tailscale
FR: A chrome extension
What are you trying to do?
A chrome extension allowing you to access devices on your account and route all traffic on a browser through an exit node. I presume this is possible due to VPN chrome extensions already existing.
How should we solve this?
By creating a web extension (chrome, firefox)
What is the impact of not solving this?
N/A
Anything else?
This would be specifically useful when you have to move between computers, and having extensions sync is a good idea.
+1 for a firefox addon. i need to watch jellyfin movies during math class.
i never said that.
+1 Most of my vpn needs are in chrome, having a quick way to turn it on and off without having an app in the background is nice :)
+1 my school blocks vpn access by blocking your whole microsoft account, and it takes a lot of time for them to unblock it, so having a dedicated browser only for the vpn would be perfect
I assume this must be possible somehow, as other VPN services can work via a browser plugin without locally installing a client. This would be incredibly useful!
+1, I agree with SRoy99, most, if not all of my VPN needs are in Chrome. Being able to not had yet another app on my PC and have something maybe more lightweight or just implemented into Chrome, Firefox etc would be sweet.
+1
Workaround for Windows (requires admin priv.)
So my use case is that I want only a browser to use my homelab's exit node, not the entire machine. Running a VM isn't the best for performance. I tried docker containers but had troubles with setting up the GUI part properly. So an official browser extension would have been great for my use case (the topic of this thread) but I just couldn't wait any longer so found this workaround with WSL2. I hope this works for you too.
1. Install and run WSL2 with GUI support.
2. On your WSL2 distro, install tailscale as you would on any linux machine. Then do tailscale up, accept-routes, exit-node etc.
3. Install Chrome browser and run it. It will pop up as a new program window on your Windows host machine.
4. For HW acceleration, search and install your GPU drivers in your WSL2.
5. For audio, sudo apt-get install -y pulseaudio, then restart the chrome browser.
The connection speed for me is a bit slow but still just enough for general usage and streaming home media (well, it's really not too bad given that I'm overseas at the moment). The best part is this workaround does not interfere/conflict with the routes I've set up on my host machine, and I can enjoy a browser that's dedicated for my internal stuff with an acceptable quality and without any worries.
This would be very useful for situations where you need to be connected to multiple Tailscales at once, example being my home Tailscale, my work Tailscale and our work partners Tailscale. I can manage it via switching on the CLI but having a dedicated browser profile for each with it's own dedicated connection would be perfection.
Sometimes it would just not possible to install anything but a browser extension. In fact the web-based SSH client already proved that it's possible to do that.
I think this is really important, allowing one to have tailscale running in machines where one does not have permission to install any app, but can install a browser extension
Would really like this on my chromebook. I disable the android subsystem for performance so I need a different way to access my tailscale network.
+1 Would be very helpfull when using tailscale with nextcloud, immich, etc. that has browser-based solutions.
+1 my Chromebook has 16GB of storage and i cant even install the play launcher
