A powerful Chromium browser extension that captures JavaScript console messages (log, warn, error, info) from any active tab, displays them live, and automatically saves them to a text file.
🔓 100% Open Source — Inspect the code yourself on GitHub
- Full Console Capture: Uses
chrome.debuggerAPI to catch all messages, including native browser errors that content scripts miss. - Deep Object Logging: Captures nested objects, arrays, and stack traces — not just string representations.
- Live Monitoring: Real-time display of logs in the popup window.
- Auto-Save: Periodically saves captured logs to your Downloads folder without prompting.
- Custom Save Location: Choose where to save your logs with a file picker.
- Smart Overwrite: Updates the same file (
console-logs.txt) continuously, preventing file clutter. - Persistent Storage: Logs are stored locally and survive browser restarts.
- Cross-Platform: Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
| Browser | Support | Installation URL |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Edge | ✅ Full | edge://extensions |
| Google Chrome | ✅ Full | chrome://extensions |
| Brave | ✅ Full | brave://extensions |
| Opera | ✅ Full | opera://extensions |
| Vivaldi | ✅ Full | vivaldi://extensions |
| Arc | ✅ Full | arc://extensions |
| Firefox | Different API architecture | |
| Safari | ❌ No | Incompatible extension model |
Since this is a developer tool, you install it as an "unpacked" extension.
- Download/Clone this project folder to your computer.
- Open your browser and go to the extensions page (see table above).
- Toggle Developer mode on.
- Click Load unpacked.
- Select the
Console loggerfolder (the root folder containingmanifest.json). - The extension icon will appear in your toolbar.
- Navigate to the website you want to debug.
- Click the extension icon to open the popup.
- Click "Start Capturing".
- Important: Your browser will show a warning banner: "Console Logger started debugging this browser". This is a security feature of the Debugger API.
- Logs appear immediately in the dark-themed console area.
- Messages include timestamps and log levels:
[2025-12-15T12:00:00.000Z] [LOG] Message... - Objects are serialized with full depth (configurable).
- Check the "Enable Auto-Save" box.
- Set the Interval (default 30 seconds, minimum 5 seconds).
- Set a Filename (default
console-logs.txt). - The extension will silently overwrite this file in your Downloads folder.
- Tip: Open the file in VS Code or similar to see live updates.
- Click "Set Save Location" to open a file picker.
- Choose your preferred folder and filename.
- The extension will display where logs are being saved.
- Note: The custom path is shown for reference. Due to browser security, "Save Now" and auto-save go to Downloads, but you can use "Set Save Location" anytime to save directly to your chosen location.
- Restricted Pages: You cannot capture logs from browser internal pages (
chrome://,edge://,about:, etc.).- Symptom: Warning message in the popup.
- Fix: Navigate to a normal website and try again.
- Save Now: Immediately downloads the current log history.
- Set Save Location: Opens file picker to choose where to save logs.
- Clear Logs: Wipes the in-memory log history.
- Stop: Detaches the debugger.
- Security Warning: The "started debugging" banner is enforced by the browser and cannot be hidden.
- Downloads Folder: Extensions can only save to your Downloads folder (browser security restriction).
- Storage Limit: Up to ~10,000 log lines are stored. Older logs are rotated out.
Console logger/
├── manifest.json # Extension configuration (MV3)
├── background.js # Service worker (debugger, storage, downloads)
├── popup.html # Popup UI structure
├── popup.js # Popup logic
├── styles.css # Dark theme styling
├── icons/ # Extension icons (16/48/128px)
└── README.md # This file
MIT License. Free to use and modify.