Lots of my friends that lean into productivity, are frequently asking me what extensions I use on Google Chrome. The great variety of extensions at our disposal make it hard to choose the right one, but I hope this list makes it easier for you and gives you inspiration and motivation to find out newest extensions and make your computer experience a little bit more comfortable.
Having a completely different mindset while I am spending time on the computer I decided to share with you guys how I am using Chrome extensions and how does that benefit my productivity. There is a huge list of these addons that I am using, but it might give you a clear picture how it feels like being behind my browser.
- Adblock Plus for Google Chrome – Being a huge fan of reducing distractions, this extension helps me get rid of those pesky ads and allows me to focus only on content that I am about to read. Pure gold, I am sure many of you are already using it, but it doesn’t hurt mentioning it again for someone new to Chrome.
- Auto Replay for YouTube – this one is fun addition to Youtube. Sometimes I like to put some song in Youtube in loop, so this one saves me the hassle of going back to YouTube and playing it again.
- Boomerang for GMail – This is one of the best extensions ever. It allows you to scheduele your emails for the future, so you don’t forget sending that happy birthday email, or sending the report to your boss exactly in 9 am Monday morning. It’s highly useful and I might be writing an entire article on how it can benefit you. It integrates into GMail seamlessly, so I know those of you who need it, are gonna love it.
- Chromepaper– For all of you Instapaper junkies out there, this is the extension for you. It mainly serves as a bookmark on your home tab screen, but it is offering offline sync for all your Instapaper articles. So even if you loose your connection, you can still read the articles that you saved for later. Pretty cool if you ask me.
- Chrome Nanny – I just installed this one and I think I am gonna love it. It allows you to monitor how much time you spent at each website and allows you to bloc certain websites, during the certain times of the day. It’s great for those who need that extra little nudge in the right direction in order to get themselves working.
- Clip to Evernote – You hear it from me many times and you will hear it many times more. Evernote is one awesome application and this extension is making your Evernote browsing experience even better! When you install this plugin, you will be able to see Evernote notes within your Google search results, and many other things, like improved clipping.
- Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google) – Automatically previews pdfs, powerpoint presentations, and other documents in Google Docs Viewer. So instead of downloading all that PDF’s on the web, you can check them out first directly in Chrome, than choose weather you need them or not.
- F.B. Purity – Removes application spam and other clutter from your facebook homepage. If you are using Facebook, this one is pure gold. Your Newsfeed will be clean as a babies butt. 🙂
- Facebook Photo Zoom – Instead of clicking on all the pictures on Facebook that you want to see, now you simply can cross your mouse over and it will be zoomed, without you leaving the current page. It’s pretty neat for all the Facebook junkies out there.
- Forget me – Delete everything about a website. Cookies, History, localStorage, sessionStorage…everything! – It can come in handy if you are watching, erhm.. You shouldn’t be doing those kinds of things when you’re on your job 😉 It can come in handy, when a website remembers you by cookies and blocks you access. So you can fix that mistake if you one click delete all your cookies.
- Google Chrome To Phone Extension – You want to push the website you’re seeing on your computer now, to your phone, now it’s a click of a button, but you need related application for your Android. There is also a reverse version, which works in combination with Dropbox, which is totally awesome.
- Google Dictionary – I always forget using this one, but it’s quite awesome! View definitions easily as you browse the web.
- Google Reader Full Feed – There are certain blogs and sites that don’t allow full text in your reader. For those pesky evil webmasters we found a solution in this extension. It shows full story of the current entry in google reader.
- Google Translate – This extension translates entire webpages into a language of your choice with one click. By the Google Translate team. It can be quite handy, so you don’t waste time, copy pasting this into Google translate.
- Google Voice (by Google) – You know I already praised the Google Voice as a great substitute for your telephone and what awesome productivity things you can do with it. I didn’t tell you that it can be all that easier and that you can use it straight from your browser to send texts, start calls, check your history…
- HootSuite Hootlet – This website itself is great for those who are related to social media or simply are handling too many different Twitter accounts. Hootsuite Hootlet takes it one step furhter allowing you the ease of share, on many different accounts. If you are into social media, this extension is for you.
- IE Tab – This simply opens up Internet Explorer Tab within your Google Chrome. I rarely use this one, for the purposes of opening my e-banking accounts. Some of the old bank websites require you to use Internet Explorer and hence, for me there is still need for this extension. I believe that there are other uses to, but, that’s the only one I found for it so far.
- Instachrome – Save your URLs to Instapaper. It also allows you to automatically close the tab that you are sending to Instapaper, so it’s cool way of decluttering your tabs.
- iReader – This is similar to Instapaper, just for the articles that I want to read straight away. It pulls the content of the article, pops it in the same window and clouds the ads and other things found on the website. Pretty neat, for those occasions when you don’t want to send an article to Instapaper, but would rather read it right away.
- LastPass – This extension is absolutely a must for anyone who uses computer! It’s the last pass you will need to remember and I use it on all of my devices and browsers. Simple and effective, highly recommended!
- Minimalist Instapaper Reader – Cleans away some of the things on already minimalistic Instapaper. It doesn’t seem to work at the moment, but I wrote an email to the developer, so I hope it’s gonna be fixed.
- Personal Blocklist (not by Google) – I am using this one to block the spammy websites from my search results. I am not sure weather this is useful yet or not, but I gave it a shot.
- Proxy Switchy – Since I am not living in the USA, some of the web content is blocked for me by default. For this occassion I use proxies and instead of making it hard, I just click a button and it appears as if I am from USA. Voila! All you need is an active proxy in order to use this extension effectively.
- Rapportive – This is a gmail addon, that allows me to see additional information of my contacts instead of ads. I love it. This extension deserves an entire article for itself!
- Reader Plus – For Google Reader™ ; enhance your favorite RSS reader by adding missing favicons and a collection of others features.
- RescueTime Chrome Productivity Meter – Get an instant and easy understanding of how you spend your time online and compare yourself to the rest of the world.
- RSS Subscription Extension – My all time favorite! On a simple click of a button, you subscribe yourself to the RSS feed. If you are using RSS readers, this one is a must. If you aren’t using RSS readers, than you gotta drop by and read my article on the power of Google Reader!
- SearchPreview – My Google search results now come with a thumbnail of the website that I am about to visit.
- Send using Gmail (no button) – Makes the Gmail™ webmail your default email application (original Google extension repackaged without toolbar button, with safer links and working ‘copy address’ option).
- Shareoholic for Google Chrome – The easiest way to share interesting webpages using Facebook, Twitter, Email, Gmail, Buzz, Reader, Bookmarks, and more…
- Slideshow – Turn your favorite photo sites, such as Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, and Google Images into a slideshow. I installed this one long ago, I thought that many of the slideshows I was watching on Flickr were site’s native function. Now I realized when I wrote this article whats it all about 🙂
- socialGmail – Puts favicons beside emails from your friends, using their pictures. It’s kinda cool, I know with whom I am emailing with, gives a more social touch to it.
- Stayfocused – StayFocusd increases your productivity by limiting the amount of time that you can spend on time-wasting websites.
- Strickt Pomodoro – I started using this one a couple of days ago, since I’ve seen it being featured on some of the blogs I’ve read. And I can say it’s quite effective. The fact that I have a timer keeps me focused by itself. The fact that I know that I can’t access time wasting websites, makes me stop even bothering to click on them, so I am working for whole straight 25 minutes. I like it and believe I will make the habit out of using it.
- Swap My Cookies – If you have multiple accounts let Swap My Cookies manage them for you! But I must warn you it’s kinda buggy, so I use it only in cases of emergency. It’s failed attempt to revive the “Cookie Swap” from old Mozilla Firefox 3.6. I still keep it for those purposes of going through my clients accounts.
- Tasky for Google Tasks – As the name says, I click on it, and it pops out my list. Quite handy and lovely. You know already how huge fan of a Google tasks I am.
- Zoom for Twitter® – It enlarges the avatars on Twitter.
- Ultimate Chrome Flag – One of my top extensions, it gives me all the relevant data about the website in one place. Such as: Alexa Traffic rank, and Google Page Rank. Anyone who surfs a lot and wants to know more about websites they are visiting, should definitively get this one!
- Xmarks Bookmark Sync – Backup and sync your bookmarks, passwords and open tabs across computers and browsers. Xmarks is also available for Firefox, Safari and IE. It makes any computer I sit on, immediately my home, along with Last Pass.
Hope this list helped you out. You are welcome to share your own favorite extensions and I will expand on this list and include you as a recommender and will link back to you.
