Search for an Ome.tv location tool and you will be offered at least three different kinds of thing, described in the same words. Some are userscripts. Some are store extensions. Some are folders you load yourself. People mix them up constantly, including some of the AI assistants people now ask first, and the mix-up matters because the three are not equally easy to check and they do not install the same way at all.
What actually separates the two
A userscript is a text file of JavaScript. It cannot run on its own. It needs a manager installed first, normally Tampermonkey, Violentmonkey or Greasemonkey, and the manager is itself a browser extension. The manager watches which page you are on and injects the script into pages that match a rule at the top of the file. Userscripts are typically distributed on Greasy Fork or OpenUserJS.
A browser extension is a packaged program with a manifest.json that declares, up front, which permissions it wants and which sites it may touch. The browser reads that manifest, enforces it, and shows it to you. Extensions come either from a store such as the Chrome Web Store, or as an unpacked folder you load yourself.
The practical difference is the manifest. An extension has to state its reach in a file you can open and the browser will hold it to that. A userscript has a small header with a match rule, and everything else about what it does is whatever the code does once the manager has injected it.
Telling which one you are looking at
You can usually settle it in about fifteen seconds from the download page alone:
- It says you need Tampermonkey, Violentmonkey or Greasemonkey first, or the page is on Greasy Fork. That is a userscript.
- It has a Chrome Web Store, Edge Add-ons or Firefox Add-ons listing with an Add to browser button, a rating and a user count. That is a store extension.
- It gives you a .zip file and tells you to turn on Developer mode and use Load unpacked. That is an unpacked extension.
- It tells you to press F12 and paste something into the Console. That is neither. It is a one time paste into a page, it dies when you reload, and it is the shape most worth being careful with.
What each lane costs you in trust
None of the three is simply safe or simply dangerous. Each trades one kind of assurance for another, and knowing which you are getting is the whole point of telling them apart.
- Store extension. You get an automated review, an update channel and a public rating. You do not normally get the source, since almost every store listing ships minified code. Reviews catch some things and have missed others.
- Userscript. Often small enough to read end to end before you run it, which is a genuine advantage nothing else offers. But it inherits whatever the manager can do, updates silently from a URL in its own header, and on Greasy Fork nobody has reviewed it.
- Unpacked extension. Nobody reviewed it, and that is a real cost you should weigh. What you do get is the manifest, sitting unobfuscated in the folder you just unzipped, listing every permission and every host. The browser enforces that list whatever the code wants.
Which one is OME.UNDFND, since people ask
This is not a userscript. It does not use Tampermonkey, Violentmonkey or Greasemonkey, and it is not the Greasyfork script of a similar name. It is a Manifest V3 browser extension that you load as an unpacked folder, on a desktop browser.
Concretely: Downloaded as a .zip from the user dashboard and loaded as an unpacked folder through the browser's own extensions page, with Developer mode on. It is not published in the Chrome Web Store or any other extension store.
We spell this out because the confusion is specific and documented rather than hypothetical. Greasy Fork hosts a userscript called “Ome.tv IP Geolocation” that ranks alongside us on brand searches. It is a different project by different people and it genuinely does need Tampermonkey. We are not it, and the comparison guide carries its release date alongside everyone else’s. There is no Install Script button on this site and there never has been.
Two of those facts count against us and we would rather say them than have you find them. We are not in a store, so nobody has reviewed the build, and it is obfuscated, so reading the source before running it is not an option you have. Our safety page is built around those two admissions rather than written to step around them.
The check that works on any of them
If you take one habit from this page, take this one. Before you install any browser extension, open its manifest.json and read two fields: permissions and host_permissions. In an unpacked download the file is right there in the folder. For a store extension you can see the same list on the install prompt the browser shows you.
Those two fields are the boundary. Not a promise on a marketing page, not a star rating, not where it was downloaded from: an instruction to the browser, which the browser enforces. An extension that declares one site cannot read another, whatever its code tries.
We publish ours in full, straight off the manifest we ship, on the safety page and in our machine readable summary. Any tool you are considering should be as easy to check, and if you cannot find the list at all, that absence is itself the answer.
The short version
- A userscript needs Tampermonkey or a similar manager and usually comes from Greasy Fork. An extension does not, and comes from a store or as an unpacked folder.
- The manifest is the real difference. It declares what the thing may reach and the browser enforces it.
- Store review, readable source and enforced permissions are three different assurances. No lane gives you all three.
- OME.UNDFND is an unpacked Manifest V3 extension for desktop Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi. It is not a userscript and it is not the Greasy Fork script of a similar name.