I use chrome for most of my browsing needs on the internet, there are so many extensions and plugins you can install on chrome to make your life so much more simple and more productive.
I am sure you will pick up some of them right away and thank the developers for these awesome super duper plugins.
Note: I am not giving a list of famous apps as my focus here is to list out some great plugins which you can use in your browser, which will make your browsing experience richer and enhance your productivity on the internet. For exact difference between app and plugin see here.
Table of Contents
20. Pushbullet
This is a great extension if you wish to see updates on your Android or iOS phone on your laptop.
Sometimes you might be working on your laptop and your phone is not with you, then this plugin will show notifications like incoming calls, messages, emails etc.
Also you can use it to send links, pictures, files to your phones from your PC.
19. Text Mode
Sometimes you just want to view the web page in text format without all the images, ad clutter, so this plugin just does that.
After enabling this, all pages load in text format without pictures, videos, animations, ads, flash. This also helps in loading the pages faster and saves you a lot of time.
18. Hover Zoom
Sometimes when you are browsing a site and you see an image, there is always an instinct to zoom if the image is small. So the best you can do is open that image in new tab and then it gets displayed as the original size.
But this plugin can instantly help you zoom over any image which you see on a site and you will be able to see magnified version right there and then.
All you have to do is hover over the thumbnail and the image can be seen in the original size. It works on almost all popular sites. Also it supports video files and you can enable/disable zooming for specific sites.
17. Feedly Mini
Feedly as you must be aware is the world’s most popular RSS and Blog Reader with more than 15 million plus users worldwide.
This extension helps you get connected with your Feedly account and allows you to save, tag, share or subscribe content.
You can do many things like :
- Add websites to your Feedly account
- Saves pages to view later
- Email and Tweet pages
- Share pages on FB and Evernote
- Tag pages
16. Adblock Plus
This is a must have plugin if you are truly annoyed with advertisements. It blocks different ad types like :
- Banner Ads
- YouTube Video Ads
- Facebook Ads
- Pop-Ups
Also useful for blocking malware.
After using this extension for sometime, I seriously could not imagine my life without it.
I used to hate those pop-ups and video ads seriously hampering user experience on the sites I visited. And Adblock Plus just seamlessly works non stop in the background to remove these.
There is an option to enable ads for some specific sites in case you want to. Also by default it allows non intrusive advertisements on some sites like static ads, or ads that are not annoying or intrusive you can disable if you wish to see no ads whatsoever.
15. Evernote Web Clipper
Serious heavyweight if you want to improve productivity on the internet, I cannot think of working without it. I will not be doing a full review here but just to give you an idea.
If you wanted to save, markup or share any web page online then this is the tool you have to use. You can do some wonderful things like :
- Clipping – Clip full articles, simplifies articles(removes images etc.), saves full page, save PDFs you view online, Select any text or image and save it, Clip Email Conversations, Take Screenshots and share with friends.
- Markup – Highlight content on a page, Highlight text in any screenshot, annotate screenshot with text, shapes, arrows.
- Share – Share you articles, clips, images, videos you clipper with friends on Facebook, Twitter.
14. StumbleUpon
This extension helps you discover interesting content like best photos, videos, websites.
You are asked to list down your interests, after which this plugin will start its magic. It will start showing you pages after pages based on your interests from a list of over 200 million+ pages.
13. Buffer
This works great for sharing content on Social Media. You can publish updates on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. Also you can schedule your content and it will also give you stats about clicks, retweets, shares. likes etc.
12. StayFocusd
Another great productivity hack you can install on chrome.
If you are wasting too much time on social networking sites, viral content sites, video sites, gaming sites etc. then you can use StayFocusd to temporarily block these websites.
You are in charge on the time you want to set for such sites and after the allotted time is over the extension will block these for the rest of the day. Of course you can configure if you wish to block a part of the site, some pages only etc.
11. Tab Cloud
When you are browsing, I tend to open 10-15 tabs on an average and if my work is not finished, I had no idea how to save all those tabs.
Another problem was if I was working on home laptop and some tabs were opened and then next day started working on office laptop, I had no clue how to transfer those tabs to my office laptop. Tab Cloud solved both these problems and more.
It allows you to save any session at any time and all tabs open in that window can be saved so that they can be opened later or open on a new PC.
10. Lastpass
Well this one is my savior. I just have no clue how I managed my life on internet before this.
As the name suggest, you just need to remember One password which is mainly to give you access to your LastPass Vault that is it. Forget all other passwords, because Lastpass will take care of that.
- It will recover first all passwords saved on your browsers and import to the vault.
- Then any new site you visit it can generate new and secure password for you
- It will automatically fill username password when you revisit that site
- It will fill forms automatically by saving your details
- If you wish to keep some notes secure you can do that.
- Also for added security you can use Multi-security features like before your vault is accessed you got to give a second level permission using your mobile so that even if your main password is compromised you are still secure.
- It uses AES 256 Bit encryption, meaning all passwords are encrypted and never stored as it is on Lastpass servers. Your master password is never ever shared with Lastpass
I won’t write more for this plugin, if you wish to get just one plugin out of this list get this one please and make your life simpler without having to remember 100’s of passwords or using a single password across sites.
9. Google Translate
Pretty self explanatory, it adds a button to your toolbar and you can click it to translate the page. Pretty handy and free plugin.
8. Google Dictionary
Another great extension from Google, a small popup bubble is opened if you double click any word and the meaning is displayed. No need to check any other site.
Also it will store history of words you have already looked up before. If there are some foreign words they are automatically translated to your preferred language.
7. OneTab
This is another productivity extension for managing tabs. Sometimes you find yourself surrounded with 20-30 tabs when you are researching about a topic, looking for a product, so you can club them all together and click on OneTab button. So this is more like creating a temporary bookmark of sites.
It will convert all the opened tabs into a list so that when you want to reference later, you can restore them all together or one by one.
This plugin also helps in reducing memory upto 95%, by removing the clutter of large number of open tabs.
6. Awesome Screenshot
If you like to take lots of screenshot this is a great extension. You can capture the whole page, part of page, annotate screenshot, blur any sensitive data, share and upload in one click.
5. Click&Clean
One stop solution to delete history, remove download history, erase temporary files, clear cookies. Also if you wish you can use it to clean up your hard disk.
4. Zenmate
Sometimes you might not access a webpage as it is blocked in your country, office, college etc.
Zenmate is a VPN Proxy Service which helps you access such sites for free. Since this gets installed directly on Chrome, there is no authentication issues you will face when downloading this on your school, college, office laptop or PC.
It also encrypts your browser data and prevents your home PC or when you are using public WiFi from hackers.
3. Evernote Clearly
If you read a lot of blogs, newspapers, articles then you should get this. It makes webpages look neat and clean, removes unnecessary distractions, you can browse multiple pages in one go.
Also it reads posts and articles so if you like you can enable Text to Speech. Also it gets integrated with Evernote so that all your articles and posts get synced to your PC, tablet, phone.
2. Todoist
Todoist is a great app if you maintain to do lists, make notes. This extension helps you bring your lists from your app right in chrome browser. It helps you stay organised and productive. If you want to track any articles, blogs to read later you can add the URL as a task in one click. Useful if you wish t manage the tasks right from the browser toolbar.
1. Extensity
If you pick up more than 5-10 plugins or already have them installed you might have some trouble managing these.
Sometimes you might want to disable a particular plugin, enable at a later time. This final plugin in our list will help you do that with a simple click right from your main toolbar. It will keep your toolbar neat and clean looking, at the same time will help reduce memory usage by quickly disabling a plugin.
No need to go inside Chrome settings and doing it everytime when you wish to enable or disable a plugin.
There are many more plugins but these are some of the ones I thought will share to start with. Do share if you use any other plugins which improve user experience and productivity and we will add these to our list.
