Make your Chrome browser more flexible and powerful with these handy extensions. I use these eleven Chrome extensions every day.
Evernote Web Clipper
Save any webpage to Evernote. I use this for almost every single article I read online. Whenever I ask myself, “what was that article I read about XYZ?” I can search my Evernote and easily find the article. Plus, you can tag your articles to make connections between what you read. Evernote gives you the option of saving the entire article with the original formatting, or you can simply the article’s formatting.
Google Art Project
When you make a new tab in Chrome, it defaults to some boring page. Replace that with artwork from museums around the world. A new artwork is featured every day. I was previously using a similar extension, Momentum that featured a different photo every day. The photos were nice landscapes, so Momentum is a good alternative–especially if you’d like your todo list over-layed on top of the photo.
Google Cast
Push any browser tab onto your tv set. Very handy for sites that have streaming video you want to watch on your bigger screen. Or if you want to show off photos to your parents from Facebook, everyone doesn’t have to huddle around a screen. Just push the tab over to your TV. (You’ll need to have a Google Chromecast plugged into your tv set first.)
Google Mail Checker
Be immediately notified when you have new email to your gmail account. A little number appears on the browser icon telling you how many emails you have waiting to be read.
Highly Highlighter
Come across a block of text that is really interesting? You could upload a screengrab to Twitter. Or you could use this handy plugin. The Highly service collects together all your highlights. I’ve been using this only for a couple weeks, and I already have 190 highlights. Finding passages to highlight while you read will increase your engagement within whatever you read. This is a very fun extension.
Honey
Forget searching for online coupon codes. This site will automatically check all the coupon codes for you, and find the best deal. It’s totally amazing. While you are at your shopping cart, click the honey button, and the page will literally refresh every time as it tries all the codes in its database.
Hypothesis
Annotation for webpages. As of right now, it’s a bit more of a scholarly audience. For a more mainstream audience, use the Highly Highlighter. But one area that Hypothesis is better than Highly is commenting. You cannot comment with Highly. Hypothesis allows you place comments anywhere on a webpage for others to discover and respond to.
Instapaper
Save articles to read later on your phone or tablet. If an article is a bit too long to read at the moment, you just click the Instagram button, and it automatically saves a simplified version of the article to your reading queue. Another use of the simplifying formatting is when a website has tons of distracting ads. You can save the article to Instapaper for relaxed reading.
LastPass
Saves all your passwords for all websites in encrypted format, so you never have to type them again! Every time you open your browser, you only have to enter your primary password once. I was skeptical of this extension at first, but over the past year, this extension has proved extremely worthy.
Reddit Check
Automatically checks if the article you are reading is on reddit. I have three uses for this extension: 1) Easily check the popularity of an article by seeing the number of upvotes in your browser toolbar. 2) Quickly find additional comments about an article. 3) If I’m reading an article that is really good and I want to share it on Reddit, I don’t have to manually search Reddit to see if it’s already posted.
Tweets Counter for Twitter
Automatically checks if the article you are reading has been tweeted, and by how many people. Due to Twitter’s API, this doesn’t search the entire Twitter archive, only the past month or so. If I’m sharing an article on Twitter, I’ll use this plug-in to see anyone else has already tweeted it, because I might reply to that person’s tweet.
Tech blogger Anthony Dean wrote about his six favorite Chrome extensions. Between his list of six extensions, and mine with eleven, we have one overlap with LastPass. If you have any favorite Chrome extensions, make sure to comment on his blog post.