Pausing, Per Site and Everywhere

## Why it matters

Sometimes you want blocking off, but you don't want to break your configuration. Maybe a site you normally block needs to work for a bit. Maybe you want to give an advertiser a fair shake just this once. Or maybe you're testing something and you need a clean view of what the network actually looks like without Scalpel interfering.

Pausing gives you that without the friction of editing your allowlist. You can pause everything globally, or pause just one site. When you're done, you switch it back on. Nothing's been changed. Your allowlist is untouched. Your filter lists are still there.

## How it works

Scalpel has two pause modes: global and per-site.

Global pause: Click the extension icon and look for the pause button. Toggle it on. Blocking turns off immediately for the rest of your browsing session. All requests go through. Adverts load. Trackers run. The badge shows OFF.

When you restart your browser or hit the pause button again, global pause switches off. Blocking comes back. Nothing was permanently changed. It's session-scoped.

Per-site pause: Right-click on the page and select "Allow on this site" (or the equivalent menu item, depending on how Scalpel's settings are configured). Scalpel adds one dynamic allowlist rule for that domain. Requests from that site go through. Everywhere else stays blocked. The badge shows OFF for that tab.

This rule persists across restarts. It's part of your allowlist. If you later decide to block that site again, you right-click and select "Block" (or toggle the rule off in settings).

Both modes use dynamic rules. Scalpel applies them via Chrome's declarativeNetRequest dynamic-rules API, which lets extensions add or remove rules at runtime. They don't touch the static rulesets (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, etc.). Those stay exactly as they are.

## What does not matter

Pausing is not the same as disabling the extension. If you disable Scalpel entirely, you lose all blocking until you re-enable it. Pausing keeps the extension running. It just tells Chrome to apply allow-all rules instead of block rules.

You also don't need to pause in order to test whether a page works without blocking. If a page breaks because of blocking, allowlist it from the right-click menu. If you're just testing and don't want the change to persist, use global pause. It clears on restart, so there's no ongoing allowlist entry for you to clean up later.

Per-site pause and the allowlist are almost the same thing. The difference is just your intent. If you add a site to the allowlist, you're saying: "I want to support this site, or this site is important to me, and I'm okay with it loading adverts and trackers." If you pause a site temporarily, you're saying: "Just for now, let this through." Both result in that site's requests being unblocked. The practical effect is identical.

## Code example

When you toggle global pause on, Scalpel adds a high-priority dynamic rule:

{
  "id": 99999,
  "priority": 1000,
  "action": {
    "type": "allow"
  },
  "condition": {
    "domains": ["<all_urls>"]
  }
}
Copy

This rule says: allow all requests everywhere. Because it has priority 1000 (higher than normal block rules), it takes precedence. Chrome matches it for every request and allows it.

When you toggle pause off, Scalpel removes this rule. The normal block rules come back into play.

For per-site pause, Scalpel adds a rule like:

{
  "id": 50000,
  "priority": 100,
  "action": {
    "type": "allowAllRequests"
  },
  "condition": {
    "urlFilter": "||example.com^",
    "resourceTypes": ["main_frame"]
  }
}
Copy

This rule allows all requests whose main frame comes from example.com. Requests on that site go through. Requests everywhere else stay blocked.

## How Scalpel Ads Blocker shows it

In the popup, Scalpel displays a pause toggle. Click it to pause everything. The badge will show OFF, and blocking will be off for the rest of the session.

On the right-click menu, there's an allowlist toggle for the current site (the label changes based on whether the site is already allowlisted or paused). Click it to add the site to your allowlist, or to remove it if it's already there.

When pausing is active, either globally or for a site, the badge shows OFF in grey instead of a number. This tells you at a glance that blocking is off for this tab (or everywhere, if it's global pause).

If you want to manage your allowlist permanently, open Scalpel's settings. There's an "Allowlisted sites" section where you can see every domain you've added and remove any you no longer want on the list. Each entry is a domain. Scalpel applies one dynamic rule per domain.

Global pause clears when you close your browser or manually turn it back on. Per-site allowlist entries persist until you remove them.