Acronymicon 🔍

Acronymicon 🔍

A lightweight browser extension that detects acronyms on web pages — especially job ads — and shows instant definitions via tooltip on hover.

No backend. No PII collected. Everything runs locally in your browser, with optional anonymous aggregate analytics.

Features

• Whole-page highlight mode — every known acronym on the page is underlined automatically on load
• Hover to reveal — tooltip opens on mouseover; no click required (works correctly inside hyperlinks)
• MutationObserver — catches dynamically loaded content (LinkedIn, Greenhouse, SPAs, infinite scroll)
• Shows primary meaning instantly, with alternatives
• Industry-tagged definitions — every entry is labelled with one of 13 categories (Business, Currencies, Finance, Gaming, General, Geography, Government, Media, Medical, Science, Sports, Tech, Work) for richer context
• Rate definitions — 👍 / 👎 feedback per acronym, stored locally
• Multi-language ready — drop in src/acronyms.<lang>.json to add a language
• Dark mode support
• Toggle on/off from the popup
• 100+ acronyms in the English dictionary out of the box

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

Install (Development / Unpacked)

Before loading the extension, create the required credentials file:

cp src/constants.example.js src/constants.js

Chrome

1. Open chrome://extensions
2. Enable Developer mode (top right)
3. Click Load unpacked
4. Select this folder (acronymicon/)

Edge

1. Open edge://extensions
2. Enable Developer mode (left sidebar)
3. Click Load unpacked
4. Select this folder

Project Structure

acronymicon/
├── manifest.json               # Chrome MV3 manifest
├── popup.html                  # Extension popup UI
├── popup.css
├── popup.js
├── icons/
└── src/
    ├── constants.js            # Local credentials — gitignored, copy from constants.example.js
    ├── constants.example.js    # Committed template for constants.js
    ├── analytics.js            # GA4 Measurement Protocol batching
    ├── content.js              # DOM scanner + tooltip engine
    ├── content.css             # Injected styles (tooltip + highlights)
    ├── background.js           # Service worker
    └── acronyms.en.json        # English dictionary (default)

Adding Acronyms

Edit src/acronyms.en.json. Each entry follows this schema:

"ACRONYM": {
  "definitions": [
    { "text": "Primary meaning", "industry": "Tech" },
    { "text": "Alternative meaning", "industry": "Finance" }
  ]
}

The first definition is treated as primary. industry is optional; omit it for cross-industry terms or use one of: Tech, Finance, Medical, Sports, Government, Media, General, Geography, Gaming, Work, Currencies, Business, Science

Analytics

No PII is sent — only acronym tokens and event names, attributed to a randomly generated anonymous device ID.

See PRIVACY.md.

Roadmap

• Whole-page mode (auto-highlight all acronyms on load)
• Hover to reveal (tooltip on mouseover)
• Rating system (👍 / 👎 feedback)
• Multi-language dictionary support
• Anonymous aggregate analytics
• Community dictionary via GitHub-hosted JSON

Support

Acronymicon is free to use and always will be. If it saves you time and you’d like to say thanks, tips are entirely optional but very welcome!

Tip via PayPal

License

MIT

Author

Rob Wade