there is a trick for at least chrome before 85, where if you install the google-made extension "suspicious site reporter" it will show the full url including protocol (which you can't even do with flags so it tampers with something internally which means they don't have to do this at all)
True, but the distance between Firefox source and Firefox is config+compile.
You cannot compile Chrome. I've heard that Chromium can be compiled and run, but I've never actually seen it, or hear of anyone using that professionally.
I'm not sure what your point is... You thought it was weird that an extension would get preferential treatment, and I pointed out that this is true for Firefox also.
I looked into it several months ago and it looks like that extension is whitelisted to do it. If you try to repack the crx file and install it, the address bar doesn't get changed.
