Highlights
Favorites filter for the new-tab background

Settings → New Tab → Source for new tab photos gains an "Only show favorites" toggle. When on, the new-tab photo, the precache top-up, and the "On this day" memory strip all restrict to assets you've marked as favorites in Immich.

Combines with the album selector — if you also pick an album, the result is "favorites within that album," not the entire album. The settings page renders a small clarifier under the toggle when both are set.
Server-side filter via isFavorite: true on /search/random and /search/metadata — much cheaper than fetching everything and filtering client-side, and supported across Immich versions (older servers simply ignore the field).
Uses the existing asset.read scope; no API key change required for the typical setup. If the key happens to lack the scope, the settings page surfaces the exact error inline.
If you have no favorites yet (or the selected album contains none), the toggle area explains what to do instead of silently rendering nothing.
Toggling either album or favorites-only now wipes the SW precache queue, so the next new tab immediately reflects the new criteria instead of cycling through 1–3 stale entries.


Pagination always renders a fixed 6-page window

The popup's pagination bar used to grow as you paged forward — 3 numbers on page 1, 4 on page 2, 5 from page 3 onward — which looked broken between transitions. It now always renders 6 page numbers, anchored to the start when you're near page 1 and to the end when you're on the last known page. The window only shows fewer numbers when the result set genuinely has fewer than 6 pages.
Toolbar icon at 16 px restored

The three-card stack used at 48 / 128 px doesn't survive the supersample-then-resize to 16 px: the rotated semi-transparent back/middle cards downsampled into the gradient and the photo silhouette disappeared, leaving the toolbar icon looking like a plain purple chip. The 16 px icon now uses a dedicated render — single white card scaled to ~72 % × 56 % of the canvas, slight tilt, the same sun + mountains landscape inside — so it reads as a photo at toolbar resolution.
Closed issues

Compatibility

Existing settings persist across the update — server URL, API key, default album, theme, all feature toggles, the saved-uploads list. chrome.storage.local survives the in-place update from every store.
The new newtabFavoritesOnly default is false, so the new tab keeps behaving exactly as before for everyone who doesn't flip the toggle.
Verified untouched in this release: the save-to-Immich flow, content script, popup search / video preview / filter pills / Maps / update banner / bug-report consent flow, Safari workflow, manifest permissions. Only the pagination renderer in popup.js changed; everything else around it is byte-e


One-click API key creation
The welcome page (step 2) and Settings → Connection both gained a Generate key from my session button that mints a scoped API key against your Immich without asking for a password. Works for OAuth, SSO, and password-based Immich logins — the extension piggybacks on the session cookie your browser already has from when you signed into Immich. The cookie value is never read (it's httpOnly); only the resulting API key is stored.

Why this is worth knowing about:

OAuth-only users can finally onboard without copy-paste. Click Generate key from my session with an Immich tab signed in, the extension does the rest.
Same path doubles as a "rotate the key" button in Settings → Connection — useful if you suspect leakage, after a server reset, or when the recommended-scopes list grows.
The key created has exactly the eight scopes the extension actually uses (asset.upload, asset.read, asset.download, asset.update, asset.view, album.read, albumAsset.create, sharedLink.create). Frozen at module import time — no path mints a "full access" key by accident.
SECURITY.md has a new section breaking the security guarantees down per surface.

New tab paints instantly (closes #8)
Every new-tab open now paints from a small pre-fetched cache (Cache API for the image bytes, chrome.storage.local for a 3-entry queue) and immediately fires a message to the background service worker to refill the cache for the next open. Two parts to the speedup:

The cache itself. Cold start is the same speed as before — but every new tab after that opens with the photo already there.
First-paint snap. The 600 ms opacity fade-in is skipped on first paint (was making cached opens still feel slow). Auto-rotate cycles still get the smooth fade because there it actually transitions between two visible photos.
Storage hygiene:

Worst case: 3 × ~500 KB previews ≈ 1.5 MB on disk.
24-hour staleness window — entries older than that get evicted on the next open.
FIFO eviction past the 3-entry cap.
Cache top-up runs in the background service worker, not the new-tab page, so it survives the page unloading the moment you type a URL or click a result. (This was the bug behind "the cache feels slow" — the page was dying mid-fetch and the queue stayed empty.)
State / region in the location overlay (closes #9)
The new-tab corner used to show "Boulder, United States". It now includes the state when Immich has it from EXIF GPS reverse-geocoding: "Boulder, Colorado, United States". Photos without a state value fall through cleanly — the empty field is filtered out.

"Replace new tab" defaults back to ON
The v0.7.0 default-off ("you have to opt in to the photo new tab") turned out to be more confusing than helpful — users were installing the extension and then asking why their new tab wasn't being replaced. New installs again default to on; existing users keep whatever they explicitly chose (the storage value overrides the default).

Firefox: download finally works
The popup's Download original button used to silently fail on Firefox because the popup loses focus mid-fetch and the synchronous <a download>.click() fires into a popup that's already tearing down. The download flow is now driven from the background script: popup → message → background fetches with x-api-key, wraps the bytes in a blob URL, hands that to chrome.downloads.download(). Background scripts have no focus to lose, so the download manager picks it up reliably.

The downloads permission is added on the Firefox build only (Chrome's popup-side path already worked, so Chrome users won't see a re-permission prompt on update).

Archive after save
A new toggle in Settings → Save to Immich → Archive after save. When on, every successfully saved item is also marked archived in Immich — it disappears from the main timeline, stays in your default album (if you set one), and remains searchable. Works on both old (isArchived: true) and modern (visibility: "archive") Immich; the call sends both fields.

Recommended API-key scopes updated
The welcome page and Settings → Connection now list two more scopes in the click-to-copy "Minimal" set:

asset.download — required by the popup's Download original action on modern Immich.
asset.update — required by the new Archive after save toggle.
Both rows are optional in the sense that the corresponding feature degrades gracefully if you don't grant them, but if you ever hit a 403 on download or archive, regenerating the key with these ticked is the fix. Toast messages on archive-failure now name the missing scope explicitly instead of silently swallowing the error.

"Replace new tab page" defaults to off for fresh installs
Multiple users complained that they didn't realise the extension would replace their new tab. Fresh installs now opt out by default; the welcome-page toggle is the explicit opt-in. Existing users keep their current setting via an upgrade migration that writes featureNewtab=true into storage if it was never explicitly stored — so the new default doesn't accidentally turn off the feature for anyone who was happy with it.

The Settings copy now spells out the browser limitation: "Once an extension declares a new-tab override in its manifest, the browser routes every new tab through it — there is no way for the extension to release the new tab back to the browser's default at runtime. To fully restore the browser's own new tab, remove the extension."

Friendlier error messages
Connection failures now identify the most likely cause (server down, wrong URL, self-signed cert, http/https mixed-content) instead of leaking the raw NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource. On Firefox, the message also points to about:addons → Permissions → "Access your data for all websites" if host_permissions weren't granted.

This release fixes the two violations cited in the v0.6.0 Chrome Webstore review (unused permission + single-purpose), and ships everything that was sitting on the local development branch since v0.6.0.

Web Store rejection fixes
scripting permission removed. The codebase never called chrome.scripting.* — we use chrome.tabs.sendMessage against the always-loaded content script instead. The unused permission triggered the Purple Potassium "requesting but not using" violation.
Omnibox keyword removed (the im + space shortcut). Combined with the new-tab override it triggered the Red Argon single-purpose violation. Smart search lives in the toolbar popup, which is unaffected.
Minimal-mode search bar removed from the new-tab fallback page. With "Replace new tab" turned off, the page is now a clock-only view (or redirects to a fallback URL of your choice). No "search experience" inside the new-tab override anymore.
New features
Inline video preview
Play overlay + duration badge on every video card.
Click play to swap the poster for a <video> element with controls — auto-pauses + tears down on close.
New diagonal-arrows button pops the player out into a dedicated 960×600 window with native fullscreen support.
Inline cap: 150 MB. Player-window cap: 500 MB. Above the cap or on fetch failure → graceful Open in Immich fallback.
Filter pills
A row of All · Photos · Videos pills above the gallery filters the popup view by asset type. Applies to both no-query (recent library) and search-result modes.
"Open in Maps" quick action
A fourth quick-action button next to Share / Download.
Choose Google Maps or Apple Maps (macOS only) in Settings → Features. Apple Maps option is disabled on non-macOS — the maps:// URL scheme has no handler elsewhere.
Only the photo's latitude and longitude are sent (in the URL). No image, filename, asset id, server URL, or API key is ever transmitted.
Update banner
A small "Updated to vX.Y.Z" banner appears once at the top of the popup the next time you open it after the browser auto-updates the extension. Links straight to the matching GitHub release notes. Click the link or the × to dismiss it permanently.
Bug-reporting flow
The About section's "Found a bug?" card now opens a consent modal that previews exactly which four system fields will be added to a prefilled GitHub issue: extension version, browser, OS, and Immich server version. The API key and server URL are explicitly excluded — by structural guarantee in the URL builder, not just by convention.
Required scopes in Settings
Settings → Connection now mirrors the welcome page's API-key-scopes card (Minimal / All tabs, click-to-copy on each scope row). Users who skipped onboarding now see the same guidance.
Popup polish
Tab bar redesigned as a segmented pill control with icons.
"Recent" tab renamed to "Saved" to match what it actually contains.
Empty recentCount badge no longer renders as a tiny nub when there's nothing saved yet.
Defaults
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