Best Chrome Extensions to Improve Productivity
Unsurprisingly, as the editor of a productivity website, I’m obsessed with refining the details of my tech life to make sure every element helps me get the job done. While I have software that I swear by ( WriteRoom , Deckset , Evernote ), I’m more of a proponent of my favorite browser extensions. They are lightweight, easy to install and usually free, but they have a huge impact on my productivity. These are the Chrome extensions that I love the most and recommend the most.
Boomerang
As a dedicated Inbox Zero practitioner, I see late-night emails as an act of war, so thank God for Boomerang for scheduling Gmail emails that allows me to get up early to reply to emails without annoying my colleagues. I can write an email at 5:30 AM but make sure it doesn’t arrive before 10:30 AM. I can come up with something to say to someone while they’re on vacation and schedule an email after they return in a few days so that I don’t interrupt their free time.
Checker Plus for Gmail
Checker Plus for Gmail puts a small envelope icon on the Chrome toolbar that tells you when you have a new email and lets you read and reply to emails right from there without opening the Gmail tab. It works whether you have the Gmail tab open or not, which means you can turn off Gmail notifications on your desktop, performance sucks if ever.
Checker Plus for Google Drive
Equally useful is Checker Plus for Google Drive, which lets you view and open documents, spreadsheets, or presentations in your Google Drive right from your toolbar. Anything that keeps me from G Suite tabs is a godsend.
Just read
Removes formatting, ads, comments, distractions from a web page and displays text in a clean, readable style. You can customize the extension however you want, but I am good at using the default CSS.
Make America Kittens Again
It was created to replace Donald Trump with kittens, but you can also enter your own list of people you want to block – block Harvey Weinstein! Block your ex! Make all of them kittens!
News Feed Eradicator for Facebook
So what are you waiting for? This extension solves your FOMO in seconds. No more news feed! This is one step closer to breaking with Facebook, which you always threaten.
OneTab
Take ten trillion open tabs and turn them into a list. You will save memory and enjoy closing all these tabs. Use a convenient URL to share your list with colleagues, friends, or yourself. Don’t forget to bookmark OneTab if you want to access it from another computer as it doesn’t have cloud sync.
Save in your pocket
Pocket is my preferred Read Later app, and I use the Save to Pocket Chrome extension as another tool to close all those tabs. Throughout the day, I open up at least five full stories that I don’t have time to read, but saving to Pocket means they are safe and sound so they can be read over the weekend. (If you’re looking for good articles on real crime, I’ll try to recommend them when I’m done.)
Weather
Temperature and forecast in your dashboard. I set up an IFTTT recipe to notify our Slack team of the next day’s weather every day at 4:00 pm, which satisfies some of my weather needs, but a constant temperature all day long, strong all day long is a dream come true, especially when the weather in New York changes from 50 to 80 during the day.
Wikipedia
It makes viewing Wikipedia prettier, cooler, better. You probably spend more time on Wikipedia than you think, and Wikipedia’s left-hand navigation and other design changes make it faster and more enjoyable.
These are not all extensions that I rely on – they are the ones that most affect my productivity. And yes, I’m a die-hard Chrome user despite its awful interface and unnecessary bloat, but I know that many of them, or acceptable equivalents, are available for other browsers – if you have the killer Firefox or Opera suite. extensions, tell us in the comments.