`Manifest file is invalid` when installing my chrome extension?

Question

This is my manifest.json

{

  "name": "Environment Quick Switch",

  "version": "1.0",

  "description": "Quick switch around develop environments.",

  "browser_action": {

    "default_icon": "icon.png",
    "popup": "action.html"

  },

  "permissions": [

    "tabs", "http://*/*", "https://*/*"

  ]

}

I load it's folder in develop mode is OK, but after I packaged it and try to install the .crx file, comes the Manifest file is invalid problem .

Is anyone knows how to deal with this?

Answer 1

I got this error too when I updated my extension. I think it happens sometimes when your extension is propagating to various servers. I came and looked at this thread and then went back to the store and tried again and it was fine.

Answer 2

I finally fixed this problem, it's just because my develop folder's path contains Chinese characters, moved it to a English path can solve this.

Answer 3

I had the same problem. The zip-file was accepted in the developer dashboard, but I got an error message saying that my manifest-file was invalid when installing from the webstore.

No Chineese characters on my end, it seemed like the problem was with character encoding.

I saved the manifest.json-file as ANSI - not UTF8 - and the package was accepted by the chrome webstore.

Answer 4

For anyone having issues with this

To find the error in the manifest file I did the following:

1. went into the new developer dashboard
2. clicked on the "package" section where you can upload a new package
3. clicked the CRX File main.crx download link for the Published package.

The site then gives a path for the error in an error message in the top of the page.

My error was in the exclude_matches list, i had an excluded path with invalid match syntax. The index in the exclude_matches part of the error message showed which entry that had errors (exclud_matches[1], 0-indexed, so second entry had an error).

Answer 5

I got this error too , I think maybe your resources under a SkyDrive folder or some team code Management soft folder . Try to copy the resources to another path, such as desktop. package your plugin with the new path , then your may success !

Answer 6

I just had this problem with a version number. forgetting to prefix my pre-1.0 release with a 0 as in "0.95" allowed it to upload and pass to publish, but fail to install.

In summary: ".95" bad, "0.95" good

My mistake for forgetting to install locally (was a migration), but still should probably be caught by the uploader.