Chrome · Edge · Brave · Opera · Vivaldi

Install on a Chromium browser

One package covers all of them — they run the same extension engine. The only thing that differs is the address you type in step 3.

Download for Chromium

A 19KB zip.

  1. 1

    Unzip it, and keep the folder somewhere permanent.

    Your browser reads the extension from this folder every time it starts, so Downloads is a poor home for it. Move it somewhere you will not tidy away.
  2. 2

    Open your browser’s extensions page and turn on Developer mode.

    The toggle is top-right. chrome://extensions in Chrome, edge://extensions in Edge, brave://extensions in Brave, opera://extensions in Opera.
  3. 3

    Choose Load unpacked, and select the folder.

    Pick the folder itself, not the manifest inside it. A card titled Locus – External Papers appears.
  4. 4

    Pin it, then click the icon and choose Connect to Locus.

    Pin from the puzzle-piece menu so the icon stays visible. Connecting opens a page here that hands the extension your session — you need to be signed in to Locus in the same browser.

Chrome asks whether to disable developer-mode extensions after some restarts. Choose to keep it. That prompt goes away once the extension is installed from the Web Store, which is where this is heading.

When it does not work

It says the publisher refused the download.

That is an access answer, not a bug. If the page shows Get access or Purchase PDF, or the URL carries redirectedFrom=fulltext, you are looking at an abstract. The extension uses your session and nothing more, so if you cannot open the PDF yourself it cannot either.

No paper found on this page.

The page does not publish citation_* metadata, which is what nearly every publisher emits for Google Scholar. Send us the URL and we will add a fallback for that site.

Nothing changed after I updated the extension.

The popup is re-read from disk every time it opens, but the background script is not — it is only re-registered when you reload the extension from your browser’s extensions page. A fix to the download can look like it did nothing while the new popup sits in front of you. The version number on the extension’s card is the visible sign the reload took.