10 Best Browser Extensions to Eliminate Internet Irritation
The internet is rife with trouble. Pop-up ads when you visit a page to be closed, sites that automatically play sound even on background tabs, pages that reload and accept all the text you enter – they all suck. Here are some browser add-ons that make the Internet a better place for everyone.
10. Behind the overlay (Chrome / Firefox)
You know the websites you go to, you start reading the article, and then all of a sudden a pop-up appears asking you to subscribe to a newsletter or something, and the only way to reject it is to click “No thanks, [insert humiliating thing here]? »Yes, I hate them too, and Behind the Overlay for Chrome and Firefox banishes them forever.
We looked at this a while ago and it still works like a charm, whether that popup is one of those annoying “yes that’s great / no, I hate good stuff” ads or any other popup like I ask you to register or log in.
9.First page (Chrome / Safari) and re-pagination (Firefox)
Fortunately, multi-page slideshows are far less common on the Internet these days than they used to be, but many sites still rely on them to stretch one article to a dozen or more of actual clicks and page views. It’s annoying and slow to read, but you don’t have to worry about it . Chrome and Safari users can install Page One , which combines all these slideshow parts and displays them on one page, while Firefox users can use Re-Pagination , which does the same with a right click.
If you don’t want to install anything at all, you can always use the “printable” page or “reading mode” of your browser to get everything without having to press a dozen times, or send it to Pocket or another “Read Later” service that usually removes the garbage anyway.
8. Lazarus (Chrome / Firefox)
Lazarus has been around for a long time , but the sheer amount of information it holds for me guarantees a place on this list, and if you’ve been using it for almost the same amount of time, you know that it has probably saved you a ton of headaches too, perhaps from -for the forms you filled out, tried to submit, and that the page timed out, or emptied all of your text fields because you did not format a required field in a certain way.
Such annoyances are the main goal of Lazarus, and you can get rid of them permanently with a quick install from the Chrome Web Store or, if you are a Firefox user, from Mozilla Add-ons . It saved my ass more than once, and since I’ve seen some complaints about the add-on no longer working in Chrome, consider TIRE (Text Input Recovery Extension) if you want an alternative.
7. Magic actions (Chrome / Firefox / Opera)
YouTube is full of entertaining videos, but it is definitely one of the most annoying websites out there. From horrible commenters to annoying (but easily disabled) overlays and random permissions – getting everything the way you want it can be difficult – and then one change can override your preferences on another system. Magic Actions fixes all of this.
In addition to making any videos that can play in HD (or better yet, 4K) do so, Magic Actions also suppresses ads ( which you may or may not do ), kills YouTube comment sections, lets you adjust volume. with the mouse wheel and adds a movie mode that saves you the hassle and allows you to focus on the video you are watching. Overall, it gives you a YouTube experience that feels more like a media player than a video portal. Plus, it’s one of our favorite Chrome extensions in general , although it’s also available for Firefox and Opera.
6. WikiWand (Chrome / Firefox / Safari)
Wikipedia is probably one of the most useful websites in general, but it also has its share of annoyances. Pages load quickly, but are often difficult to navigate, contain many sections, and can look fresher and cleaner. Wikipedia has done a redesign before, but WikiWand , an add-on for Chrome, Firefox and Safari (and also available for mobile), completely transforms every Wikipedia page into a better reading experience.
The add-on moves the table of contents to the sidebar where you can quickly jump to it while reading, makes the font easier to read, adds hover to preview links and images, and more. If you like the look but want something less radical, try the previously mentioned WikiTweaks , which gives you a little more control .
5. Block sound of a silent site (Chrome)
We just mentioned this Chrome add-on , but Silent Site Sound Blocker solves one of my biggest annoyances with many websites – as soon as you download them, they try to increase video views and reach by automatically playing a random video somewhere. in a tiny corner of their website. This is annoying, especially when you have multiple tabs open and you don’t know exactly where the video is playing on the page.
Silent Site Sound Blocker automatically disables tabs that are not your main tab, and even so it uses a whitelisting system to make sure the only tabs that play sound at all are the ones you approve. You even have the option to allow the site to play sound once and then ask again, or block it and then ask again the next time you visit. Of course, you can also blacklist sites so that they never play audio. If you want an alternative, check out the previously mentioned Smart Tab Mute , available for Chrome and Firefox .
4. Imagus (Chrome / Firefox)
Tiny thumbnails that don’t open for large images, or worse, only open for large images on the same page or open links instead of larger views, are annoying and the previously mentioned Imagus (available for Chrome and Firefox ) fixes them. Instead, just hover your mouse over the image you want to see zoomed in and it will appear nice and large for you to explore.
We used to recommend Hover Zoom for things like this, but since a ton of useful Chrome extensions went to the dark side , we can’t anymore and Imagus is a suitable replacement.
3. Pocket (Chrome / Firefox / Safari / Opera / Edge)
Pocket is useful for a lot of things, and while it’s strictly a read-later service that lets you save articles for offline reading whenever you have time to get to them. This is great, and there are tons of professional tips on how to get the most out of it , but it’s also a great way to eliminate almost all of the inconveniences of the traditional web interface. Plus, it is available for almost any web browser .
For example, you probably already know that by keeping an article in your pocket, you can transfer paginated articles as a slideshow onto one long, easy-to-read page . You also remove ads and other unnecessary things that slow down your device or make it difficult to read around them. With the right Pocket tools, you can even get an estimate of how long it will take to read an article, a summary of your articles with bullet points so you can skim first and dive deeper later, and more. And all this without the hassle of autoplaying videos, comments, ads, or other annoyances.
2. Social Fixer (Chrome / Firefox / Opera / Safari)
If you install one browser extension that will dramatically improve your Facebook experience , it should be Social Fixer . We’ve highlighted it a few times , showed you how to use it to clean up political posts from Facebook , reorder your news feed with it, always see the latest posts and easily find posts you’ve interacted with, hide sponsored posts and pages, filter your feed news so you don’t miss important news and much more. If there’s something on Facebook that annoys you, chances are Social Fixer can handle it.
Of course, if you are not a fan or need an alternative, you can also check out FB Purity , available for all those same browsers , and another tool that we highlighted earlier .
1.uBlock Origin (Chrome / Firefox)
The fact that this site is powered by ads doesn’t mean we don’t know ads are one of the most annoying parts of the web. Maybe they take up entire pages, or they make your browser run when you try to read or click. They might automatically play or block the page you are reading until you can close them. Maybe they just slow down your browser. We feel this pain, and uBlock Origin is our favorite ad blocker for Chrome, Firefox and Opera – not only because it’s easy enough to get the job done, but also because it’s incredibly powerful and customizable .
uBlock Origin lets you control which items are loaded and which are not, which ads you see and which you suppress. You can customize it however you want, and it is faster and easier than Adblock Plus or Ghostery, which each have their own problems selling ads or partnering with ad companies . If you want an alternative, consider Disconnect , a browser extension that doesn’t block ads, but keeps your privacy by blocking tracking, and the only ads it actively blocks are malicious ads that you want to block anyway .