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Getting started

Create React App with the WebExt template is a way to create single-page React web extensions. It offers a modern build setup with no configuration.

Quick start

Get started by creating a new web extension with create react app.

npx create-react-app my-app --template webext
cd my-app
npm start

If you've previously installed create-react-app globally via npm install -g create-react-app, we recommend you uninstall the package using npm uninstall -g create-react-app or yarn global remove create-react-app to ensure that npx always uses the latest version.

(npx comes with npm 5.2+ and higher, see instructions for older npm versions)

A new browser window will open with your web extension.

When you’re ready to deploy to production, create an addon bundle with npm run build.

npm start

Get Started Immediately

You don’t need to install or configure tools like webpack or Babel. They are preconfigured and hidden so that you can focus on the code.

Create a project, and you’re good to go.

Creating a web extension

You’ll need to have Node >= 14 on your local development machine. You can use nvm (macOS/Linux) or nvm-windows to switch Node versions between different projects.

To create a new web extension, you may choose one of the following methods:

npx

npx create-react-app my-app --template webext

(npx comes with npm 5.2+ and higher, see instructions for older npm versions)

npm

npm init react-app my-app --template webext

npm init <initializer> is available in npm 6+

Yarn

yarn create react-app my-app --template webext

yarn create is available in Yarn 0.25+

Selecting a package manager

When you create a new web extension, the CLI will use npm or Yarn to install dependencies, depending on which tool you use to run create-react-app. For example:

# Run this to use npm
npx create-react-app my-app --template webext
# Or run this to use yarn
yarn create react-app my-app --template webext

Output

Running any of these commands will create a directory called my-app inside the current folder. Inside that directory, it will generate the initial project structure and install the transitive dependencies:

my-app
├── README.md
├── node_modules
├── package.json
├── .gitignore
├── public
│   ├── favicon.ico
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── logo192.png
│   ├── logo512.png
│   ├── manifest.json
│   └── robots.txt
└── src
    ├── App.css
    ├── App.js
    ├── App.test.js
    ├── index.css
    ├── index.js
    ├── logo.svg
    ├── serviceWorker.js
    └── setupTests.js

No configuration or complicated folder structures, only the files you need to build your web extension. Once the installation is done, you can open your project folder:

cd my-app

Scripts

Inside the newly created project, you can run some built-in commands:

npm start or yarn start

Runs the web extension in development mode. A new browser window will open with your web extension.

The web extension will automatically reload if you make changes to the code. You will see the build errors and lint warnings in the console.

Build errors

npm run build or yarn build

Builds the web extension for production to the build folder. It correctly bundles React in production mode and optimizes the build for the best performance.

The build is minified and the filenames include the hashes.

Your web extension is ready to be deployed.