The best Google Chrome extensions to revolutionize your workday

If you’re like me, you swear by Google’s Chrome browser. Above firefox and Safari. It’s fast, light, and doesn’t get in the way of the content you want to see. But what makes Chrome truly unique — perhaps even powerful — is when you add those amazing Chrome extensions and apps to your personal installation. There are tens of thousands to choose from on the Chrome Web Store, most of which (despite the name) are free.

These extensions can be installed on Chrome for Windows, MacOS, Linux, and also Chrome OS-based devices like a Chromebook laptop. However, they won’t work on mobile versions of the Chrome browser for Android or iOS.

Here are the very best Google Chrome extensions that just might revolutionize your workday.

Detects active WordPress theme being used on current WordPress website and links to the theme, if not found then returns a Google search for “{theme’s name} wordpress theme”.

OneTab is a solution for those of us who like to open a few too many tabs on Chrome. And while Chrome is a particularly minimalistic browser, having dozens of tabs open at the same time can still be a struggle. If your browser and your RAM tend to struggle at this point, OneTab offers a solution: A single tab that condenses your open tabs into a history-like list that you can reference instead, saving memory and speeding up Chrome for you.

ColorZilla, one of the most popular Firefox developer extensions with over 5 million downloads is finally available for Chrome!

With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program.

Among the various password management tools available, including Chrome’s built-in system, Lastpass is particularly well-regarded for both its ease of use and security. Lastpass uses a combination of a private master password, auto-generated passwords for websites and services, touch local-only data encryption, and two-factor authentication to make password filing both safe and fast. The official extension automatically keeps users logged into the service without having to use the web interface.

What is the easiest way to find out the fonts used in a webpage? Firebug and Webkit Inspector are easy enough to use for developers. However, for others, this should not be necessary. With this extension, you could inspect web fonts by just hovering on them. It is that simple and elegant.

It also detects the services used for serving the web fonts. Supports Typekit and Google Font API.

The simplest way to take a full page screenshot of your current browser window. Click on the extension in your browser bar (or press Alt+Shift+P), watch the extension capture each part of the page, and be transported to a new tab of your image that you can right-click to save-as or just drag to your desktop. No bloat, no ads, just a simple way to turn a full web page into an image

This tool allows the user to hover over a linked thumbnail image and view it in a simple pop-up window. It’s quite convenient if you often browse sites such as Reddit, which feature very small thumbnails for large images. The tool will display an image in its native resolution — unless that’s larger than your computer screen — and it supports animated formats like GIF and GIFV. It even allows for scrolling through a list of images on Imgur without opening the site.

Mercury Reader combines the functions of a “read it later” bookmark tool with a reading-focused web page reformat. It automatically pulls out the text and key images from a page (ideally news or blog posts) and shows them in big text that’s easy on the eyes. The extension can also send pages to your account, or even to a Kindle for comfy reading later. The tool is configurable for your ideal reading preferences, too, and it automatically syncs across computers and mobile devices. If you find something you need a hard copy for, we can also help you print from Chrome more efficiently.

Session Buddy is an essential tool for those who habitually open a specific set of tabs. It saves sessions that include a set of tabs that you want to have open at the same time. This is also handy if Chrome — or your computer itself — is particularly crash-prone. The tool’s internal management system even allows users to customize, save, export, and import session lists with ease.

Session Buddy is an essential tool for those who habitually open a specific set of tabs. It saves sessions that include a set of tabs that you want to have open at the same time. This is also handy if Chrome — or your computer itself — is particularly crash-prone. The tool’s internal management system even allows users to customize, save, export, and import session lists with ease.

Boomerang allows Gmail users to postpone sending messages, something that’s sorely missing from the default user interface. It’s especially useful if you do business with people in other time zones (or continents), so that you don’t accidentally send that invoice request at 3 a.m. The service also includes reminders, which are handy if you’re waiting on a response, and applications for Android and iOS that let you use Boomerang when you’re away from your computer.

Hangouts is Google’s messaging client, which also moonlights as the stock SMS client baked into some Android phones. Hangouts is available as a regular website and as a mini tool housed inside Gmail, but if you’re a regular user, this standalone version is quite handy. It works just like a standard messaging client, complete with integrated notifications for incoming messages.

The Chromecast is one of the most popular video streaming gadgets on the market, mostly because it’s cheap and straightforward to use. While it’s mostly used with the official phone app, this browser extension will allow you to “cast” tabs to your television, including videos that aren’t available on phones or tablets.

This article was originally published on March 21, 2018 by Cleet the Geek.