Veil documentation

Veil is a Chrome extension that hides sensitive data on web pages before you share your screen, record a demo or take a screenshot. This guide covers every feature. For a quick look, see the home page and its live demo.

Install Veil

1. Open Veil on the Chrome Web Store and click Add to Chrome.
2. Click the puzzle-piece icon in the toolbar and pin Veil.

When Veil is installed, updated or reloaded, it starts again in the tabs that are already open. If a tab does not respond, reload it. Chrome updates Veil on its own.

Hide sensitive data on a site

Use this to cover money, emails, card numbers and other data that has a known format.

1. Open the site you plan to share.
2. Click the Veil icon and turn on Hide sensitive data on this site.
3. Under What to hide, select the types. Money is selected to start with.
4. Choose a style: Mask, Blur or Hide.

Veil covers every match on the site’s pages, including matches that load later. The setting applies to the whole site, and each selected type shows as a row under Sensitive data in the popup. Delete a row to stop hiding that type.

What types can Veil find?

Veil does not look for names, street addresses or bank account numbers, because they have no reliable format. Pick those elements yourself instead.

Veil skips code elements (code, pre, kbd and samp) for every type except API keys and tokens, because pages often show keys in code elements.

What counts as money?

• A currency symbol or code before or after a number: $1,240.50, 1.240,50 €, ৳ 5,000, Tk 500, Rs. 2,500, USD 99, 99 BDT, CHF 1'250.00, US$1,000, 50¢.
• Short forms: $1.2k, €3M, ₹3 lakh.
• Amounts split across elements, such as <span>$</span><span>1,240</span>.
• Input fields whose value has a currency, or whose label, name or placeholder says price, amount, total or similar.
• Plain numbers next to words like Total, Balance, Price, Revenue or Fee, including Balance | 5,000 table cells. This one is off by default because it catches more false matches. Turn on Also catch plain numbers next to words like Total or Balance to use it.

Add your own words

The custom box takes one entry per line. A plain entry matches that text, and case does not matter. An entry between slashes, such as /INV-\d+/, is a regular expression.

Mask, blur or hide: which style should I use?

Use Mask unless you have a reason not to. With Blur you can also turn on Show hidden data clearly while I hover over it. That setting is off by default.

How do I see the hidden data again?

Press Alt+Shift+M to show the hidden data on the current tab. Press it again to hide it.

Veil covered something that is not sensitive

Pick the element, or right-click it and choose Veil this element. Then click Keep this visible when hiding sensitive data. The popup shows how many elements you have kept visible and lets you reset them.

Pick an element and change it

Use this for anything without a fixed format, such as names, addresses, photos or a whole panel. There are three ways to start:

• Click the Veil icon, then Pick an element.
• Press Alt+Shift+V.
• Right-click anything on the page and choose Veil this element. This skips the picker.

While you pick:

After you select an element, a panel appears:

• This page / Whole site sets where the change applies. Veil remembers your last choice.
• Replace text makes the element editable in place, so the new text keeps the site’s font, size and color. Press Enter to save, Shift+Enter for a new line, and Esc to cancel.
• Blur shows a live preview. Drag the slider to set the strength, and optionally let the element show clearly while you hover over it.
• Hide has two modes. Keep the space leaves a blank gap. Remove from the layout lets the page close up around it.
• Select parent / Select child changes your selection without restarting the picker.

Every save shows an Undo button for 5 seconds. Veil applies your change again every time the page loads, including on single-page apps.

To change a saved rule, select the same element again and apply the same action. Veil updates the rule instead of adding a second one.

Manage your rules

The popup lists the current site’s rules in three groups: this page, the whole site, and other pages on the site. For each rule you can:

• Turn it on or off.
• Jump to the element on the page.
• Delete it.

The switch in the popup header pauses all of Veil’s changes. Alt+Shift+X does the same.

Back up and move your rules

Export saves all your rules to a JSON file. Import adds the rules from a file to your existing ones and never overwrites them.

Keyboard shortcuts

To change them, open chrome://extensions/shortcuts.

Before you share your screen

• Open the pages you plan to show before you start sharing. On a slow page, data can flash on screen before Veil’s first scan.
• Check that the right types are selected for each site. Only money is selected to start with.
• Press Alt+Shift+M once to check what Veil covers, then press it again.

Known limits

• Veil hides data on screen only. The page’s own scripts can still read the original data, including text you replaced.
• Veil cannot reach some content: charts drawn on a <canvas>, images, other sites’ shadow DOM components, blank or srcdoc iframes that the page fills in itself, and text with a gradient fill.
• Numbers without a currency are not caught unless you turn on the plain-number setting.
• Rules can break when a site changes. A redesign can make a selector stop matching. Veil also stores the start of the element’s text as a fallback, which recovers many of these cases, but not elements without text, such as images.
• Lists that reorder can misfire. A rule for “the 2nd card” may land on a different item when the order changes.
• Replacing text on framework-rendered elements can occasionally break that part of the page. If this happens, delete the rule, or pick a smaller element that contains only text.
• Some pages are off limits. Chrome blocks extensions on chrome:// pages and on the Chrome Web Store.

Privacy and permissions

Veil makes no network requests and has no analytics or remote code. Your rules are saved with chrome.storage.local on your device. Veil asks for access to all http and https sites so it can apply your rules again when a page loads. Read the privacy policy for the details.

Get help

Report a bug or ask a question in the GitHub issues. To report a security problem, follow the security policy.