My First Chrome Extension: ADHD Reader

A Year ago, in spring 2022, I read an study about how bolding first letters of each words have been tested to make it easier and faster to read for people having dyslexia, adhd or other neurological challenge.

I tried it from the sample, and it's hard to say if it actually works or is it all about placebo, anyhow I sent the study to my friend. Couple days later he got back to me and said that it's actually only couple lines of code if I would like to try out more. Life happened and I forgot whole thing.

After the summer I got an idea that I want to learn how to make Chrome extensions and how to publish them. I wanted do something rather simple, so I can get it published as soon as possible. Main thing was not about the coding, but building the actual boilerplate and figure out the publishing process to Chrome Web Marketplace. So I decided to build my first extension by leveraging the study about making reading easier for the neurodiverse ppl.

First of course I had to choose the icon for my extension, I used canva.com and found and vector icon of a book, it was perfect because this extension is about reading, and because its making reading faster, the lightning is a nice touch.

ADHD is associated to being fast phased, and also is part of the target group, so name for the extension was easy to pick: ADHD Reader - to be honest, I didn't think about it too much since I had no idea that anyone would actually use it, like ever.

Extension was published and I moved on, building two other extensions, which I actually felt like someone could use, myself included. Couple of months later I saw that there actually is some users on my chrome extensions, but not on the ones I thought. ADHD Reader had gained some attention and had already almost hundred users!

Not so long after that I got first reviews in the marketplace and that was so cool! Someone actually liked my project so much they were willing to write a review, give 5 stars and still give some feedback about how to improve and make it better!

By end of the year 2022 there was 4? reviews most of them 5 stars, one 4 stars. I listed the feedback as issues in my github project and started planning an update.

In february it crossed 1000 users and I decided that now I must start with the update! about a month later I had an update ready and I published it. After that I saw some users leaving for a week, but then it started to grow again!

This week in August 2023 I once again updated the analytics dashboard and WOW! There is now 16.000 users!

This has been an awesome project and a insightful and importat lesson about that you never know what people actually need and want to use. Two of my other extensions has combined users of 5, and I really thought that those would be awesome.

I have got thanks and feedback through instagram and twitter, and of course from the reviews. It's an amazing feeling to hear that you have been actually able to help someone with something you have done.

Checkout the ADHD Reader - my first chrome extension.