Protected pages

One important limitation of the Run script action is that it cannot run scripts in what are known as "Protected pages". These are pages whose URL starts with any of the following:

URLs	Description
chrome://	All Chrome's settings pages and configuration pages
chrome-extension://	All extension pages, such as AutoControl's own configuration page.
devtools://	DevTools windows
about:	All about pages
data:	All data URLs
view-source:	Tabs showing the source code of other pages.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/ https://chromewebstore.google.com/	All pages in the Chrome Web Store.
file://	Pages in the local hard drive or local network drives. Can be unprotected. See below.

The browser prevents all extensions from running scripts in these pages. This is a security restriction that cannot be bypassed.

file:// pages are a special case that can be unprotected by enabling the "Allow access to file URLs" option in the extension's details page at chrome://extensions.

This limitation also affects the ACtl.runInTab and ACtl.runInFrames functions. These functions will ignore any protected page they receive in their Tab Specifier argument.

Examples of protected pages

chrome://newtab
chrome://settings
chrome-extension://lkaihdpfpifdlgoapbfocpmekbokmcfd/main.html
about:blank
data:text/html;base64,PGZvbnQgc2l6ZT03IGNvbG9yPWJsdWU+SGVsbG8h
view-source:https://example.com
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/shortcut+manager

Scripting API Script Isolation Asynchronicity Backgrnd Scripts GUI vs API ACtl.include ACtl.import ACtl.getFile ACtl.saveFile ACtl.saveURL ACtl.openURL ACtl.closeTab ACtl.runInTab ACtl.runInFrames ACtl.runInPageCtx ACtl.getTabInfo ACtl.getTabIds ACtl.TAB_ID ACtl.setTabState ACtl.captureTab ACtl.execAction ACtl.runCommand ACtl.getClipboard ACtl.setClipboard ACtl.expand ACtl.switchState ACtl.var ACtl.pubVar ACtl.on ACtl.off ACtl.sleep ACtl.STOP_CHAIN ACtl.STOP_FULL_SEQ