Form Rescue

Getting started

Firefox: install Form Rescue from Firefox Add-ons. It installs permanently and updates automatically.

Chrome and Edge: Form Rescue isn’t in those stores yet, so you load the developer build yourself. It takes about a minute (see Developer build).

Three steps

  1. Enable a site. Open a site where you write long text, click the Form Rescue toolbar button, and choose Enable protection for this site. Your browser asks to allow access to that site only.
  2. Write as usual. About a second after you pause, the popup shows Saved locally at …. It only says “Saved” once the draft is actually stored.
  3. Review and recover. After a refresh, a closed tab or a sign-in, return to the page, open Form Rescue, and choose Review drafts.

Developer build

For Chrome and Edge (or to run a build you made yourself) you need the built extension folder.

Download (easiest): get form-rescue-<version>-chrome.zip (Chrome and Edge) or form-rescue-<version>-firefox.zip from the latest GitHub release and unzip it into a folder you’ll keep.

Or build from source (Node.js 24 and pnpm; see Contributing):

pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm build

This produces apps/extension/dist/chrome (Chrome and Edge) and apps/extension/dist/firefox. Below, “the folder” means the unzipped download or one of these.

Chrome

  1. Open chrome://extensions.
  2. Turn on Developer mode (top right).
  3. Click Load unpacked and choose the Chrome folder.
  4. Pin Form Rescue from the puzzle-piece menu so the toolbar button is easy to reach.

Edge

  1. Open edge://extensions.
  2. Turn on Developer mode.
  3. Click Load unpacked and choose the Chrome folder (Edge uses the same build).

Firefox

Use Firefox Add-ons for a normal, permanent install. To run a development build instead:

  1. Open about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox.
  2. Click Load Temporary Add-on… and choose manifest.json in the Firefox folder.
  3. In the Extensions menu, allow Form Rescue on a site when you enable it.

Development installs are temporary in Firefox (the Firefox Add-ons version is not): they are removed when Firefox restarts, and the browser deletes their storage, including drafts. In Chrome and Edge an unpacked extension stays installed, but moving or deleting its folder breaks it.

Try it on a practice page

Once the public site is live, the practice form is a safe place to test. From the source repository you can also run pnpm fixtures and open http://127.0.0.1:4173/demo.html, a synthetic support form used by the automated tests.

Private windows

Form Rescue does not run in private or incognito windows.