Filler Word Finder

WHAT IT DOES

Filler Word Finder is a browser extension that scans any webpage for common filler words and phrases in English and highlights them with a colored background and underline. It identifies hesitations like "um," "uh," and "er," as well as discourse markers such as "like," "you know," "actually," "basically," "literally," "just," "really," "very," "sort of," and "kind of." The tool displays a running count of filler word instances found on the page, helping writers, editors, students, and content creators identify where weak or redundant language may be undermining their writing. Reducing filler words can make writing clearer, more concise, and more professional. The tool is ideal for editing blog posts, articles, academic papers, documentation, email drafts, and any other text-based content where clarity matters.

WHERE IT RUNS

Filler Word Finder works on any webpage that contains English text. It runs locally in your browser as a lightweight userscript, scanning text nodes across the entire page while avoiding script tags, style blocks, and form inputs. It works on blog posts, news articles, documentation pages, email drafts, social media posts, academic papers, creative writing, and any other text-based content. The tool handles static pages, dynamically loaded content via AJAX, and single-page applications where content updates without page reloads. All processing occurs entirely in your browser—no text is ever sent to any server.

HOW TO USE

After installation, open the floating panel by clicking the extension icon. The panel displays the current count of filler words found on the page. Toggle highlighting on or off using the checkbox—when enabled, filler words appear with a warm orange background and underline, making them instantly visible. Enable the "Ignore common adverbs" toggle to filter out common filler-like adverbs such as "actually," "basically," "literally," "just," "really," "very," and others, which may be used legitimately in formal writing. Click the Scan Page button to manually trigger a fresh scan, useful after content updates. Click Clear Highlights to remove all highlighting without disabling the feature permanently. The tool automatically scans the page when it loads if highlighting is enabled, and continues to detect new content as it appears. The count updates in real time as you scroll and interact with the page.

REAL MECHANISM — WHY THIS WORKS

Most filler word detectors rely on simple substring matching or regular expressions that produce many false positives because they cannot distinguish filler words from legitimate content. Filler Word Finder uses a different approach: a curated, context-aware lexical detection engine that combines word boundary matching with phrase-level detection. The engine maintains a categorized dictionary of over 50 filler words and multi-word phrases, organized into semantic groups such as hesitation fillers ("um," "uh"), discourse markers ("like," "you know"), hedge words ("maybe," "perhaps"), and intensifiers ("really," "very"). Each filler is matched using word boundary regex patterns that ensure complete word matching without partial overlaps (e.g., "like" matches "like" but not "likely"). The engine also supports phrase detection for multi-word fillers such as "sort of," "kind of," and "you know," using lookahead and lookbehind patterns that preserve phrase integrity. An optional filter suppresses common adverbs that may be used legitimately, reducing false positives while maintaining high detection accuracy. The engine processes text in batches to avoid blocking the main thread, and it preserves the original DOM structure by replacing text nodes with document fragments containing highlighted spans. This approach ensures accurate, fast, and fully private filler word detection without sending any data off-device.

THE PANEL

The floating panel is fully draggable and remembers its position per site, snapping to the edges of the viewport when dragged near them. You can collapse the panel to a small icon to minimize screen distraction and expand it back with a single click. The panel is resizable from the bottom-right corner, giving you more space to view statistics and controls. Press the Escape key to close the panel instantly. The panel remains open across page navigation within the same domain, maintaining your current toggle states. All preferences—panel position, highlight toggle state, and ignore-common-adverbs toggle state—are saved per domain for a seamless experience.

PLEASE NOTE

Filler Word Finder requires the free BotGentz extension to be installed and enabled, as it relies on the cross-extension messaging API provided by BotGentz for DOM access permissions. Because websites frequently update their structure, scanning and highlighting may require periodic script updates to maintain compatibility. If the tool does not highlight text as expected, please check for updates or report the issue. All text processing occurs entirely in your browser. No page content, text samples, or analysis results are ever sent to any server. The extension does not read, store, or transmit any personal information. It only reads the DOM of the pages you choose to interact with and applies visual highlights at your request.