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Extensions that changed hands, October 2026

Every month we record who publishes the most-used VS Code and Open VSX extensions, and what Chrome extensions ask to access. This page lists what changed 6–31 October 2026.

Most of these changes are ordinary: a new maintainer, a company renaming itself, a release pipeline moving to another account. They are still the moments worth a look, because an extension runs with your editor's or browser's access, and a new owner gets that access with the next update.

Of note: a Solidity look-alike that showed as "Juan Blanco"

On 26 October, luanblanco.language-pack-sol entered the Marketplace's top 5,000 with 1,090,955 reported installs. It was gone the next day. Two details in its listing data:

• The publisher display name was Ju + U+202E (right-to-left override) + ocnalB na, which a screen shows as "Juan Blanco", the author of the real Solidity extension (juanblanco.solidity). The publisher ID itself was luanblanco.
• The extension name was "solidity" followed by 23 zero-width spaces, so it looks like the real name but doesn't match it.

It ran code on activation and wasn't on Microsoft's block list when we checked on 4 November. Fake Solidity extensions with inflated install counts have been reported before (April 2025, April–July 2026); the real one was first published in November 2015, which an install count can't fake. Package SHA-256 as we saw it: 4599e3f61b86569a105ea9390a2c8e4d3f5c54b7cc0e87c7a3f3024e529…

Open VSX: published by a different account

Open VSX is the registry Cursor, Windsurf and VSCodium install from. These extensions' latest version was published by a different Open VSX account than the one before. "Verified" means the namespace has a verified owner.

VS Code Marketplace: publisher or repository changed

Removed from a registry

No longer found, with the last version we saw; each one re-checked on the day this page was built, and any that came back are left out. Removal can be the publisher's choice or the registry's.

Chrome Web Store: new permissions in an update

Extensions with 10,000+ users whose update asked for permissions or sites the previous version didn't have. Chrome disables an extension until the user accepts some new permissions, but many are granted silently.

How this is collected

• Daily snapshots, 6–31 October 2026, of the top 5,024 VS Code Marketplace extensions by installs and the top 5,503 Open VSX extensions by downloads, from each registry's public API. Changes outside those lists aren't counted.
• Chrome: the public Web Store sitemap and update check; permissions are read from the package when a version changes, for 656 extensions with 10,000+ users so far. Some updates are missed, so the Chrome table is a lower bound. Developer names and addresses aren't shown.
• Counts and installs are as of 2026-10-31. Each row links to the extension's own page, which shows the current state.
• Something wrong, or your extension listed for an ordinary reason you'd like noted? Write to support@opsfixes.com and we'll correct it.