Quell

Quiet the web. A free, open-source browser extension that removes the noise you didn't ask for — starting with forced AI features (Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Bing Copilot), and growing to cookie-consent nags and other annoyances.

Free. No account. No tracking. Made by Purple Directive.

→ Install from the Chrome Web Store — works on Chrome and Edge.

Why

Only ~30% of people find new AI features in their apps useful; 40%+ call them an annoyance or hype (Prophet 2026; Stanford HAI 2026). Existing "AI blockers" are either paywalled with dark patterns or fragile single-site hacks. Quell is the honest one: the blocking core is free forever, it collects nothing, and its blocklist is kept fresh by an automated pipeline so it doesn't rot when sites change.

What it blocks today

• Google — AI Overviews and AI Mode, on all 190 Google country domains. Two modes:
  • Hide — surgically removes the AI blocks, keeps the rest of Google.
  • Clean Web — forces Google's classic web results (udm=14); selector-proof, never breaks.
• Bing — hides the Copilot sidebar and entry points.
• Cookie banners (beta, opt-in) — blocks consent platforms at the network layer (317 rules) and hides banners with the full EasyList Cookie List: ~15,000 generic selectors plus domain-specific rules for ~16,000 sites. Rules derive from the open EasyList Cookie list (CC BY-SA 3.0 — see NOTICE). If a site misbehaves, the popup's Pause on this site switch turns the cookie layer off for that site only — network and cosmetic layers both.

Rule pipeline (Phase 2 — live)

pipeline/build_rules.py regenerates the cookie rules from the EasyList Cookie List: network block rules (rules/cookie-cmp-easylist.json), a generic hide stylesheet Chrome injects natively (rules/cookie-generic.css), and a domain-specific selector map (rules/cookie-domains.json) that the background serves to each page one host-slice at a time — pages never see the whole map, and the files aren't web-accessible (sites can't fingerprint Quell). Only filter syntax that translates with full confidence is converted; everything else is dropped and counted, and the build fails loudly if output shrinks suspiciously. A weekly GitHub Action (quell-rules-refresh) opens a PR when upstream rules change.

Roadmap

• Other annoyances — newsletter modals, chat-widget popups (Annoyances lists).
• More AI surfaces — Gemini in Gmail/Docs/Drive, Meta AI, Grok on X, YouTube AI.
• A device-wide DNS option, and "Do Not Train" / opt-out signals.

Not on the roadmap: ad-blocking. uBlock Origin already does that better than anyone, for free. For ads, we recommend uBlock Origin — pointing you to the better tool is the honest thing to do.

What it does NOT do (on purpose)

• It does not "delete your data from AI servers" — no client tool can. The honest version (send opt-out signals, surface every platform's opt-out controls) ships in a later phase.
• It does not stop AI globally — only in your browser, on your device.
• It does not track you or phone home.

Install (developer / unpacked)

1. Open chrome://extensions (or edge://extensions).
2. Enable Developer mode.
3. Load unpacked → select the extension/ folder.
4. Pin Quell, run a Google search, open the popup to toggle modes.

Tests

tests/run.sh loads the real extension into Playwright's Chromium and verifies every surface against local fixtures (no live Google/Bing traffic): AI-block hiding, the organic-result false-positive guard, clean-web redirect, master-switch gating of the network ruleset, cookie-banner hiding, scroll-lock release, the no-blanket-unlock regression, and the per-site pause. Requires a global playwright install (npm i -g playwright + playwright install chromium).

Privacy & permissions

No analytics, no remote storage, no telemetry. Settings live in chrome.storage.local on your machine. Quell never sends your browsing anywhere.

The base install requests only storage, declarativeNetRequest (rule-based blocking Quell can't read your traffic through), and scripting. The broad all-sites permission is optional — it's requested only if you turn on Cookie banners, and only then can the cosmetic layer run on the pages you visit. Leave that feature off and Quell never touches a page outside Google/Bing search.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.