RecencyPulse

Search what people actually said this month.
A free, open-source Chrome extension that jumps straight to recent Reddit and TikTok discussion.

Website · Install · How it works · Privacy

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What it is

Search results have filled up with pages written to rank well rather than to be read. When you want a real opinion — is this thing worth buying, is this neighbourhood any good, did anyone else hit this bug — you end up appending reddit to every search out of habit.

RecencyPulse turns that habit into one click. Click the icon, type a topic, pick a platform. It opens the search you actually wanted, already filtered for recent discussion.

Why the time limit matters

An old thread can rank at the top for years. If you're asking about a product, a policy, a version, or a place, a four-year-old answer is often just wrong.

Reddit searches are pinned to the past month by default — the filter most people want but rarely bother to set.

Install

From the Chrome Web Store

→ Add RecencyPulse to Chrome

Or search "RecencyPulse" in the Chrome Web Store.

From source

git clone https://github.com/wushu75/RecencyPulse.git

1. Open chrome://extensions
2. Turn on Developer mode (top right)
3. Click Load unpacked
4. Select the recency-pulse folder

Works in Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Arc.

How it works

There's no backend, no API, and no scraping. The extension builds a search URL and opens it in a new tab. That's the entire mechanism.

Platform	URL it opens
Reddit	reddit.com/search/?q=QUERY&sort=relevance&t=month
TikTok	tiktok.com/search?q=QUERY

Your input is trimmed and passed through encodeURIComponent, then handed to chrome.tabs.create().

Using it

• Click a platform button to select it, click again to search
• Or press Enter to search whichever platform is selected
• The selected platform shows a brand-coloured stroke — orange for Reddit, black for TikTok

Privacy

RecencyPulse requests no permissions at all. When you install it, Chrome has nothing to warn you about, because there's nothing to approve.

• No data collected. Search terms go from the box to the search page and nowhere else.
• No page access. It can't read your history, your tabs, or the sites you visit.
• No analytics, no tracking, no ads, no accounts.
• No network requests of its own.

chrome.tabs.create() needs no permission when opening a normal URL, which is why the manifest has no permissions key. If you ever see a version of this extension asking for permissions, it isn't this one.

Project structure

recency-pulse/
├── manifest.json     Manifest V3 config, no permissions
├── popup.html        300px popup UI and styles
├── popup.js          Query building and tab routing
├── icon16.png
├── icon48.png
└── icon128.png

Everything is vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No framework, no build step, no dependencies — clone it and it runs.

Adding a platform

Add one line to the PLATFORMS map in popup.js:

const PLATFORMS = {
  reddit:   q => `https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=${q}&sort=relevance&t=month`,
  tiktok:   q => `https://www.tiktok.com/search?q=${q}`,
  yourSite: q => `https://example.com/search?q=${q}`,
};

Then add a matching button in popup.html:

<button class="search-btn yourSite" data-platform="yourSite">Search Example</button>

The data-platform value must match the key in PLATFORMS. Add a background colour and a .yourSite.selected { outline-color: ... } rule to the stylesheet and you're done — routing and selection wire up automatically.

A note on Facebook

Earlier versions included a Facebook button. It was removed: Facebook returns Not Found for direct search URLs unless you're logged in, and has been progressively retiring the /search/posts path. Rather than ship a button that fails for most people, it's gone. Reddit works logged-out; TikTok mostly does.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Useful things to work on:

• Additional platforms with stable, public search URLs
• Configurable time ranges for Reddit (week / month / year)
• Remembering the last selected platform between popup sessions
• Keyboard shortcut to open the popup

Please keep it dependency-free and permission-free — that's the point of the project.

License

MIT.

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_{RecencyPulse is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Reddit or TikTok. It opens their public search pages and nothing more.}