Greasemetal : A user script manager for Google Chrome

Posted on September 23rd, 2008, by Joel 15 Comments

What is Greasemetal?

Greasemetal is a UserScripts runtime for Google Chrome. The runtime hosts UserScripts (tiny JavaScript files that modify the webpages being displayed) to be executed on Google Chrome, similar to what Greasemonkey does for Mozilla Firefox, or Greasekit does for Safari.

Greasemetal is developed by Kazuho Oku as part of his research activity at Cybozu Labs, Inc., a public software company in Japan. Greasemetal is licensed under GNU Public License version 2.

How does Greasemetal work?

Google Chrome does not provide any interface to develop browser addons. Greasemetal modifies the behavior of Google Chrome using an inter-process communication channel called AutomationProxy, which is used for automatically testing the functions of the web browser.

Using Greasemetal

  1. Download the Greasemetal Installer: GreasemetalInstaller.exe (1.2MB)
  2. After installation, launch Greasemetal from the start menu. Greasemetal will in turn start up Google Chrome, while hooking its behaviors to insert UserScripts.
  3. Once you have started running Greasemetal, add userscripts to the userjs directory under your My Documents folder (or Documents folder on Windows Visa). If you are unfamiliar with UserScripts, a number of scripts are available from userscripts.org.

A few limitations

Greasemetal has the below limitation and I hope this will be gone in the future versions.

  • no UI for userscript management (yet)
  • no support for following functions: GM_xmlHttpRequest, GM_setValue, GM_getValue, GM_registerMenuCommand

Related posts:

  1. What’s Wrong With Google Chrome?
  2. Google Chrome Offline Installer (From Google)
  3. Google Chrome 4.0.249.78 Final
  4. Google Tests It’s Luck in Browsers – Chrome
  5. Greasemonkey User Script Update Checker

15 Responses to “Greasemetal : A user script manager for Google Chrome”

  1. Joshua says:

    hi,
    i’v installed Greasemetal and the folder userjs in located in my documents. now here is the problem: when i click install on this page (for example): http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/14980 i get this page: http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/14980.user.js and nothing is happening in the userjs.

    can you please help?

    joshua.

  2. Nenad says:

    Same

  3. hiuioh says:

    right-click

    “save link as”

    save into userjs

  4. Andre says:

    hihi. I have a problem with greasemetal. I have installed it and I can’t seem to run it! When i run greasemetal, it opens google chrome for a few milliseconds and then closes immediately! I have tried reinstalling chrome and greasemetal but the problem still persists. It would be nice if someone could help me resolve my problem. Thx

  5. paul says:

    Hi, I have the same problem as Andre which is strange because I had installed it and it worked fine for a bout two weeks. Has there been a Windows Update that affects greasemetal? Any help would be good!

  6. janelle says:

    I’m having the same problem as Andre and paul. Please help ):

  7. David says:

    I have the SAME problem as Andre & Paul & Janelle with mine, it opens chrome for like a few seconds and then just “crashes”.

    Please Help!!!!! :(

  8. yosef adest says:

    I have the same issue.. opens chrome for a second and that’s it, I can’t access chrome at all.. ANY SOLUTIONS, anyone???

  9. maroom says:

    gease mental seems to be not working…..!
    plz hlp me how it works guys………!plz yaar

  10. maroom says:

    @paul: how it worked fr u plz hlp mee i installed it….
    when i tried to open it it is showing that chrome is running plz close it and try again……

  11. blacknoise says:

    Ok people this does NOT work anymore so don’t bother installing it unless someone can come up with a working fix

  12. Joel says:

    @blacknoise:
    well yes, google chrome’s internal addon handling has been re designed and i think the plugin requires some changes to cope up with the new plugin handling engine which is easiliy accesible without switches.

    so till a fix is released please be patient.

  13. ali says:

    I have the SAME problem as Andre & Paul & Janelle with mine, it opens chrome for like a few seconds and then just “crashes”.
    Please Help!!!!!

  14. blacknoise says:

    @ali:
    Greasemetal does NOT work with new chrome versions and it will do so until the author makes it compatible
    In the mean time if you want extensions to work, use Chrome developer latest which supports it. But there are limitations still