Why is my Chrome Extension grayed out?

Question

Problem

A chrome extension I wrote is grayed out, and I can't figure out why.

Context

I wrote and submitted a Chrome Extension called Pull Favors to the Chrome webstore.

It uses the CSS order property to sort and group GitHub Pull-Requests in a logical way.

The other day I noticed that several of my extensions were grayed out, and 'blocked'--meaning they no longer work. One of these was Pull Favors.

According to this support article:

If you see a message saying "Extensions Disabled," it's because Chrome has turned off one or more of your extensions to keep your data safe while you're browsing the Internet. The extensions that Chrome turned off either didn't come from the Chrome Web Store or were installed without your permission."

My extension is published in the Chrome webstore and was certainly installed with my permission.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling to no avail.

I suspect there's something wrong with my extension (since a few other extensions seem to still work), but I can't figure out what it is or find anything about it on the internet.

What's going on?

Research

Chrome seems to have implemented a new policy in November 2013, which has caused some uproar in the community, which prevents Windows users from installing extensions from outside the web store.

I'm not sure why this is affecting me, as I'm an OS X user and, as I said, my extension is distributed through the webstore.

Answer 1

Add browser_action.default_icon in your manifest.json file

{
  ...

  "browser_action": {
    "default_icon": "icons/icon-32.png"
  },

  ...
}

---

Before

After