Does anyone else feel so limited when using a blank Chrome browser like me? There are times you probably wished you could resize your tabs the way you like, turn them into dropdown lists, or kick your favorite articles into a safe space till you have enough time to deal with them.
Or what about those annoying cookies that pop-up from who-knows-where and disrupt your browsing experience. Not to talk of the intrusive and annoying Google ads that cover your favorite content while surfing the internet.
It’s time to say goodbye to these unpleasant experiences and take your chrome app to another level with chrome extensions.
But What Are Chrome Extensions And How Do They Work?
Chrome extensions are web software or programs that were developed with programming languages such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, and more to improve your browsing experience.
What these extensions technically do is that they help you tweak or modify preset chrome functions into however you like it. For instance, you can use a chrome extension to block out intrusive cookies which are otherwise expected to pop up when you visit a website.
Some other extensions introduce entirely different functionalities which enable you to turn your tabs into window layouts or modify your web Youtube view with cinema modes.
The list keeps going on and we are going to explore a few below.
50 Best Chrome Extensions to Enhance Your Browsing Experience in 2023
There are literally tons of chrome extensions. But let’s explore the top 50 extensions that will enhance your browsing experience in 2023.
1. AdBlock For Chrome
We all get annoying pop-ups when we surf through the internet, and that disrupts our browsing experience. To avoid that, you should use Adblock, a chrome extension with over 226,000 five-star reviews and almost 60 million users globally. This extension helps you block intrusive ads not just on websites but also on social media platforms like Facebook and Youtube.
2. Grammarly
Grammarly is an AI tool that helps writers and non-writers to produce clear and concise content for whatever purpose. This chrome extension automatically detects grammatical errors, wrong tones, and imperfect words wherever you are writing. Then it provides real-time suggestions to fine-tune your words and help you craft the best content possible with ease.
3. LastPass Password Manager
Tired of typing in your passwords every time you want to log into a web account? Yeah, that sucks. And that’s why you need to use LastPass, a verified password manager with over 10 million users and several thousands of five-star reviews. LassPass also helps you save your payment card details in a safe vault and autofills payment boxes when you prompt it to. This ensures you don’t have to carry your payment card everywhere or cram tens of digits.
4. Honey: Automatic Coupons & Rewards
Do you love to shop online but the ridiculous prices buzz you off? Then you need the Honey extension, one of the tools managed by PayPal. This extension automatically scans each store you visit and provides you with available coupons to reduce your checkout cost. With the Honey extension, you can add items to a track list and get notified immediately there is a price drop. What’s more interesting is that you can use this extension to compare product prices from different sellers on Amazon.
5. Pushbullet
If your work requires you to always be on the laptop, then you need something that can save you the stress of switching over to your mobile phone anytime a message pops in. Pushbullet connects your devices together. This means whatever messages you receive on your mobile device automatically pops up on your laptop screen. Moreover, you can reply to those messages right from your PC. This chrome extension also helps you to seamlessly move files and even links between the devices connected.
6. Momentum
Momentum is another awesome chrome extension that allows you to customize every new tab page however you want it. For instance, you can set up each new tab page to feature your to-do list in order to keep you current with your daily plans. Other cool things you can do with Momentum includes adding mind-calming quote series, artistic visuals, shortcuts to frequently-visited websites, and weather information.
7. Save to Pocket
Many times we come across valuable resources on the internet that we can’t consume immediately probably because of more pressing tasks at hand. But that’s not a problem with Pocket. This chrome extension helps you save articles, visuals including videos from Youtube, recipes from your favorite Pinterest network and many more. Once you have the chance, you only need a click to revisit these resources without gags.
8. Evernote Web Clipper
Similar to Pocket, Evernote web clipper helps you throw every resource and idea you get from the internet into a safe space until you need them. You can directly save web pages, screenshots, and even PDFs. One interesting feature of Evernote is that it helps you screen capture just that part of a webpage you need. And this means you don’t have to keep those visibly annoying ads and sidebars. Moreover, you can add texts, highlights, and special notes to your screenshots.
9. SEO Minion
If you’re a SEO specialist and content marketer, then here’s one for you. SEO minion is a chrome extension that helps you carry out in-browsing checks for On-Page SEO, broken links, and deeper SEO analysis. Users can also access SERP preview in real-time for their websites. Other features include Hreflang tag validity checker and location stimulator for certain keywords in two different locations.
10. LeadLeaper
LeadLeaper is an email finder that works by capturing email addresses of lead profiles from LinkedIn search results. Also, this chrome extension can help sort the addresses captured and prevent duplicates in your database. What’s more is that you can integrate LeadLeaper with your CRM software, Google G-suite, and Microsoft Office 365 to manage bulky email campaigns.
11. Data Miner
Data miner is a web page scraper that helps you extract texts, tables, and lists which are then uploaded to Google sheets for sorting. If you’re in the sales department, you will find this chrome extension really useful in searching and extracting lead info from a HTML page. Data miner has other features such as multi-page crawling, email extraction, page downloads, and automated crawling of paginated websites.
12. uBlock Origin
In case you’re looking for an extension that blocks more than just ads, that’s uBlock Origin. The Ublock origin extension helps you set your browsing preference to filter out distractions that could come from cookie warnings, overlays, and many others. Users can also prevent third-parties from tracking their browsing activities and history. Additionally, uBlock saves you the stress of manually blocking online malicious URLs.
13. Google Keep
Google keep is another alternative extension to Pocket that enables you to save web resources for later. Moreover, you can sync whatever you’ve saved across different devices to ensure easy accessibility anytime and anywhere. Things you can save with Google Keep include URLs, visuals, and texts. You can also add extra notes or highlights to the resources you save.
14. Tab Wrangler
Do you have the habit of always leaving so many tabs open on your chrome app? Tab wrangler saves you the stress and automatically removes old, inactive tabs that you haven’t re-visited for long periods. No worries since you can always access the closed tabs anytime you want. Also, you can use tab wrangler to lock tabs from closing and prevent auto-closing from your favorite sites.
15. OneTab
Similar to Tab Wrangler, One Tab helps you manage your lengthy inactive tabs and reduce clutters. However, One tab does not remove them. Instead, this chrome extension converts your tabs into a dropdown list which you can access by tapping the Onetab icon. This saves your operating system’s CPU and battery while prioritizing system speed and efficiency.
16. Google Translate
Google Translate is a chrome extension that helps you to translate texts on a web page into any language you want. What makes this tool important is that you don’t have to leave your current page, copy and paste texts to translate, or switch between tabs. By highlighting the sections you want or using the right-click button, you’ll see a quick translation in your preferred language. Also, you can use this extension to translate an entire page, not just sections only.
17. StayFocusd
So here’s one for you if you easily get distracted and spend too much time surfing Twitter and Facebook on the net, checking out every updated article in your feed, and ending up doing nothing productive. StayFocusd helps you allocate time to your favorite websites and locks you out once you’ve spent past the set time. Note that the time allocated is entirely in your control.
18. RescueTime
RescueTime is a productive-centric extension that helps you track all the sites you visit on chrome while allocating the amount of time you spend on each. This gives you a good overview of just how much is too much for the pages you check-in daily. In turn, you’re able to cut stakes and reduce time spent while boosting your productivity by focusing on more crucial things. You can also use it in conjunction with StayFocusd to block those sites after time’s up.
19. Dark Reader
Constantly exposing yourself to white and bright screens always, especially at night is definitely not a good thing as your eye muscles are completely tensed. Dark Reader inverts the colors all on your chrome pages into black to give you the dark mode view. You can also adjust the brightness, fonts, and even contrast of your web page display. This helps your eye muscles relax while ensuring you get to spend more time on your laptop.
20. Tampermonkey
This is for techy geeks. Tampermonkey helps you “tamper” with pages, modify their layouts, and add features that you want, the way you want them. You can use this extension to run user-scripts directly on a website and automate some actions that enhance your browsing experience.
21. Hover Zoom
Hover Zoom is a tool that automatically enlarges visuals like images when you hover on them. Let’s say you visit online stores such as Amazon, you don’t need to always click in to zoom the product images before getting a good view. Another interesting fact is that the enlarged images produced by Hover Zoom do not blur out or look visibly pixelated.
22. Earth View from Google Earth
With over 800,000 users and 2500 regional images, Earth view is an extension that helps customize your new tabs on chrome. Every time you open a fresh page, this tool displays a captivating landscape from Google earth and gives you that virtual feeling of surfing the world right from your browsing device. It’s more or less the perfect break from the usual boring and rigid default view.
23. Boomerang for Gmail
Manually setting up meeting schedules, staying up in bed to send emails at the right time, and crafting emails from scratch can be really tiring. Boomerang for Gmail is an email productivity tool that helps you sort these tasks by automatically fixing your schedules with a calendar, setting up recurring emails, and scheduling emails with time triggers. As an AI tool, Boomerang can help you write awesome emails and track responses.
24. Video Downloader Professional
Tired of streaming videos online without being able to download them? You can use the Video Downloader Professional extension to download videos from a website directly to your PC’s hard disk. Any time you browse a page that has some videos on it, this extension detects their source files and lists them in accessible formats available for download. You can even change your video resolutions and save data when downloading large files.
25. Session Buddy
Session buddy is like your personal assistant that helps you save, manage, and retrieve your browsing sessions with ease. You can use it to store your open tabs, list them as collections, and categorize them with titles. This keeps your chrome’s bar from getting clustered with tons of active and inactive tabs, and also frees up your operating system’s memory. Additionally, Session Buddy helps you recover previous tabs after a crash with only two clicks.
26. Ghostery
Simply browsing up a term on search engines exposes you to different web trackers, usually from companies who want your personal data for their marketing purposes. And yes, that can be really annoying. Ghostery is a tool that you can use to prevent auto-tracking from third-party websites, block annoying and intrusive ads, and boost your website’s loading time.
27. Magic Actions for YouTube
Magic Actions for Youtube helps you tweak your Youtube experience with cinema modes, autoplay settings, and auto-HD features. You can literally get into the cinema feeling with a simple toggle even when you’re right on your bed. This extension also allows you to take in-stream or in-video quality snapshots in PNG, WEBP, and JPEGs which you can later use on social media or any other platform. Other interesting features include day and night mode, with additional twenty predefined colors, and options to set up custom themes.
28. Tab Resize
Having to switch between tabs can be time-draining and sometimes unpleasant especially when you have tons of tabs to work with. The Tab Resize extension solves this problem by helping you turn your tabs into layouts. That means you can have up to six or more tabs opened as visible layouts on separate windows and easily move between them.
29. Vimium
Not a fan of scrolling with your mouse, or maybe you’re already so used to keyboard-gaming and you can’t get a fix around mouses? That’s not a problem with Vimium. This extension lets you use your keyboard keys as shortcuts to navigate your chrome browser. So if you want to open a new tab, just slam the “t” button. And Viola!!! There you have it. You also have access to tons of other shortcuts.
30. Stylish – Custom themes for any website
Stylish is just as it sounds. You can customize the web pages you visit with thousands of themes and backgrounds. This includes modifying the font sizes, styles, changing button colors, and even adding animations. Other things include creating your own custom styles from scratch, sharing it with the stylish community for public use, and integrating different themes on social media platforms like web Facebook and Youtube.
31. Send from Gmail (by Google)
The Send from Gmail extension allows you to quickly compose emails on the webpage you are on. It does this by making Gmail your default email provider, then uses the page title as the subject and the selected page text and link address as the message.
32. Checker Plus for Google Calendar
Checker Plus for Google Calendar is a tool for managing your time and staying organized. With this extension, you can set reminders and add events directly from your browser. You can also view and edit these events right from the extension. And since it syncs with your Google account, you literally have access to the extension on any device.
33. Postman – REST Client
If you manage multiple requests and collections on Chrome, Tab Postman is the extension for you. With this tool, you can work on different tasks in separate tabs and stay focused and productive. It’s like having multiple browser windows open, but without the confusion. Tabbed Postman makes it easy to switch between tabs, close, and reorder as needed.
34. Infinity New Tab
Infinity New Tab is a simple but powerful extension that helps you stay focused and organized with a fully customizable “new tab” page that displays your goals, tasks, and to-do lists. You can also set a daily focus word to keep you motivated and view a beautiful, customizable background image. Infinity New Tab allows you to integrate a note-taking feature similar to evernote.
35. Toby Tabs
If you’ve ever been in a situation where you had multiple tabs open and couldn’t seem to find the one you needed, Toby Tabs is just the fix you need. It is a tab management tool that allows you to organize all your tabs into collections for easy access. All you have to do is drag and drop your browser tags into these collections and access them on any desktop with automatic sync. This Chrome extension even allows you to use tags to label collections and create to-do lists.
36. Workona
Workona is another tool that helps you organize your work properly in browsers. It allows you to stay focused by organizing your tabs into workspaces. More so, Workona works in the cloud and auto-saves all your tabs, so you won’t have to worry about losing work. You can even save memory and keep your computer running smoothly thanks to the tool’s tab suspension feature. From Bookmark tabs to search tabs, tab groups, and sync tabs, Workona makes tab management truly seamless.
37. Raindrop.io
It can get challenging when you add bookmarks and just can’t seem to find the tabs where you think they should be. Raindrop.io solves this problem by helping you to effectively manage your bookmarks. Users will also find it easy to organize highlights, annotations, and tabs. Moreover, Raindrop.io serves as a permanent library where you can securely access your bookmarks from anywhere.
38. EverHelper - Note, Bookmark, Password, and Form Filler
EverHelper helps you keep bookmarks and dials in an HTTP-secure area that is synchronized and accessible from any computer. The tool allows you to keep your bookmarks private with a password. Not to mention that you can rest assured that you won’t lose any important bookmarks thanks to the online Backup and trash features. EverHelper allows you to archive, duplicate, and even import your bookmarks to the FVD Speed Dial in 3 clicks.
39. Checker Plus for Gmail
Have you ever been so caught up in work that you forget to check your emails and end up missing a very important one? Well, you can say goodbye to that with the Checker Plus for Gmail tool. This extension allows you to get notifications, read, listen to, or even delete emails without having to open the Gmail app. There is also a voice notification feature that reads out your emails on prompt.
40. OneTab Pro
Most people face the lagging PC issue due to high CPU load. And more often than not, this is as a result of multiple tabs open on Chrome. OneTab is an extension that solves this by saving up to 95% of memory as it allows you to convert all your tabs into a list. Then you can restore them individually or at once.
41. Papier (Digital Whiteboard)
Papier is a Chrome extension that helps you jot down your ideas as they come. In most cases when you get awesome ideas while working, you end up forgetting them. But with Papier, you can easily write these thoughts down without interfering with what you were doing before. A great feature of this extension is that your write-ups are backed up directly to Chrome and you don’t need an account or sync.
42. Postlight Reader
Whether you’re conducting research or just reading for entertainment, those ads that pop up all over the screen can be a real nuisance. Postlight Reader clears away these ads and clutter leaving you with a clean view of just text and images. The extension has other features that allows you to adjust typeface and text size, toggling between light or dark themes for a more seamless experience.
43. Fireshot
With an award as "The Best Free Google Chrome Extension" by PCMAG.COM, Fireshot is an extension that allows you to take full and partial screenshots. You only need to use the Shift key to select the text or image area you want to screenshot. Fireshot also allows you to paste multiple URLs for automatic batch capture and the screenshots are stored locally on your computer.
44. Loom
Loom is an extension that helps you record your screen and share them easily. During screen recording, you can also decide to record your face or the environment using your device’s camera. Some extra features include being able to record only one chrome tab or your entire window. The videos are automatically saved to the cloud, so you can access your videos anywhere and even control viewing access.
45. Note Board - Sticky Notes App
With Note Board, you don’t have to just write down ideas, you can simply screenshot any web content, resize it, and save it as a sticky note. A more recent update even allows you to use ChatGPT to create notes with the answers of the AI. Note Board also helps you schedule reminders for notes, and find them in the same place you initially saved them.
46. Block your Google Analytics
Block your Google Analytics is an extension that blocks tracking scripts used by Google to collect data about website users. This ensures Google doesn’t record your personal visit to your website as an actual visit. That way, you don’t need to deal with inaccurate visits and views while you get to focus on visits from third-party users only.
47. Clockify Time Tracker
If you’d like to know how much time you spend being productive, then Clockify Time Tracker is the tool for you. It automatically tracks the time spent on various tasks, or you can input it manually. This extension is very beneficial in improving productivity thanks to features such as idle detection, Pomodoro timers, reminders, etc. So when you walk away from your laptop, it automatically stops tracking.
48. Privacy Badger
Privacy Badger is a tool that blocks invisible trackers on your computer. This extension sends the Global Privacy Control signal to opt you out of data sharing and selling. It also enables the Do Not Track signal to tell companies not to track you. If tracking bots ignore this, Privacy Badger will find a way to block them and keep you off the radar.
49. Todoist for Chrome
Ranked as “the best to-do list right now” by The Verge, Todoist is an extension that helps you organize your work and life. The tool allows you to add websites as tasks, complete tasks from the browser, and plan your day. Not to mention that you can do more on both desktop and mobile with features such as reminders, progress tracking, and recurring due dates.
50. Tab Modifier
Tab Modifier, as the name implies, is a tool for modifying your tabs on Chrome. This means that you can rename a tab, change its icon, pin it, and avoid losing them when your system suddenly shuts down. Other customizable features give you much control on how you want your tabs to look or respond.
Conclusion
Wheeww! I bet you’ve already gotten tons of extensions that will transform your browsing experience, kick out those ads that suck, push back cookies to where they belong, and help you enjoy your time on the web.
Of course, you also need to be careful of bugging your chrome app with too many extensions to avoid system lagging. Only choose the ones you need and install them while ensuring your device’s security is on to avoid cyber attacks.
Lastly, have fun with your extensions.
