SpareRoom Scout

What it looks like

Three steps, one page, one browser tab. You decide at every one.

1. Collect

   Pick one of your saved searches. Ads appear on the list as they are read.

2. Drafts

   A message is written under every ad you are keeping, ready to send. Reading them is up to you. Edit or regenerate any of them.

3. Send

   Only the messages under kept ads, one at a time, paced like a person typing.

One list underneath, and one decision on it: green to keep, red to ignore; click an ad to flip it. That choice covers all three steps — an ignored ad is not drafted and never messaged. Nothing is hidden from you, so every ad stays where you left it, wearing what it is: the ones in orange cannot be moved, and those are the ones already contacted, held by SpareRoom’s Early Bird window, or no longer on the search.

“Needs your check”: if Scout cannot confirm a message went out, it says so and asks you to look in SpareRoom’s sent folder. That ad is then frozen until you answer — no later run will touch it. It never guesses.

The ads, people and messages in that picture are invented.

What Scout will not do

• It never sends without a click. No scrape, no draft and no message ever starts on its own.
• It never sees your SpareRoom password. It uses the login already in your browser, the same one you use yourself.
• It does not rush. Every request waits a random human pause, and it talks to one page at a time.
• It stops at 20 messages a run. That is a hard limit you cannot raise.
• It stops when it is unsure. An unconfirmed send is handed to you, never retried behind your back.

Install in four steps

Chrome asks a few unusual things of you because this is not from the Web Store. One of them you have to type — a link cannot do it.

1. 1

   Unzip it somewhere permanent

   Mac: double-click the zip; a spareroom-scout folder appears next to it. Windows: right-click the zip → Extract All… → Extract, then open the new folder — the spareroom-scout folder inside it is the one you want.

   Move that folder somewhere it can stay, such as Documents — not Downloads. Chrome loads it from wherever it sits, so if the folder moves or is deleted the extension stops working.

2. 2

   Open the extensions page

   Click in the address bar at the top of Chrome, type chrome://extensions and press Enter. It has to be typed — links to that page do not work. (Or: the ⋮ menu top-right → Extensions → Manage Extensions.)

3. 3

   Turn on Developer mode

   A switch in the top-right corner of that page. Flip it on and three new buttons appear.

4. 4

   Load unpacked, then choose the folder

   Click Load unpacked and pick the spareroom-scout folder from step 1. The folder looks empty in the chooser — it only shows folders — which is fine. Click Select.

   “Manifest file is missing or unreadable” means you picked the folder around it. Go one level deeper. More on that below.

First time you open it

1. It asks you to log in, once. Two things: your SpareRoom login, in the tab Scout opens for you — it borrows that login rather than storing one, and never sees your password — and permission to use the Google account this Chrome is signed in with. There is no second Google login and no password to invent: only your email address is shared, and it is only how Scout knows you are allowed to use it.
2. It asks for your name. That is the only other thing it needs to get going. The rest of “About you” makes the messages better and can wait — you can change all of it later.
3. Save a search on spareroom.co.uk — or star some ads. Run the search you want (area, budget, move-in date) and click Save search. Scout works from one list at a time, chosen under “Working on”; your Saved ads — the rooms you star with SpareRoom’s own Save button — are always offered there too. One or the other has to exist first.
4. After that it stays quiet. Scout checks both logins in the background and says nothing while they work. If one lapses — you log out of SpareRoom, or the Google permission is withdrawn — it asks again before doing anything else.

When something looks wrong