What is chrome-to-safari?

chrome-to-safari is a macOS tool that turns a Chrome browser extension into a signed Safari extension, without needing a paid Apple Developer account. Safari can run Chrome style extensions, but unsigned ones get disabled every time Safari restarts, forcing you to re-enable them each time in the Develop menu. This tool fixes that by signing the extension with a free Apple ID, so once you turn it on in Safari it stays on for good. Getting started takes two steps. First you create a free signing certificate through Xcode by signing in with your Apple ID, no paid membership required. Then you either open the included app with a UI, where you can drop in an unpacked extension folder or paste a Chrome Web Store link and click Convert, or you use the command line version and point it at a folder or a store link directly. Behind the scenes the tool downloads the extension if you gave it a store link, reads its manifest file to figure out a name, converts it using Apple's own safari-web-extension-converter, fixes a known bug where the converter creates mismatched bundle identifiers, builds the project with Xcode's build tool using your free certificate, verifies the resulting signature, and installs the finished app into Applications before launching it and Safari together. It also cleans up the temporary build files it created unless you ask it to keep them. There are real limits worth knowing. A development signed app only works on the Mac that built it, so you cannot hand the finished app to someone else, they would need to run the script themselves. Not every Chrome extension feature exists in Safari, and the conversion step will warn about anything unsupported. Free certificates expire after about a year and need re-signing. The project requires macOS with the full Xcode app installed, not just the command line tools. It is released under the MIT license, and its own privacy policy states that nothing is collected or transmitted.