Selected Text Word Counter

WHAT IT DOES

Selected Text Word Counter instantly counts the words and characters of any text you select on a webpage. As you highlight text, a small tooltip appears near your cursor showing the word count (and optionally the character count). For detailed analysis, open the statistics panel to see word count, character count (with and without spaces), sentence count, paragraph count, and estimated reading time. You can copy the selected text or the statistics to your clipboard with a single click. The tooltip updates in real-time as you expand or change your selection, making it perfect for writers, editors, students, and anyone who needs to track text metrics.

WHERE IT RUNS

The extension works on every website with selectable text, including news sites, blogs, academic articles, documentation pages, and any other page with text content. It runs locally in your browser, analyzing selected text without sending any data to external servers. The extension supports all major browsers and adapts to both desktop and mobile viewports seamlessly.

HOW TO USE

After installation, simply select any text on a webpage—a tooltip appears showing the word count of your selection. To see more detailed statistics, click the extension toolbar icon and select "Show Statistics," or use the keyboard shortcut (if configured). The statistics panel shows words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, paragraphs, and reading time. From the panel, click "Copy Stats" to copy all statistics to your clipboard, or "Copy Text" to copy the selected text. To customize the experience, open the extension panel and toggle "Show tooltip on selection" to enable or disable the floating tooltip. Toggle "Show character count in tooltip" to include character count in the tooltip. Toggle "Include reading time in panel" to show or hide reading time estimates. Choose the tooltip position (Above cursor, Below cursor, or Beside cursor). For per-site customization, enable or disable the extension on specific websites using the per-site controls.

THE ACTUAL MECHANISM — SELECTION API WITH REAL-TIME STATISTICS PIPELINE

The extension uses the browser's Selection API (`window.getSelection()`) to capture user-selected text. It listens for `selectionchange` events, which fire whenever the user changes their selection. When a selection is detected, the extension retrieves the selected text using `getSelection().toString()`. The text is then passed through a statistics pipeline: word count is calculated by splitting on whitespace and filtering empty strings; character count is the string length; character count without spaces removes all whitespace characters; sentence count uses regex to match sentence-ending punctuation (. ! ?); paragraph count splits by double newlines; reading time is calculated using a default reading speed of 238 words per minute (configurable). The tooltip is positioned using the bounding client rect of the selection range, calculated from `getRangeAt(0).getBoundingClientRect()`. The tooltip's position is adjusted to stay within the viewport. The panel updates with the same statistics when opened. All calculations are performed client-side with no external dependencies. The extension supports copying both the raw text and the formatted statistics using `GM_setClipboard`.

THE PANEL

The settings panel is a lightweight, draggable overlay that appears in the center of your screen. You can reposition it by clicking and dragging the title bar; release it near the screen edge and it will snap into place automatically. To collapse the panel into a compact title bar, click the minimize button, expanding it again with the same control. The panel is fully responsive, adapting to different screen resolutions with a minimum width of 300px and a maximum of 480px. Press the Escape key at any time to dismiss the panel without applying changes. All controls—the enable/disable toggle, show statistics button, close button, tooltip toggle, character count toggle, reading time toggle, position selector, and per-site controls—are accessible within a clean, high-contrast interface that respects your system's color scheme.

PLEASE NOTE

This extension requires the free BotGentz companion extension to be installed and active, which provides the underlying DOM access, clipboard, and storage engine. The extension works with text selections on any webpage but may not work correctly with selections that span across multiple text nodes or complex DOM structures. The reading time estimate is based on the default reading speed of 238 words per minute (the average adult reading speed). The tooltip may not display correctly on very small text selections or when the selection is near the edge of the viewport. No personal data, browsing history, or selected text is ever collected, stored, or transmitted. All settings are saved using the browser's storage API and remain solely on your device. The extension does not inject ads, trackers, or analytics of any kind.