Understand This Page
User Guide
Everything you need to use and get the most out of Understand This Page — from your first analysis to plans, billing, and troubleshooting.
Getting started
Understand This Page lives in Chrome's side panel and analyzes a page only when you ask it to.
- Install the extension from the Chrome Web Store and pin it to the toolbar.
- Open the panel with the toolbar icon, the right-click menu, or the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Y (Mac: Cmd+Shift+Y).
- On first use, acknowledge the privacy notice — it confirms you understand that page content is sent for analysis only when you click the button.
No account, sign-up, or configuration is needed. The free plan works immediately.
Analyzing a page
Click Understand this page. The extension reads the visible page, detects what kind of page it is — a product, a job listing, a news article, a video, one of 16 types — and answers the question that matters for that type. Text-based HTTPS PDFs opened in the current tab can be analyzed with the same button.
- No selection needed: by default the whole visible page is analyzed.
- Select text first to make that selection the focus of the analysis.
- On YouTube, the video transcript is included automatically when one is available.
Comparing selected pages
Use the small + button to collect compatible pages into a temporary comparison list. The + action captures the page locally; it does not run the full analysis. If local evidence cannot identify the page type, a small AI classification request is made before the page is added.
- Add two or more compatible pages. Each title appears immediately in the panel and can be removed with its own × button.
- The main action changes to Compare N pages. Products, job listings, and SaaS pages get a decision-focused comparison; articles, news, and research papers get a source comparison.
- Product and job comparisons support up to eight pages. SaaS and source comparisons support up to four.
- Clicking Compare sends the captured contexts in one request without re-reading the tabs. Follow-up questions reuse those same sources.
Chrome may require one click on the extension's toolbar icon after you navigate to a different site. That click grants access and completes a waiting + action; it does not run the full page analysis. The comparison list lasts only for the browser session.
Reading PDFs
Open a text-based HTTPS PDF in the current tab and click Understand this page. The bundled parser extracts text locally from documents up to 25 MB and 200 pages. The PDF file itself is not uploaded; the initial analysis sends a bounded best-effort text context through the same Finnzon service used for web pages.
The answer shows how many pages were readable. Follow-ups retrieve question-relevant passages from session-only extracted text, and research PDFs can be added to source comparisons. Mixed PDFs are summarized from the readable pages. Scanned, image-only, and password-protected PDFs are not supported yet.
Reading the answer
Answers lead with a verdict, with the reasoning underneath. The colored verdict pill gives you the conclusion at a glance:
- Green — positive: recommended, worth a look, apply.
- Amber — positive with reservations, or something needing your attention.
- Red — negative: not recommended, skip, high risk.
- Gray— the page didn't give enough evidence either way. The extension never colors uncertainty.
The header of each answer shows a confidence percentage. Use the buttons under the answer to copy it as clean, shareable text or to run the analysis again.
Every answer ends with a highlighted skeptical-read card. When it only lists information the page never disclosed, it is titled What this page doesn't tell you; when it also gathers red flags or concerns read from the page itself, it is titled Before you decide. It is the one place to check before acting on a page — what the page said that should worry you, and what it chose not to say.
On product pages and job listings, itemized points that are grounded in captured page evidence — key specs, pros and cons, salary details, red flags — carry a small Show on pagechip. Clicking it scrolls the analyzed page to the exact passage the point is based on and briefly highlights it, so you can verify a spec, review quote, or salary line on the page itself instead of taking the answer's word for it. If the page has changed and the passage no longer exists, the chip says so rather than highlighting the wrong text.
Follow-up questions
After an analysis, ask follow-ups in the box at the bottom of the panel — for example "what about the battery life?" or "where do they discuss pricing?". Follow-ups reuse the already-captured page, so they are fast and work even after you scroll away.
On videos, answers anchor key points to timestamps like [12:30]. The timestamps are clickable: clicking one jumps the video on the analyzed tab straight to that moment.
Personalized answers
Optionally, tell the extension who you are in settings — two short fields: About you(e.g. "senior React developer, family of four") and Preferences & constraints(e.g. "budget-conscious, vegetarian").
Verdicts then fit you instead of a generic reader: job listings are judged against your skills, products against your budget, restaurants against your diet. The profile is stored only on your device and included in your analysis requests; clear the fields any time to go back to neutral answers.
Comparing recent products and jobs
Products and job listings you analyze are remembered in a local history on your device — up to 20 of each kind. Once two or more analyses of the same kind exist, a Compare analyzed products (or job listings) card appears at the bottom of the panel.
- Tick 2–8 items and press Compare selected. The comparison names a recommended pick, ranks the items with reasons, lists the concrete differences — actual prices, salaries, terms — and ends with what none of the pages disclose.
- Comparing reuses the analyses you already generated: the pages are not read or sent again, only your stored analyses are. One comparison counts as one analysis against your daily quota.
- Comparisons are deterministic. The same unchanged set of analyses always returns the same verdict — instantly and without spending quota — until you re-analyze one of the items and its content actually changes.
- The history is stored only on your device. Remove a single item with the × next to it, or use Clear history. History is kept only while local answer caching is enabled.
With the optional profile filled in, the comparison is judged for you specifically — products against your budget, job listings against your skills.
Answer language
Open settings with the gear icon and pick your answer language — 27 are supported, including English, Finnish, Swedish, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese. The page being analyzed can be in any language.
Plans and limits
The plan card at the top of the panel shows your current plan and today's usage.
- Free — 3 page analyses and 12 follow-ups per day, every engine, all languages. Limits reset daily.
- Pro ($9/month or $89/year) — daily analysis and follow-up limits removed under a generous fair-use policy, with deeper answers from our most capable model.
Upgrade from the panel: tap Upgrade to Pro, enter your billing email, and complete the Stripe checkout that opens in a new tab. Pro activates automatically — no account or license key.
Subscription actions live in Settings → Subscription. Use Restore purchase with your billing email if you reinstall Chrome or move to a new computer. Pro users can use Manage subscriptionthere to open Stripe's billing portal for cancellation, invoices, or payment method updates.
The billing email is saved locally in the extension so those subscription actions can be prefilled later. Payment details are entered only on Stripe's hosted checkout and billing portal pages.
Caching
Answers are cached locally so revisiting a page is instant and doesn't spend your daily quota. Use Analyze again to get a fresh answer for a page that changed. Email pages are never cached. Temporary comparison contexts and extracted PDF text use separate browser-session storage and disappear when the session ends. You can turn persistent answer caching off in settings.
Troubleshooting
- "Could not read page context" — Chrome system pages (chrome://, the Web Store) and some embedded viewers cannot be analyzed. Regular websites work.
- Daily limit reached — the free plan resets at midnight UTC, or upgrade to Pro to remove the limit.
- Paid but still on Free — use the refresh button in the plan card; if that doesn't help, open Settings → Subscription and use Restore purchase with your billing email.
- No transcript on a video — some videos have no captions; the analysis then uses the visible page instead and says so.
- A PDF page was not read — image-only pages require OCR, which the extension does not currently perform. The answer shows the readable-page coverage so you can judge a partial result.
- The AI service is temporarily unavailable — the attempt was not counted against your quota; try again in a moment.
Support
Pro subscribers get email support: write to info@finnzon.com from your billing email and include a short description of the problem and the page type it happened on. We aim to reply within two business days.
Free plan support is self-serve: this guide and the FAQ on the front page cover the common questions. Bug reports are welcome from everyone at the same address — they help us make the extension better.