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Cite This Page - APA, MLA, BibTeX icon

Cite This Page - APA, MLA, BibTeX

Generate an APA, MLA, Chicago or BibTeX citation for any web page in one click. Runs locally, editable fields, no sign-in.

Works on
Chrome
Version
3.0.3
Add to Chrome

Citing a web page by hand means digging through the byline for a full author name, hunting for a publication date that may only exist in a meta tag, and then getting the punctuation right. This reads those details off the page you're on and writes the citation for you.

Citing a web page by hand means hunting for the author, the date, and the site name, then remembering the exact format. This extension reads those details straight off the page and writes the citation for you.

Open it on any article and it fills in the title, author, site, and publication date from the page's metadata, then formats a citation in APA, MLA, Chicago, or BibTeX. Switch styles from the dropdown and copy with one click. Every field is editable, so if the page got something wrong — or left it out — you can fix it before you copy.

It works on the page you already have open. No account, no paywall, nothing uploaded.

Screenshots

What it does

  • Auto-fills title, author, site, and date from the page.

  • Four styles: APA, MLA, Chicago, and BibTeX.

  • Every field is editable before you copy.

  • Detects a DOI when the page has one.

  • Runs entirely in your browser

    no login, no servers, no tracking.

When you'd reach for it

  • Citing a news article for a paper

    News sites bury the publication date in structured metadata even when the visible page says "2 days ago". The popup reads that metadata directly, so the date lands in the citation without you converting anything. Switch the dropdown between APA, MLA and Chicago and the same source reformats as you go.

  • Adding a web source to a BibTeX bibliography

    Pick BibTeX and you get a complete @misc entry, with a citation key built from the first author's surname and the year, ready to paste into your .bib file. If the page carries a DOI, it's picked up from the metadata or from the first DOI string in the page text and included as its own field.

  • Fixing a citation the page got wrong

    Plenty of sites list the wrong author, put the CMS name in the site field, or have no date at all. Open Edit fields and you can correct the title, authors, site, date and URL, with multiple authors separated by semicolons. The citation above rewrites itself as you type, so you copy the corrected version.

How to use it

  1. 01Open the article or page you want to cite.
  2. 02Click the extension icon.
  3. 03Pick a style (APA, MLA, Chicago, or BibTeX), fix any field if needed, and click Copy.

Permissions & privacy

Single purpose

Single purpose: Read bibliographic metadata from the page in the active tab and generate a formatted citation (APA, MLA, Chicago, or BibTeX). Permission — activeTab: Used to access the current tab only when the user opens the popup, so the citation details can be read from that page. Permission — scripting: Used to run a one-time metadata reader in the active tab when the popup opens. No content scripts run automatically. Permission — storage: Used only to remember the user's chosen citation style (chrome.storage.local). No personal data stored. Host permissions: None. No host_permissions and no <all_urls>; page access is granted only when the popup is opened, via activeTab. Remote code: None. All code is bundled in the package; nothing is fetched or eval'd at runtime. Data collection / transmission: None. No data is collected, stored off-device, or transmitted. All processing is local; the citation is shown in the popup and copied to the clipboard.

activeTabCan read the page you're currently on, and only after you click the extension.
scriptingRuns the extension's own code on pages, to change what you see.
storageSaves your settings and data in the browser's own storage, on this device.

Runs entirely in your browser. It reads the citation details of the page only when you open the popup, and stores just your chosen citation style locally. Nothing is sent to any server. Independent extension. It runs only the code shipped inside the package — no remote code is fetched.

Questions people ask

how to cite a website in apa format in chrome

Open the page you want to cite, click the extension icon, and the citation is already built in the popup with APA selected. Use the dropdown to switch to MLA, Chicago or BibTeX, then hit the copy button to put it on your clipboard. Your chosen style is remembered, so the next page opens in the same format.

Where does it get the author and date from?

From the page's own metadata: author fields such as citation_author or the standard author meta tag, and dates from fields like article:published_time, citation_publication_date or a time element. The site name comes from the og:site_name tag, falling back to the domain when no tag exists. When a single tag packs several authors into one string, they get split apart on commas, semicolons and "and".

What if the page has no publication date?

APA output falls back to (n.d.), and the other styles simply omit the date segment rather than guessing. If you know the real date, type it into the date field as YYYY-MM-DD and the citation updates immediately. The same applies to a missing author: the title moves into the lead position, which is what APA expects for an unauthored source.

Does it need access to all my browsing?

No. The manifest declares activeTab, scripting and storage, and no host permissions at all, which means it can only look at a tab at the moment you click the icon on it. The scripting permission runs the one metadata reader in that tab when the popup opens — there is no content script sitting on pages in the background. Storage holds a single value: which citation style you last used.

Why are the fields empty on some pages?

Chrome blocks extensions from reading its own internal pages, such as chrome:// URLs, the Web Store and the new tab page, so nothing can be pulled from them. The URL field is still filled in where possible, and you can type the rest by hand. On a normal article page, empty fields usually mean the site publishes no metadata for that item.

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