for further improvement of the web extensions platform.

In addition, we don’t plan to specify, standardize or coordinate around extension signing or delivery. Each browser vendor will continue to operate their extension store fully independently, with their own technical, review, and editorial policies.

Where to learn more

Take a look at our full charter. Check out our GitHub to follow along with the work. Once we have the first Editor’s Draft of the specification, we’ll be inviting the broader extensions community to contribute to it through Github issues and pull requests.

— Chairs Timothy Hatcher and Simeon Vincent; editors Tomislav Jovanovic and Mukul Purohit

Call for Participation in WebExtensions Community Group

The WebExtensions Community Group has been launched:


We will specify a model, permissions, and a common core of APIs for web browser extensions. By specifying the APIs, functionality, and permissions of WebExtensions, we can make it even easier for extension developers to enhance end user experience, while moving them towards APIs that improve performance and prevent abuse.

Charter: https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/blob/main/charter.md


In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account. Please note, however, that W3C Membership is not required to join a Community Group.

This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2021-06-01 by Theresa O’Connor. The following people supported its creation: Theresa O’Connor, Timothy Hatcher, Philipp Kewisch, Simeon Vincent, Mukul Purohit. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.

The group must now choose a chair. Read more about how to get started in a new group and good practice for running a group.

We invite you to share news of this new group in social media and other channels.

If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please email us at site-comments@w3.org

Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team