How to add new plugins in ONLYOFFICE Cloud Service using Chrome extensions

The pre-installed plugin set extends the functionality of ONLYOFFICE editors, for example, you can quickly edit a picture right in the doc, or find synonyms of a word. Would like to add even more new plugins to your ONLYOFFICE cloud service? Read the article to learn how to do it.

A plugin in ONLYOFFICE is an easy way to add new features to the editors. Currently, the following plugins are available by default:

• ClipArt allows adding images from the clip-art collection into your document.
• Highlight code allows highlighting syntax of the code selecting the necessary language, style, background color.
• OCR allows recognizing text on the picture and insert it into the document.
• PhotoEditor allows editing images: crop, resize, apply effects, etc.
• Speech allows converting the selected text into speech.
• Symbol Table allows inserting various special symbols.
• Thesaurus allows searching for word synonyms and antonyms and replacing it with the selected one.
• Translator allows translating the selected text into other languages.
• YouTube allows embedding YouTube videos into your document.
• WordPress allows publishing articles directly from the document editor on the WordPress website.
• EasyBib allows generating citations and creating bibliographies in documents.

The WordPress and EasyBib plugins can be used if you connect the corresponding services in the portal settings. You can refer to the following instructions for the server versions, or for the SaaS version.

Along with the pre-installed set, you can also add more plugins to ONLYOFFICE editors. Open this folder on GitHub and find other plugin examples. Among those, there is an Autocomplete plugin that can help users type faster.

Surely, you can also build and integrate your own plugins using our detailed API documentation.

Users of the desktop and server versions can manually add additional plugins to the editors.

If you’re a user of the cloud service or ONLYOFFICE Personal (or both at once) and need any other plugin apart from those in the pre-installed set, you can easily add it to the editors as a Chrome extension.

We’ll show you how to do it using the example of the Chess plugin.

Step 1. On your computer, create a main folder for all the extension files.

Then, create a subfolder with the plugin files and name it as the future extension (in our example, you can download all necessary Chess plugin files from GitHub).

Step 2. Add the manifest.json file and the main.js file to the main folder.

For the Chess plugin, you’ll also need to add the pluginBase.js and plugins.css files to the main extension folder.

Step 3. Launch your Chrome browser and go to chrome://extensions/.

Turn on the Developer mode and click the Load unpacked button.

Select the created main extension folder:

You’ll see that the new extension is now available in your browser:

Step 4. Launch your ONLYOFFICE and open any document to check if the new plugin is available in the editors:

Detailed instruction on how to add new plugins in ONLYOFFICE server solutions. Read our article on Dzone >>

Official API documentation on plugins. Learn more >>

All the currently existing open source plugin examples. Visit GitHub >>

Description of the Plugins tab in ONLYOFFICE editors. Go to the Help Center >>