Lightbeam

New release: Lightbeam 2.4.0

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Some persons shared useful ideas how to improve Lightbeam on Gitlab and this release contains these improvements.

You can now filter the first parties by choosing different options in a new sidebar. These options affect which first party websites are shown. So if you decide to show only 50 websites this means that Lightbeam shows only 50 first party websites. Because first parties may contain a different number of third parties the graph could contain much more than 50 nodes. It would be technically possible to limit the nodes to a specific number but this would cost more performance, so I decided not to do so.

The drawing of the graph is an ressouce-intense process. If you recorded many websites it could even be that Lightbeam crashes. That's why Lightbeam now shows a warning when there are more than 200 nodes.

Additionally to these changes there are more features. With the newest version it is possible to import data that you exported before. This is not only helpful to make testing of Lightbeam easier. It also gives you the opportunity to prepare some special cases that you can just import at every time and show to other people.

And there are other little changes:

Data can also be saved in a fused version.
Export contains metadata (e.g. version of Lightbeam used to export the data).
Only "real" third parties are shown (before also URLs like abc.domain.de were shown as third parties when they were called from domain.de although they aren't third parties in this case).
The tooltip shows the number of requests.

Lightbeam moves to Codeberg

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Lightbeam is a tool which has the purpose (among others) to show that you need to protect your privacy. The add-on itself is also caring for your privacy and only saves recorded data local in your browser.

Gitlab which still hosts the repository of Lightbeam uses Cloudflare to protect its website from bots and Cloudflare makes it impossible to log in to the platform in some cases when you use a browser with add-ons that increase your privacy. That is the reason why I decided to move the repository of Lightbeam to a new home: Codeberg. Codeberg is maintained by a NGO and doesn't use trackers, third party cookies or anything similar so it is the perfect place for Lightbeam.

There is already a repository for Lightbeam on Codeberg while the old one still exists on Gitlab. The plan is to replace all URLs on this website and in the add-on itself until the end of this year. Another todo is to create an archive of the old repo and leave a note so everyone knows that the development is taking place on Codeberg.

New test version available

Tue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

A new version of Lightbeam will probably be available in this summer. More details will follow when it will be released. If you can't wait to see how it changed you can take a look at it in the beta version.

Lightbeam 3 released: Closing a chapter

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

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Introducing new features

Some of you record hundreds of websites while their daily use. In the resulting graph with hundreds of nodes it's not easy to find specific websites. For this case the add-on now offers a search function and when you enter a search term all websites and their connections will be highlighted in the graph. You can choose the colors that is used to do in the settings.

Another way to customize Lightbeam is giving it a new appearance. Until now it was showing itself mostly in dark colors. This makes sense because like the white nodes on the black background light beams appear in dark places. But as there are people demanding dark themes in their applications there are those preferring light variants. Therefore, you can now select a brand-new light theme in the settings!

Not entirely new but something that has changed in Lightbeam 3 is the control of the tracking protection (TP). Users were and are still able to configure if TP should be enabled or not. Maybe you noticed that if you did you were not able to configure it in the settings of Firefox anymore. That's why things have changed in version 3. From now on the extension display the configuration of your browser by default. If you press the button to overwrite it Lightbeam leads you to its settings where you can finally overwrite the settings and read about the consequences. Since the first button led you here you also know how to restore the browser's original configuration. After overwriting you can set the TP as you did in previous versions.

These were the most noticeable changes in Lightbeam. You can read the whole list in the release notes when you install the extension.

More things have changed

While the add-on is currently maintained only by myself I'm not the only person influencing the way Lightbeam is developing. Two of the changes mentioned above were initiated by other persons. To complete the picture of contributions I counted the issues opened by persons beside me and found out that five persons created six issues on Gitlab and two created four on Codeberg. Furthermore, two persons contacted me via email with their ideas, suggestions and bug reports. A great thank you to every of these persons!

Apart from new features and improvements there are additional things that did change in the background. Firstly, the repository with the source code of Lightbeam moved to Codeberg as it is a better fitting home for the extension. Next, the add-on was adjusted to be usable on mobile devices and published for Android. Especially if you want to show a graph to another person it's now really comfortable to just use your phone! To install Lightbeam on Firefox for Android you just need to visit AMO where you add it the same way as you do on a desktop.

Continuing to describe the development on a meta level it also might be interesting to read more about statistics. As a developer of a Firefox-add-on you are able to see some numbers regarding your extensions in the Developer Hub provided by Mozilla. It's possible to see how many times an extension was downloaded in a selected period, how many users had the add-on installed in their browser and some information about the browsers of the users like the version and the language.

Image 2 shows the development of the numbers of users and downloads during the time I was maintaining Lightbeam. You can see that more and more browsers were equipped with the add-on until 3,981 installations marked the maximum on the 18th of March this year. Since than the number was decreasing slowly until now. Looking at Image 3 which displays the state on July 24th 2024 it's obvious that most users (more than two third) are recording websites on a Windows-PC, followed by Mac-users with a quarter and Linux-users with almost a quarter. Some (5%) are already trying Lightbeam on an Android device. What is more surprising for me is that one third of the users is using Firefox with French as their prefered language. English is only on the second place with 29% and in front of German with 20%.

Move to a new chapter

In the past more than two years a lot has changed for Lightbeam and that - despite of the new features - is why I finally chose to give it a new major version: 3. With this version I close an old chapter and start a new one together with you. The last sentences I'd like to use to motivate you to tell me why you are using Lightbeam. Also, use the opportunity to bring up new ideas to improve the add-on. You can do so by writing an email or even a letter (see the imprint for contact details) or by tooting on Mastodon using the hashtag #lightbeam.

Thank you :)

Lightbeam 3.0.8: Reset everything

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

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What is new?

Zoom with buttons

Zooming in and out was always possible in Lightbeam by using the mouse wheel and at the latest when you are reading this article you know it. What is really new is that now you can use buttons to do so. When using a smartphone this means that you are also able to zoom one-handed.

Reset preferences

The next feature is also making your life easier. If you changed some settings and would like to reset it you had to remove Lightbeam completely and add it to Firefox again. In this version this is not necessary anymore. In the filter sidebar at the fuse groups and at every single preference there are buttons to restore the default settings. If you want to reset everything (beside the recorded data) and restore the original state of Lightbeam you can use a button in the settings menu.

Some knickknacks

By exploring the extension it was possible before to find out which are visited websites and which are third parties in the graph. But now the icons at the top offer some support because their shape is the same as the shape of the nodes in the graph.

Furthermore, Lightbeam now remember which mode was enabled when you left the extension. When you come back you are entering this mode right away.

Besides this a visual problem was solved: In the light theme the text in some dialogs was not visible.

Lightbeam 3.0.9: Had to downgrade

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

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Dear users,

I'm sorry that some of you experienced a slow Firefox and a Lightbeam that was crashing. Version 3.0.8 seems to have a memory leak so the RAM usage was increasing abnormally fast in some situations. I couldn't fix this problem in the mean time so I decided to do a downgrade. This means that the features which were introduced by 3.0.8 are not available anymore (only one small fix for the light theme remained) but you have a relative stable Lightbeam again. Although this Lightbeam version is listed as version 3.0.9 it is indeed at a level near version 3.0.6.

As soon as the problem with the memory leak is solved you will read about it on this website of course. If you're curious how the current state looks like you can also test a beta version of Lightbeam and give some feedback.

Stay safe and sound!

Yours,
Christoph

Lightbeam Beta 3.0.10: Fallback settings

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

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Sometimes things don't work as expected and maybe you experienced that Lightbeam also can have its problems. For example with many recorded websites it needs many resources of your computer. Maybe the browser even crashes when you open Lightbeam. In this case it's not easy to rescue your data if you're no technical expert. Or at least you didn't until now...

With this update the addon has a so called "option page". When you open the Add-ons Manager of Firefox and click on Lightbeam you will notice that there is a tab with the description "Preferences". Select it and you will see the same settings as in Lightbeam itself. Only difference: It also contains a menu called "Recorded data". In this menu you are able to import or export data.

This means you can backup your data without having to fear that your browser crashes before you were able to save it. This is why this option page is something like a fallback.

Lightbeam 3.1.0: Fallback settings

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

It's been roughly four month that I had to take back some changes of Lightbeam. A part of those changes that led to a memory leak was meant to ease the development but it had this extreme side effect. Since the rebuild for the simplification was very comprehensive it was too difficult to detect the specific cause. That's why I decided for the quick fix and removed the changes. Thus, the extension was working reliable again for you.

In the mean time I released many smaller versions that introduced the changes before the downgrade again (of course without those problematic ones). With this version the add-on is on the same level as before the downgrade.

Not only that: Finally it is time to announce a new change that was already integrated in the beta version. From now on it is possible to reach the preferences of Lightbeam by going the way via the Addon-Manager of Firefox. The advantage is that you can access the settings without having to open Lightbeam directly. If Lightbeam hangs for some reason the settings are still available. Read more details about the so called "option page" in the announcement for the beta verion.

Lightbeam 3.1.5

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

A new version of Lightbeam is available since a few days with two problems solved:

The request dates of an imported file were added twice.
If a file was imported repeatedly this created duplicate request dates which means that the displayed number of requests for a website was higher than it was in reality. Exports from older Versions that contain the attribute "requestDates" also contain duplicate entries in such a case. When you import them that's no problem but if you evaluate the data somehow else it might be a source for errors you should keep in mind.

Lightbeam 3.2.0: Unravel the chaos

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Does Lightbeam in your browser look like the greatest chaos sometimes? You unravel the nodes of the graph to be able to see which nodes are connected but the nodes are drawn to each other again and you cannot recognize anything? Then here is a way how can achieve a better overview.

A new tab of the sidebar on the right includes new options that you can adjust so the graph behaves differently. You can slow down nodes even until they stop so you can move specific nodes while the others will stand still in their place. The other two options allow to set how strong nodes are drawn to each other and the center of the graph. They also allow you to adjust Lightbeam in a way that makes it more pleasant for you.

Have fun experimenting!

Lightbeam 3.3.0: Delete selected nodes

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

This version of Lightbeam concentrates on improving existing features and adds a small new one. Let's start with the new one: After you enable it in the general settings you are now able to select nodes of the graph. When you select nodes you will new buttons above the searchbar at the bottom. Use the trash button to delete the nodes you just selected:

The next new thing is an option to exclude request dates from an export. It's a small thing but it saves some space on your hard drive if you recorded a lot of data and export it.

What is also possible now is to reset single options of the drawing settings. These are the settings that were introduced in version 3.2.0. That way you don't have to reset all of those options at once. Furthermore, the labels of the buttons to reset specific settings were improved so it should be more clear what they affect. The content of the labels is also more consistent in the whole application.

There are also some fixes for things that didn't work anymore:

The loading animation wasn't shown while data was being imported.
The general settings didn't work after a reset.
Icons for fuse groups were lost after you closed and opened Lightbeam again.

I hope you enjoy the new version. If you encounter problems or have ideas for new features please let me know!

Announcement: RSS feeds for Lightbeam available

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Often, I post on Mastodon (#lightbeam) when new versions of Lightbeam are available or something important happens. Now this websites offers you a different way to consume news about the addon. You can subscribe to two RSS feeds:

English articles: https://lightbeam.chikl.de/rss.xml
Same articles in German: https://lightbeam.chikl.de/rss-de.xml

You can also find the links to the feeds at the bottom of this website.

New version: Lightbeam 3.3.1

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

A new version of Lightbeam is available that contains the following improvements:

All font sizes are relative to the ones set in the browser settings which makes fonts more accessible.
Different layout optimizations.
The settings for fuse groups include an explanation so it should be easier to understand what they are good for.
It is easier to recognize if buttons are disabled.
An indicator is shown then nodes are being deleted so users know that the extension is still doing something.
The filter settings in the sidebar look like other settings to they are more consistent.

New version: Lightbeam 3.3.2

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A new version of Lightbeam is available that contains the following improvements:

The labels of all options of a switch are visible right away. No need to hover over an option.
The warning about performance issues when many websites were recorded is closable now.
[Android] The meta information at the top right is more compact.
[Android] The layout at the bottom of dialogs is optimized so the buttons don't look cut-off.

There is also one fix: When the user zoomed out/in and dragged a node the node didn't move directly with the cursor but with some distance. That's solved now.