Permission to read my browsing history?

If you have just updated to 2.3.2, you'll notice that chrome will give a warn: this extension will ask permission to read browsing history!

Don't worry. This permission is used to give more accurate infomation when extension not working. No history store nor uploads.

Here is more specific explanation:

Chrome extensions won't work on some special urls, such as google webstore site or chrome://newtab, and those page won't allow content script, resulting in this extension not working, which is much like the first time installed (need to refresh page to have the content script injected).

To judge if the "not working" is caused by special urls, the extension need to know the current urls. Thus the "tabs permission" has to be obtained. Tabs permission includes tab's url, so it's not wrong to say it represent the browsing history.

The tabs url is used at code https://github.com/painty/CSS-Used-ChromeExt/blob/master/dest/asset/js/devtools.js#L27