The Chrome menu bar can be a great location for shortcuts. I use my menu bar to get instant notifications of new emails and Linkedin messages. My menu bar also allows me to take the webpage I’m currently viewing and quick check it’s popularity, save an article, and annotate the page.
However, your Chrome menu bar can quickly become a big mess. Install a new Chrome extension, and almost every time a new icon will appear in your menu bar. Your menu bar can get quite crowded with all these icons. My menu bar was getting so bad, that I could barely read the URL in address field. Sure, the Google Arts & Culture add-on is nice. But I don’t need their icon in my menu bar.
Yesterday I trimmed down the number of Chrome extensions in my menu bar. It feels really good. About 20 icons were crowded together. Now only 11 remain.
Here are my 11 essential Chrome menu bar icons, sorted by their function:
Social Media popularity
Reddit Check
Check if current URL is submitted on reddit. Submit link or join the discussion.
Tweets Counter for Twitter
Shows tweets for current URL and stats for Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and other share services.
Notifiers
LinkedIn Extension
This extension lights up with a new notification count whenever you have new activity waiting for you at LinkedIn.
Notifier for Gmail
Multiple label and account notifier for Google Mail (Gmail)
Saving webpages
Evernote Web Clipper
Use the Evernote extension to save things you see on the web into your Evernote account.
Instapaper
Instapaper browser extension to save links for offline reading.
FireShot
Take full webpage screenshots. Capture, edit and save them to PDF/JPEG/GIF/PNG, upload, print, send to OneNote, clipboard or email.
Annotating webpages
Highly Highlighter
Highlight the web to share the important parts. I currently have 252 highlights.
Hypothesis – Web & PDF Annotation
Collaboratively annotate, highlight, and tag web pages and PDF documents. In theory, I love this add-on. But I rarely use it. So far, I have only 23 highlights.
Publish link
Save to Feedly Board
Save web pages to your Feedly boards. Another one that I’d like to use more, so it sits in my menu bar.
Push to another screen
Cast
Push any tab in Chrome to your TV set with a Google Chromecast stick.
A couple years ago I wrote 11 Chrome extensions I use every day. These aren’t the same 11, but there certainly is a good amount of overlap.
Instapaper could easily be a link in my URL bar, but I use the service so much, it earns the icon bar placement.