The Wren Browser Extension: Install, Connect, and What It Does

The Wren browser extension is one Chrome plug-in that connects your LinkedIn activity to your Wren account. It is completely optional and opt-in: it does nothing until you install it and connect it to your account (one click in Settings). Wren works fine without it, so install it only if you want the conveniences below.

What the extension does

The extension handles three things, all single-user and all tied to your own account:

• LinkedIn analytics sync. It reads your own LinkedIn post metrics — impressions, reactions, comments, reposts, members reached, saves, sends, and profile viewers, plus audience demographics and follower growth — from the LinkedIn pages you are already logged in to, and syncs them to Wren so your content performance lives where you write. When you first connect, it does a one-time sync of your most recent posts (about half an hour, in the background), then keeps them updated and picks up new posts as you publish — it doesn't crawl your whole history.
• Save to Wren. Right-click any page and choose Save to Wren for a one-click save to your Signals → Saved tab — or click the extension's toolbar icon to open its popup and use the Save button there. Either way, the articles you read become raw material for post ideas.
• Onboarding capture. During first-time setup, and only when you ask it to, it reads your own LinkedIn profile (name, headline, about) and recent posts to pre-fill your writing profile and writing samples, so you don't have to copy them in by hand.

How to install and connect it

1. In Wren, go to Settings → Connected Accounts and find the Wren browser extension section. Click View it on the Chrome Web Store and add the extension to Chrome.
2. Back in that section, click Connect extension. The first time, Wren shows a short disclosure explaining exactly what the background analytics capture does — it reads your own LinkedIn pages, never posts or changes anything on LinkedIn, runs throttled in a minimized window, and you can turn it off any time. Capture only starts after you acknowledge it (your choice is remembered, so you won't be asked again). Then Wren mints and hands the connection token to the plug-in for you — there's nothing to copy by hand. If Wren doesn't already have your LinkedIn profile URL, it asks for it once here.
3. The status row then shows Connected · synced … (with a green dot) once the first capture runs. If it reads Extension not detected, install it first — and if you installed it while this page was already open, refresh the page: your browser only lets a page see the extension when the page loads, so a tab opened before the install can't detect it until you reload. If it reads Connected — but we couldn't read LinkedIn, log into LinkedIn in a normal tab and click Sync.

If you ever need it, there is also a manual setup path under Advanced / having trouble connecting? at the bottom of the extension section. Copy a fresh connection token and the Wren API URL from there, click Open extension settings to open the extension's options page directly from within Wren, then paste the token and API URL along with your LinkedIn profile URL and run a backfill. The one-click Connect extension button is the normal path.

Privacy: what it can and can't see

The extension only ever reads data for the LinkedIn account already signed in on your browser. It reads your own analytics and profile; it does not access other members' private data, and it never bypasses LinkedIn login or access controls.

Everything it reads is sent only to your own Wren account over a secure HTTPS connection, authenticated with your token. Nothing is shared with third parties and nothing is sold.

Staying in control

You are always in charge:

• Background capture never starts without your say-so. The first time you connect, you acknowledge a plain-language disclosure of what it reads and that it never writes anything to LinkedIn; only then does capture turn on.
• Pause or resume capture, or run a connection test, from the extension's options page. Analytics capture is rate-limited (about 15 pages an hour) and runs in a minimized background window, so it never interrupts you. If you accidentally surface that background window (on macOS this often happens when it's your only Chrome window and you click the dock icon), Wren shows a notification explaining what the window is — on macOS with no other open Chrome window, the notification includes an Open a new Chrome window button. If you surface the window repeatedly, Wren will release it to you and briefly show a message on the page explaining what happened; analytics will continue in a new background window shortly.
• Uninstall it from Chrome's extensions page, which immediately stops all capture and removes its locally stored settings.

For full details, see Section 14 of the Privacy Policy.