How to fix the "Purple Potassium" Chrome Web Store rejection (and catch it before you submit)

You submitted your extension, waited days for review, and got back a rejection with a violation called "Purple Potassium." Your extension looks fine to you, so what does it even mean? Here is what it is, why it happens, and how to catch it before you ever hit submit. What "Purple Potassium" actually means "Purple Potassium" is Google's internal tag for excessive or unused permissions . Your manifest requests access to something your code does not actually use, and the reviewer flags it. It is one of the most common reasons a Chrome extension gets rejected, and it is frustrating precisely because the extension works fine in testing. Review is checking something testing never does: whether every permission you ask for is justified by your code. The usual causes 1. API permissions you declared but never call. You added tabs , bookmarks , or cookies to your manifest at some point, but there is no chrome.bookmarks.* call anywhere in your code. 2. Host access that is too broad. You requested <all_urls> when your extension only touches one site: // Flagged "host_permissions" : [ "<all_urls>" ] // Better "host_permissions" : [ "https://*.example.com/*" ] Leftover permissions after removing a feature. You shipped a feature that needed downloads, later removed the feature, and forgot to remove the permission. The tabs misunderstanding. The tabs permission does not grant access to the tabs API. Basic methods like chrome.tabs.create() work without it. It only grants four sensitive Tab properties: url, pendingUrl, title, and favIconUrl. If you declare tabs but never read those, it counts as unused. How to fix it by hand List everything in permissions, optional_permissions, and host_permissions. For each one, search your code for the matching chrome. call. Remove any permission with no usage. Narrow and other broad patterns to the specific hosts you need. In your reviewer notes, write one plain sentence per sensitive permission explaining why you need it. Reviewers often lack con