Overly Detailed

Every <details> on the page, already open. 📂

Overly Detailed is a tiny userscript that expands collapsed <details> elements, so you can read, search, copy, or print the whole page without opening each section by hand.

Documentation, changelogs, FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and technical discussions love tucking the useful part behind disclosure triangles. This unfolds them.

It also catches <details> added later, because modern sites rarely finish building the page when they claim they have.

Automatic opening is enabled by default. It can be disabled separately for any site from your userscript manager's menu.

Try the live demo → No installation required.

🚀 Install

1. Install a userscript manager: Tampermonkey and Violentmonkey both work.

2. Install Overly Detailed ⬇️

   Prefer a userscript directory? Install from Greasy Fork.

Your userscript manager will show its usual installation prompt. After that, updates can be handled automatically through the manager.

✨ What it does

• Opens every <details> element once the page is ready.
• Watches for new ones, covering lazy-loaded and infinite-scroll content.
• Opens exclusive accordions in full, including groups where the browser normally allows only one section open at a time.
• Leaves your clicks alone. Anything you close by hand stays closed.
• Remembers whether automatic opening is enabled or disabled for each site.
• Provides commands to open or close everything manually at any time.

The watcher only responds to newly added elements. It will not reopen something a half-second after you deliberately closed it.

🔍 Handy for

• Reading documentation without opening dozens of sections
• Printing or saving complete pages as PDFs
• Copying full FAQs, changelogs, or troubleshooting guides into notes
• Comparing settings, options, or release entries side by side
• Reducing repetitive clicking on small disclosure controls

🎛️ Menu commands

Three commands are available from your userscript manager's menu:

Command	What it does
Auto-open for this site: ON/OFF	Toggles automatic opening for the current site and remembers the preference. The label shows the current state.
Open all details on this page	Performs a one-time sweep of the current page. Handy when automatic opening is disabled or something slipped through.
Close all details on this page	Collapses every currently open <details> element. The undo button.

Per-site preferences

Opening everything everywhere is nice in theory, but some sites use <details> for navigation menus, settings panels, accordions, and other interface controls. Expanding all of those at once can make a hot mess.

Switch automatic opening off for that site and it stays off there. Everywhere else continues working normally.

The two manual commands remain available even when automatic opening is disabled.

Exclusive accordions

Some sites group sections together with a shared name, so opening one closes the others. The browser enforces that itself, which means opening every section in turn isn't enough. Each one would shut the last on its way in.

Overly Detailed sets the grouping aside while it works, then hands it back when you choose Close all details on this page. After that the accordion behaves exactly the way the site intended.

Note: the grouping stays set aside until that command runs. Collapsing the sections by hand won't bring the exclusive behavior back on its own, so reach for Close all (or reload) if you want the site's accordion returned mid-visit.

💻 Compatibility

Overly Detailed should work in modern Chromium- and Firefox-based browsers with a compatible userscript manager.

The script uses:

• <details>
• MutationObserver
• GM_registerMenuCommand
• GM_unregisterMenuCommand
• GM_setValue
• GM_getValue

Tampermonkey and Violentmonkey support the required userscript APIs.

Exclusive accordions (<details name>) are a newer addition to the platform. On a browser too old to support them there's simply no grouping to work around, and everything else behaves the same.

🧪 Live demo & stress test

Live demo

Try Overly Detailed in your browser without installing anything.

The demo loads the same OverlyDetailed.user.js file you'd install. A small browser shim stands in for the userscript-manager APIs, turning the real menu commands into page buttons and giving the script temporary storage for the tab.

You can try automatic opening, manual open/close commands, nested sections, dynamically added content, and the script's leave-your-clicks-alone behavior.

Developer stress test

stress-test.html is the less-friendly sibling: a developer test fixture for checking that the installed userscript still behaves correctly across static, nested, delayed, dynamically inserted, and exclusively grouped <details> elements.

It also exercises manual closing, menu commands, per-site auto-open behavior, intentionally pre-opened sections, and whether exclusive grouping is handed back afterwards.

When opening the stress test directly from your computer, your userscript manager may need permission to access file:// URLs. Userscript managers cannot normally modify local pages without that permission.

🔒 Privacy

Overly Detailed collects nothing and sends nothing.

There are:

• No analytics
• No telemetry
• No script-initiated network requests
• No stored page content or browsing history

Overly Detailed saves nothing until you change something. Simply browsing with the script installed doesn't write any page data or browsing history. Using the auto-open toggle stores a single on/off flag for that one hostname, held locally by your userscript manager, and it never leaves the browser.

📜 License

Overly Detailed is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.