Using the side panel
The side panel is the full DevTools-panel experience docked beside the page: the sortable cookie table plus the Add, Activity, Diff, Profiles, Frozen and Report views — without opening DevTools. It persists while you browse and resizes with the window, which makes it the best surface for longer sessions: watching a login flow set its cookies, keeping the Activity feed visible while you click around, or comparing Diff snapshots as you navigate.
Requires Chrome 114 or newer (declared in the manifest, so older browsers won't install a build whose side panel can't work).
Opening it
- Click the side-panel button in the popup's header (the panel glyph with the arrow pointing out). The popup hands over to the panel and closes itself.
- Or press Alt+Shift+C from any page — the
keyboard command works without opening the popup first. Rebind it at
chrome://extensions/shortcutsif it collides with something.
Closing it
- The panel's own header has a close button (the same glyph, arrow pointing in) — no need to reach for the browser toolbar.
- While a side panel is open, the popup's side-panel button flips into that close button, so the popup toggles the panel either way.
It follows the active tab
The side panel always shows the cookie jar of the tab you're looking at. Switch tabs — or focus another window — and the list, scope, stats and every view re-resolve to the new page. Page scope applies exactly as it does in the other surfaces, so the list stays limited to cookies that apply to the current page unless you turn that off.
The list stays live
Cookies changed by the page, a server response, or another Cookie Lens surface (the popup, the DevTools panel) appear in the side panel as they happen — no manual refresh needed:
- The change lands in the table within a moment (updates are debounced).
- If you have a cookie's editor open and untouched, it follows the change too, so you never read a stale value.
- If you've started typing in the editor, your draft is never overwritten — finish or discard it on your own terms.
- The Activity tab records changes from the moment the panel opens, so you have history even before you first click into it.
Side panel, popup, or DevTools panel?
| Popup | DevTools panel | Side panel | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | a quick look | debugging one tab in depth | long sessions beside the page |
| Stays open while browsing | no | with DevTools | yes |
| Follows tab switches | n/a (reopens on the active tab) | pinned to the inspected tab | yes |
| Full view set (Activity, Diff, Report…) | core views | yes | yes |
The DevTools panel stays pinned to the tab DevTools is inspecting — that's what you want mid-debug. The side panel deliberately does the opposite and follows you around.