Bokal › editthiscookie alternative

Looking for an EditThisCookie alternative? Bokal is the open-source successor.

EditThisCookie was delisted from the Chrome Web Store in December 2024, and a malicious copycat took its name. Here is what happened, what to check before you install a replacement, and how to move your cookies across.

Last updated 26 August 2026. Competitor details below were verified against published manifests and repositories on that date.

What happened to EditThisCookie

EditThisCookie was one of the most widely used cookie editors on Chrome, reportedly with around 3 million users. In December 2024 it disappeared from the Chrome Web Store. Google never published an official reason. The most plausible explanation is mundane: it was a Manifest V2 extension and never migrated to Manifest V3, and Google began removing MV2 extensions around that time.

The part that matters more: after the original was gone, a copycat extension took the EditThisCookie name and was caught harvesting login credentials and session tokens and pushing phishing content. It reportedly grew past 50,000 users before it was removed.

What to actually check before installing a cookie editor

1. Read the install prompt. If it says "Read your browsing history", the extension is requesting the tabs permission — access to the URL and title of every tab you have open, not just the one you are editing.
2. Check for install-time site access. An extension declaring host_permissions gets access to matching sites the moment you install it. One declaring optional_host_permissions has to ask you first.
3. Look for the source. Being open source does not make a build trustworthy on its own, but it does let you read the permission and network code, and it means claims can be checked instead of believed.
4. Watch for remote code. A content security policy of script-src 'self' means everything the extension runs ships inside the package and cannot be swapped out later.

What Bokal does

Bokal is a Manifest V3 cookie manager, GPL-3.0, with no server and no account. This is the entire published manifest permission block:

permissions: ['cookies', 'storage', 'sidePanel', 'unlimitedStorage', 'alarms', 'activeTab']
optional_host_permissions: ['<all_urls>']
// no host_permissions
content_security_policy: { extension_pages: "script-src 'self'; object-src 'self'" }

• No tabs permission, so no "read your browsing history" line on the install screen. Bokal uses activeTab, which reads the current tab's URL only after you click the toolbar button.
• No site access at install. <all_urls> appears only as an optional grant — the set Bokal is allowed to ask for. By default it requests just the origin of the tab you opened it on.
• Free users make zero network calls. There is no telemetry and no analytics. The only external service Bokal ever contacts is ExtensionPay, for the optional Pro licence check, and only once you open the upgrade page. You can verify this in DevTools → Network.

To be blunt about the trade-off: a per-site grant persists until you revoke it in chrome://extensions → Details → Site access, and while granted Bokal can read that origin's cookies. "Minimal" here means narrow — one site at a time, nothing at install — not weak. Within a site you have granted, it is fully capable, because that is the job.

Moving your cookies across

Bokal reads EditThisCookie's JSON export format directly, so switching costs nothing:

1. Find your old export

   If you still have an EditThisCookie JSON export saved, you can use it as-is. The extension itself is no longer installable from the store.

2. Open Bokal on the site

   Click the Bokal toolbar icon on the site whose cookies you are restoring, and grant access to that one site when prompted.

3. Import

   Press Import and select the JSON file. Bokal recognises EditThisCookie and Cookie-Editor arrays, its own format, Playwright storageState, and Playwright/Puppeteer cookie arrays. It will also parse a raw Cookie: header string.

Frequently asked