If you use the Google Chrome browser without using extensions, then sorry honey, but—ya basic. There is a veritable smorgasbord of software that can totally enhance your browsing experience. We’ve hand-picked 50 of what we think are some of the best Chrome extensions out there. Our alphabetical list has an emphasis on practicality and usefulness, but we’ve also included some more fun and light-hearted options.
Up your productivity, improve your online time, and have a Google-themed giggle doing it. Here’s our mega-list of the coolest Google Chrome add-ons ever.
The 50 best Chrome extensions
1) Amazon Assistant for Chrome
Avid Amazon shoppers would be wise to get themselves hooked up with Amazon’s official browser extension. It will provide you with desktop notifications about orders, deals, deliveries and more. It will also help your compare products while you’re browsing with pricing and ratings information.
2) Wolfram|Alpha (Official)
This extension gives you an official Wolfram|Alpha Button so you can search a “computational knowledge engine” from anywhere on the web without having to load up the site.
3) Awesome Screenshot: Screen Video Recorder
Taking the simple act of grabbing a screenshot to the next level, Awesome Screenshot lets you capture all or any part of a web page, screencast, record your screen as a video, make annotations, blur out information or content you want to hide and then share easily with a one-click upload.
4) Breaking News Tab
This clever customizable extension gives you breaking news from top news sources of your choice every time you open a new Chrome tab. With news from over 130 regions, you can stay up-to-date with current affairs without having to check individual sources. If you see a story you’re interested in, you can simply expand it to read it straight from the tab.
5) Break Timer
We all know we need to take regular breaks from our screens, but sometimes that’s easier said than done. The Break Timer extension will help you remember to pause with a customizable timer that reminds you to take some time to avoid eye-strain and RSI. You can choose to have a simple notification or a fullscreen break window—and for the times you really can’t stop what you’re doing, you can select to skip a break.
6) Calculator
This adds a cute little calculator icon to your browser toolbar. When you need to do some math, clicking the icon will summon the calculator into a resizable pop-up. Clean-looking and perfectly straightforward to use, this is a handy free tool.
7) Comments to Cats
We’re including this as a fun one, but an option that actually might help protect your mental health while online. Comments to Cats replaces the comments on sites like YouTube with feline imagery, preventing you from seeing horrible opinions by instead offering cute kitties.
8) Dropbox for Gmail
Dropbox for Gmail will save you some time as it essentially lets you preview and send Dropbox files and links from your Google Mail compose window. The extension cunningly adds a Dropbox button, clicking it will give you options like recent files, or the ability to search, etc, etc.
9) Earth View from Google Earth
Earth View gives you a stunning satellite image from the Google Earth database every time you open a new tab. If you particularly like what you see, you can choose to save it and use it as wallpaper.
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10) Email Tracking for Gmail & Inbox—Mailtrack
Promising to offer mail tracking “free forever and unlimited” this extension for Gmail and Inbox lets you see which emails have been read, when and how many times. You’ll see a double check mark when your email has been opened, instantly ending any but-have-they-read-it-yet dilemmas. You can also use this to filter to your mail by which messages have been read and which haven’t.
11) Emoji Keyboard by EmojiOne
EmojiOne’s fun extension gives you access to an entire emoji library so you can easily input emoticons anywhere in Chrome. What gives this option the edge is that face the emoji database is searchable by keyword, so you can find what you’re looking for quickly and easily.
12) Fair AdBlocker
Advert blocking software has been around for a good while now, but this extension offers some funky functionality that allows you to whitelist websites you’d like to support while blocking ads on more annoying sites. It can automatically adios autoplaying video ads, pop-up ads, expanding ads, overlay ads, prestitial ads or interstitial ads, and more.
13) Floating Player
Floating Player lets you watch YouTube videos in a small window while you browse the web or work on a different tab. Once installed, you just need to right-click to see the option to open the video in a pop-up window.
14) FoxClocks
If you need to know what time it is in multiple time zones, this tool is a nifty way to do so. You can customize your clock set up by country, region, or city. At the click of a button, you can easily view the time in different zones. As a bonus, unlike some other world clock extensions, FoxClocks automatically updates with daylight saving time changes so you don’t have to manually change your settings.
15) GIPHY for Chrome
Add GIPHY gifs to your Gmail messages, Facebook and Twitter posts and Slack conversations with this handy extension. You simply click, search, then drag and drop your chosen graphic straight into your web page.
16) Google Calendar
This extension gives you a button on your browser that you can click to see what’s coming up on your gCal. The button also shows an orange plus sign if you there are events on the page you’re looking at that can be added to your calendar.
17) Google Dictionary (by Google)
With support for multiple languages, this extension gives you a word’s definition in a pop-up window when you double click on it. You can also see the full definition of a word or phrase in the toolbar dictionary. There’s also the option to translate foreign words into the language of your choice.
18) Google Keep Chrome Extension
Another bookmarking option, this is ideal for Google Keep users. This adds a button that allows you to save all kinds of web content and links down to Google Keep, complete with the option to add notes and labels.
19) Google Mail Checker
Basic, but brilliant for Gmailers, this displays the number of unread messages in your Google Mail inbox and lets you open Gmail at the click of a button.
20) Grammarly for Chrome
This wicked widget has your back for spelling and punctuation mistakes and grammar errors. Its contextual spell check is clever enough to even detect correctly spelled words used in the wrong context. In addition, it looks out for cases where you misuse homophones like lose/loose and affect/effect, etc.
21) The Great Suspender
An essential extension for anyone who is guilty of too-many-tabs-open overload, The Great Suspender automatically suspends tabs that you’re not actively using. This helps reduce Chrome’s memory strain. When you want to return to the frozen tabs, they restore and reload when you click anywhere on the page.
22) Honey
Online shoppers in the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, and India can potentially save some dollar (or pound, or rupee) with Honey. If you click on the Honey extension button during your checkout process, Honey will automatically apply any available coupon codes to your cart. It’s not surprising that it’s racked up more than nine million users.
23) Hover Zoom+
Hover Zoom+ offers one neat trick—the ability to hover over images and videos on the likes of Facebook, Amazon and Reddit and enlarge the visual to full size in your browser window.
24) IMDb Ratings for Netflix
This is one of those tools that will make you think “how did I ever live without it?” It seamlessly integrates IMDb ratings into the Netflix interface so you can see what kind of score a TV show or movie has without having to go and look it up separately.
25) Instapaper
A must-have for Instapaper users, this extension is an easy-to-use tool for saving web pages to read later on your iPhone or iPad, Android device, computer, or Kindle. As you’d expect, it saves articles into your Instapaper queue.
26) Joymems
As its name would suggest, this neat extension can bring a little bit of joy to your browsing experience every time you open a new tab. It connects to your Google Photos and loads up one of your images with each new tab you open.
27) LastPass
One of the better-known online tools, LastPass is a must-have extension that is guaranteed to make your digital life easier. It’s a password manager that you can save all your passwords, personal information and payment details into so that as you browse, LastPass will autologin to every site you’ve saved.
28) Lookup Companion for Wikipedia
Frequent Wikipedia users need this unofficial add-on that offers a quick and easy mini lookup tool for the online database. It works like a mini-browser, so you can go back to previous searches if you get caught up in a click-through maze and you can customize the size of the pop-up window.
29) Momentum
This popular extension replaces your new tab page with what the developers’ call a “personal dashboard.” This customizable page will give you a new inspirational photo and quote each day, the weather forecast and present you with your to-do list, goal for the day and more.
30) Move It
This Chrome plug-in takes the break timer concept to a new level by giving you a random brain break and a quick exercise to complete at intervals you determine. Once you’ve done your physical activity, you click to dismiss the timer and it will reset ready to give you another break at your set time.
31) PanicButton
If you’re up to no good online and you need to hide your activity in a hurry, the PanicButton is the tool for you. Once installed, a quick press of the F4 key or a click of the browser button hides all the tabs you have open and replaces them with a “safe” site. You can then choose to restore your hidden tabs or delete them.
32) Papier
Papier is a clutter-free way of making notes online. This extension gives you a virtual notepad when you open a new tab that you can use to jot down your thoughts, to-do list, shopping needs, whatever. With a very clean interface, it’s an easy way to never forget an important thought.
33) Personal Blocklist by Google
If there’s a site (or sites) you don’t want to appear in your Google search results, this extension can help you do the swerve by blocking it from showing up.
34) Print Friendly & PDF
If you want to save paper and ink when you print, Print Friendly will help you do just that. It optimizes web pages by removing adverts, then lets you decide if you want to delete any extraneous content or change the font size before you hit the print button. You can also use Print Friendly to generate PDFs.
35) Official Quora Chrome Extension
This official Chrome extension adds a Quora badge to your browser from which you can see when you’ve received notifications and directly ask questions by clicking the button.
36) Save to Facebook
This official Save to Facebook button is a handy way to bookmark content around the web for regular Facebook users. You can save articles, videos, products, images and more by hitting the button. You’ll then be able to access that content via the “Saved” bookmark on Facebook.
37) Save to Google Drive
This useful tool from Google lets you save images, videos, documents, web pages, and HTML5 audio directly to your Google Drive. It adds a browser action to allow you to save the page you’re on and a right-click menu to save hyperlinks and media.
38) Search by Image (by Google)
This cool tool lets you right click on any online image and select the option to “Search Google with this image.” The results will show you where that image appears online and gives you similar image results too.
39) Send from Gmail (by Google)
This extension opens a Gmail “Compose” mail window if you click on any email address online. While that’s reason enough for Gmail users to need it, it also creates a button that when you click it, a Gmail message is generated using the webpage you’re on as the subject line with selected page text and a link in the body of the message.
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40) Send to Kindle for Google Chrome
An official Amazon.com extension, Send to Kindle lets you send reader-friendly versions of articles, features, blog posts and other web content directly to your Kindle device to read later.
41) SketchPad
If you’re a doodler, SketchPad lets you create and save drawings while you’re using Chrome. With support for touchscreens, this personalizable extension is a quick and fun way to make mini works of art while online.
42) StayFocusd
StayFocusd promises to increase your productivity by limiting the amount of time that you can spend on time-wasting websites. You can enter a list of sites you know you spend too much time on and set a time limit for each one. Once your time on that site is up, this extension blocks that site for the rest of the day.
43) Sticky Notes—Just Popped Up!
Sticky Notes gives you Post-It style note-making skills online. You can customize the color, theme and font size of your virtual note and then, as you browse, have a handy way of jotting down data.
44) Tab Resize—Split Screen Layouts
Described by the dev as “split screens made easy,” Tab Resize lets you personalize your Chrome setup. With multi monitor support built in, it’s an essential tool for those that like to work with several screens. Single screen users can also benefit from having separate windows set to their personal preference.
45) Todoist: To-Do List and Task Manager
Todoist users really need the official Chrome extension as it lets you manage your tasks directly from your browser. You can view, add, organize, delegate and complete tasks by a click of the Todoist button. You can also save web pages, articles, Amazon and IMDb pages and even Google Docs for future reference.
46) Turn Off the Lights
This plugin helps make streaming video a more immersive experience. When you’re watching YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook videos a quick click of the lamp button will dim the rest of your screen offering an improved focus on the video window.
47) Unshorten.link
This extension works with 300 of the most popular link shortening services to protect you from unsafe links. Simply click on a shortened link you’re not sure about and it will be automatically expanded and analyzed for malware. Unshorten.link will then tell you where the link leads to and whether or not it’s a safe site.
48) Weather
As you can image, they are a ton of weather extensions available for Chrome. We’re highlighting this option as it’s a great all-rounder that can do the basics, but has some more advanced options under the hood if you want to add multiple locations, get weather alerts, see a seven-day forecast and more.
49) Weava Highlighter—PDF & Web
This extension gives you a virtual highlighter pen for the web. You can highlight online text and PDFs in multiple colors then organize your highlighted content into folders. This tool will also generate citations for you and it auto-syncs so you can access your content from anywhere.
50) WhatFont
WhatFont simply does what its name suggests—identifies web fonts. If you see a font you like and you’d like to know what it’s called, just hover over it and you’ll get an instant identification.
Editor’s note: This article is regularly updated for relevance.
