Which browsers are supported?

Glassy Capture works on Chrome, Edge, Brave, and other Chromium-based browsers via the Chrome Web Store. Firefox is supported via the signed .xpi package from GitHub Releases.

Does the extension work with self-hosted instances?

Yes. During setup, enter your instance URL (e.g., http://localhost:3000) instead of the default app.glassy.fyi. The self-hosted content security policy supports localhost, local LAN ranges, and Tailscale addresses.

How does authentication work?

The extension uses your existing Glassy session. On Firefox, the auth token persists in chrome.storage.local so you stay signed in across browser restarts. No separate password or API key is needed.

Installing and Configuring Companion

Install the Glassy Capture browser extension from the Chrome Web Store or Firefox, connect it to your account, pin it, and set up keyboard shortcuts for one-keystroke capture.

5:00 beginner Jul 13, 2026

Before you start

getting-started/05-installing-glassy-companion

What you'll learn

Install the Glassy Capture extension for Chrome or Firefox
Connect the extension to a self-hosted instance or the cloud
Pin the extension and set up keyboard shortcuts
Understand session-based authentication
Troubleshoot common connection issues

Reference documentation

Read the technical docs for this feature →

This lesson is the Companion track’s installation deep-dive. For a quick-start capture overview, see Installing Glassy Capture in Getting Started.

What Glassy Capture does

Glassy Capture is a Manifest V3 browser extension that saves web content into your Glassy library:

One-keystroke capture — save bookmarks, full-page captures, screenshots, and text highlights without leaving your browser
Unified Save Card — a single progressive-disclosure form. Essentials (title, collection, tags, note, Save) are always visible; Smart capture reveals presets, visibility toggles, and content preview inline
Smart Save — automatic content detection with presets (Bookmark, Article, Video, Repo), AI auto-tagging, and content preview
Capture queue — offline captures queue locally and sync automatically when you reconnect
Multi-account support — route captures to different Glassy accounts
Obsidian Vault Companion — a dedicated Vault tab lets you browse your vault, read notes with backlinks and tags, quick-append to your daily note, compose new notes pushed to the vault, see related vault content when saving, and merge vault + Glassy tags in autocomplete. The extension proxies Obsidian requests for the server via an authenticated SSE connection — this is the only path on cloud, and the recommended path on Windows/WSL2 self-hosts.

Current version: v2.20.1

Glassy Capture is at v2.20.1. What is current, and why it matters to you: v2.19.0 made the companion a principal (it can hold its own named agent key), v2.20.0 made the public /api/capabilities manifest its single source of truth with a fail-closed client gate, and v2.20.1 makes error classification read the HTTP status code instead of inferring it from message text. Everything after that is the history of how it got here, beginning with the release that was current when this lesson was written — v2.18.1, the bridge reconnect hardening release: the offscreen-document SSE reconnect delay drops 5000ms → 1000ms, so a dropped bridge recovers within a second (pairs with the server-side heartbeat fix — first ping immediate, 20s → 5s — in glassy-dash beta.28, together closing the ~5s bridge subscribe-churn cycle on self-host). It keeps everything v2.18.0 shipped — the bridge transport v2 release (Obsidian glass-pane follow-up). The SSE Obsidian bridge now carries raw markdown bodies + request headers (If-Match, Content-Type, Accept) and relays upstream response headers (ETag) back to the server, so vault writes (tap-to-toggle checkboxes, add-under-heading, daily-note append, push-to-vault) work over the extension bridge — on containerized self-host where only the extension can reach Obsidian, reads and writes now succeed (companions ≤ v2.17.1 saw reads work but writes 502 because they fell back to the unreachable direct path). The server gates transport v2 on the version the extension advertises at subscribe (&extv=); older extensions keep the proven v1 (JSON bodies, read-only-over-bridge) behavior. The previous v2.17.1 release was the save & sync reliability release (customer release-gate hardening): capture-rule pre-population fixed (Smart Save auto-fill), transient server errors (5xx) no longer log you out, offline-queue pause/drop semantics fixed (auth failures keep queued saves until re-login), popup saves queue offline with a Queued for Sync state, and host permissions cover all glassy.fyi subdomains. The v2.17.0 release fixed the save-card image preview — the og:image now fills the header with object-fit: cover (was a tiny thumbnail on non-16:9 images including Glassy’s own square og-default.png), the favicon no longer renders a broken-image icon on pages without one, and CSP img-src now mirrors connect-src so dev/self-host capture image previews load. v2.16.0 added an MCP Settings UI — a new AI Tools (MCP) section in Settings that fetches your MCP key from the server and generates copy-pasteable config snippets for Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, and any MCP-compatible client. v2.15.0 added the Obsidian Vault Companion (Vault tab for browsing, reading, daily-note append, new notes, related-in-vault, tag bridge). The v2.14.0 Obsidian Bridge deep-fix broadens localhost host permissions (unblocks self-host WSL2), verifies the offscreen doc exists via getContexts, prevents silent auth loss with peekToken, and migrates SSE auth to one-time tickets. The self-hosted content security policy supports localhost, local LAN ranges, and Tailscale addresses for instance connections.

Installing on Chromium browsers

Get the extension

In your Glassy workspace, go to the extension download page, or search for Glassy Capture on the Chrome Web Store.

Add to browser

Click Add to Chrome (or Edge / Brave) and confirm. The Glassy icon appears in your toolbar.

Pin it

Click the puzzle piece icon → pin Glassy Capture. This keeps it visible for quick access.

Installing on Firefox

Firefox uses a signed .xpi package rather than the Chrome Web Store.

Download the .xpi

Download the latest glassy-companion-v2.20.1-firefox.xpi from GitHub Releases.

Install

Go to about:addons → gear icon → Install Add-on From File → select the .xpi.

Connecting to your account

Click the Glassy icon

Click the extension icon. A setup screen appears.

Set your instance URL

Cloud: the default app.glassy.fyi is correct
Self-hosted: enter your URL (e.g., http://localhost:3000, https://glassy.yourdomain.com, or a Tailscale address)

Click Sign in — you’ll be redirected to the Glassy login page. After logging in, you’re redirected back and the extension is connected.

The extension detects Glassy instance URL changes and re-authenticates without requiring a manual sign-out (v2.12.0+).

How auth tokens are stored

Browser	Token storage	Persists across restarts?
Chrome / Edge / Brave	`chrome.storage.local`	Yes
Firefox	`chrome.storage.local`	Yes

The token’s JWT exp claim is enforced. Legacy session-storage tokens are auto-migrated to local storage on first read.

Keyboard shortcuts

Configure shortcuts at chrome://extensions/shortcuts (Chrome/Edge/Brave):

Action	Suggested shortcut
Capture full page	`Ctrl` +`Shift` +`S`
Capture selection	`Ctrl` +`Shift` +`Q`
Capture screenshot	`Ctrl` +`Shift` +`R`
Open popup	`Ctrl` +`Shift` +`G`

Troubleshooting

What’s next?

Learn the region screenshots and element picker in depth — HiDPI handling, the offscreen pipeline, and CSS selector persistence.