But that isn't enough for true browser aficionados. We need extensions.
Google Chrome's support for add-ons has exploded in just four years, with a library of extras that now almost rivals Firefox's.
Rather than stumbling through never-ending aisles of entries in the Chrome store however, browse through our tidy list of the 90 extensions everyone should consider, spanning categories such as security, tabs, and productivity. This list does not include "apps," which are also popular in the Chrome store; those are essentially links to select Web app sites, and can frequently be used with new tab extensions to make them easier to access. This list is all about actual add-ons that extend and improve your browsing experience, sometimes in ways you might not have thought possible. In some cases it might be nothing more than a convenient new drop-down menu. In others, it could be an extension that completely changes how you use a website or multiple sites.
There are a number of extensions specific to Google and its services, which isn't surprising considering Chrome is Google's browser. Most extensions work across operating systems, so you can try them on any desktop platform. Best of all, every extension mentioned here is entirely free, so there's no harm in giving each one of them a try. If you don't like it, just head to chrome://extensions , where you can disable or remove any or all of them. You can also typically right-click an extension's icon in the toolbar to remove it.
Let us know if we included your favorite or missed the best in the comments section.
BLOGGING
ScribeFireNever leave Chrome again when writing up your latest pithy post. ScribeFire is a full app for blogging that works within your browser. It opens up a tab with all the info on your pre-set blog or blogs, with a big editing space for creating the content.
Related Content by Zemanta
Zemanta is a blogger's best friend. Available for multiple OSes, browsers, and blogging systems, this extension helps insert images and related article links. It sources them from big image sites like Flickr, and content sites like Wikipedia, IMDB, and many more.
SCREEN/PAGE CAPTURE
Awesome Screenshot Capture &AnnotateDon't limit yourself to basic screenshots. Make them awesome by annotating them with shapes, arrows, and text comments. One click uploads an image to AwesomeScreenshot.com for sharing.
Chromapaper
Yes, there is a quick access toolbar extension for Instapaper but it's pretty boring compared to Chromapaper. It lets you read what you've already saved to the Instapaper service offline.
Clearly
Clearly, created by Evernote, makes sure the pages you read online are clean and clear. It takes the text of a main article and puts it on a customizable, distraction-free page. Better yet, if you like the article you can instantly save it to Evernote to read whenever you like.
Diigo Web Collector
Dubbed a "multi-tool for personal knowledge management," Diigo is a nice mix of social bookmarking (remember Delicious?) and full info grabber like Evernote. This extension puts it to work, letting you bookmark, archive, and annotate everything you see online.
dotEPUB
EPUB is an ideal format for ebook readers like the Nook or Kindle. When you find an article online you'd rather read later on your device, use dotEPUB to instantly translate the text to that format. (It's up to you to get the file on your device.)
Evernote Web Clipper
Evernote is the premiere way to clip and store everything you see online that's worth keeping. This extension makes it a breeze, even isolating what it sees as the main content of a page, and storing just that. You can search through it all later using Evernote.com or the offline software and apps.
FireShot
There's no lack of screenshot tools in Chrome, but FireShot is a favorite. It can capture an entire page (even what you can't see), the visible portion, the whole browser window, or just what you select. It can send the new image to an editor, save it (even as PDF), upload it, print it, copy it, and email it.
Lightshot
Lightshot is a newer, lightweight screen-capture tool that works with a touch of the print-screen key, or from the Chrome toolbar. It has an entire armory of tools at its disposal, from upload-for-sharing to annotation. It'll even instantly send what you capture to Google to do a search for similar graphics.
Pocket (formerly Read It Later) is all about letting you read content you find...later. Set up an account and start saving content with the Pocket extension, bookmark buttons, or apps. One click "Pockets" the content so you can access it anytime—even offline—on all your devices. Content isn't limited to text; you can store video to watch later too.
Readability
Set up an account on Readability first, then install this extension. Click the drop-down menu for the option to read now in a clear, uncluttered interface; read later when you visit your Readability.com account; print; share via social networks; or send text to your Kindle so you have plenty to read while mobile.
GOOGLE SERVICES
Attachments.meAttaching items to any email, no less a message in Gmail, is easy—if the file is on your hard drive. But if it's stored in the cloud it can be a pain. This attachment makes it simple to access files on your Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and now SkyDrive accounts and attach them to a message without leaving the Gmail interface.
Boomerang for Gmail
Ever written a Gmail message and wished you could schedule it to send in a few hours time? Boomerang handles that for you, and you don't even have to be online when it sends. You can track replies, but you only get a limited number of free messages per month.
Checker Plus for Google Calendar
Never open up Google Calendar again. This extension gives you full access to everything you like about Google Calendar from your toolbar, plus multiple methods of adding calendar events, such as right-clicking on a webpage to add it like an appointment. The notifications (including voice) are perfectly done. It even runs in the background when Chrome is closed, so you never miss an engagement.
Checker Plus for Gmail
Manage multiple Gmail accounts easily with this extension. A drop-down menu shows all your unread messages and previews of each, which you can archive, delete, or reply to without actually visiting Gmail. Checker Plus also offers a wealth of notification possibilities, including voice, which reads your email to you. This is a must have for any Gmail junkie.
Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google)
When you click a link to a PowerPoint presentation or PDF file with this extension installed, you'll be shunted directly to Google Docs/Drive to view the file. You don't need to download it and open it in PowerPoint or Adobe Reader, or re-upload it to Google Drive first.
Google Dictionary (by Google)
Load it up, double-click any word on any webpage, and you'll see a pop-up with the definition. Or search for words from the toolbar. Multiple languages are supported.
Google Translate
Ever visit a foreign website and wish you could read it? This extension gives you the ability to do so by auto-detecting the language in use and offering the option to show it in your preferred language.
Goo.gl URL Shortener
Access Google's own URL shortener service via the Chrome toolbar with this extension. It instantly truncates the URL you're visiting and copies the new address to the clipboard for use anywhere. It'll even generate a QR code of the URL. Click on Details and you can see where and how often the shortened URL has already been used.
Google Voice (By Google)
Google's voicemail service can be plugged right into your browser. This extension offers on-the-fly access to your voicemail messages (with transcriptions) and SMS texts (to which you can reply), and you can initiate VoIP calls over Google Voice. Every phone number you see on a site becomes clickable for calling.
Offline Google Mail
Web-based email doesn't have to be exclusively used with an Internet connection. This extension ensures there's a cache of your Gmail messages available for reading when you're offline. Compose new messages and "send" them by synchronizing everything once you reconnect.
Google Quick Scroll
When you search on Google and skip to a page in the results, it's sometimes hard to tell why Google thought the page was even relevant. Quick Scroll appears only when needed and highlights the parts of the page pertinent to your query.
Save to Google Drive
Google Drive may be your primary workplace and storage area but it's sometimes tricky to put what you want in the cloud repository. This extension makes it a breeze. You can save an entire webpage, or just the downloadable elements such as images or documents, and send them directly to Google Drive. It'll even import Microsoft Office documents.
Secure Gmail by Streak
This extension might not be strong enough for the likes of Edward Snowden, but for those that need some basic open-source encryption on messages without tearing out your hair, this extension helps. The receiver needs a password from you to read what you send, and vice versa.
Send from Gmail (by Google)
If you click a "mailto:" link on most webpages, it'll launch an email client, typically your desktop software like Outlook. If you've embraced Gmail as your platform of choice, Send from Gmail will ensure that's what you get instead. Plus, the icon in the toolbar lets you send the link or the current page from Gmail without cutting and pasting. It even works with Google Apps with your own domain name.
IMAGING
JPG and TIFF image files have a lot of metadata stored in EXIF (Exchangeable image file) format. This extension gives you instant access to that info for any image you find online or that you copy to Chrome yourself. It tells you everything from which camera took the pic to the exact geographic location it was taken.
Hover Zoom
There are a lot of thumbnail images on sites like Google Images, Flickr, DeviantArt, and social networks. This extension shows you the full-size image when you hover your mouse over any tiny thumbnail on the Web.
Image Downloader
Bulk download all the images on a single webpage with this extension. It'll display a view with all the images, and you can specify which ones you want before the download starts.
Image Search by Cooliris
Google Image fanatics rejoice! This extension allows Cooliris—a fantastic interface for browsing thumbnails in a continuous scrollable 3D wall, to be your default view for image searching on Google.
INTERFACE/UTILITIES
AdBlock and Adblock PlusAdblock Plus is a community-driven extension (ported from Firefox) that everyone loves. The unrelated AdBlock (minus the 'plus') does the same thing, but also adds video ad blocking on sites such as YouTube, and even in Flash-based games. Both extensions are hugely popular. Considering the video-ad blocking extras, and that Adblock Plus is now whitelisting some ads it deems "acceptable," the plus-less AdBlock is probably the slightly better pick among two excellent products.
Better Pop Up Blocker
Chrome has a pretty good pop-up blocker integrated, but it can't catch them all. Installing Better Pop Up Blocker will catch the annoyances Chrome lets by, such as windows generated by Javascript. You can blacklist any sites that still somehow get through.
Chrome Remote Desktop
There are many times when it would be handy to be able to control someone else's computer from afar, or let others take control of yours for tech support. Many tools exist to make this happen, but arguably none are as easy to implement as Chrome Remote Desktop, since it's all done via the browser extension. It works cross platform for Windows and Mac users—even Chromebooks.
Extensions Manager
You can type in "chrome://extensions" to manage extensions in Chrome, or use this utility to get quick access to a simplified list of your extensions (and apps and themes), then turn them on and off as needed.
IE Tab
In days of yore, many websites were optimized for Microsoft's Internet Explorer. If you encounter some in your browsing travels along the Information Highway, use IE Tab to load the page using IE's rendering engine, while still remaining within a Google Chrome tab.
Lazarus: Form Recovery
It's happened to all of us: we've filled out a complicated form online, hit a button, and some error made us lose it all, forcing us to refill every single box. Lazarus saves your work as you type in any form, so if there's an error or crash, it brings it back. Hooray!
Mega Button
The Mega Button is exactly that—a button on your toolbar that gives you access to just about every setting and bit of info you could want in Chrome, including history, bookmarks, plug-ins, downloads—and yes, extensions.
Minimalist for Everything
A lot of Web apps are simply too cluttered. Using Minimalist you can trim the fat off the appearance of almost any website—dump the toolbars, skip the navigation panes, you name it. Different sites can get different treatment, or you can use pre-defined scripts from sites like UserScripts.org or UserStyles.org to get exactly the look you want.
Oweb Voice Input
Google search lets you speak your query, but what about all those other text boxes on the Web? Oweb Voice Input installs a little microphone icon in the text box of every page you visit with Chrome. Click it, dictate the necessary content, and a speech-to-text engine fills out the form for you. It supports 30 different languages.
RSS Subscription Extension
Google Reader is no more, so subscribing to RSS feeds is a little more complicated than it was. This extension puts the orange icon back in the Omnibox (the combo search/URL box) so you can subscribe to feeds with one click. You can subscribe to just about any service, including Feedly, The Old Reader, NewsBlur, and whatever reader you want to add.
Stylish
If you've ever used Greasemonkey on Firefox, you'll appreciate Stylish. This extension works with scripts you download from userstyles.org to transform the look of websites. There are thousands of scripts from which to choose, and something there will help improve your browsing on Facebook, Tumblr, Google, and elsewhere.
SuperSorter
If your bookmarks are just a digital pile of names, run SuperSorter to organize them. The app sorts bookmarks, deletes duplicates, merges folders full of bookmarks as you request, and kills off empty folders.
word highlight
Typically if you search for a word or phrase on a webpage, you can see one instance at a time. This extension highlights every instance of a word/phrase on the page, so you spend less time mousing around to find it. It also activates right on a Google search to highlight every word you want in the results.
Xmarks Bookmark Sync
Chrome has its own excellent method of synching bookmarks, tabs, passwords, and settings among browsers (using your Google account), but Xmarks goes it one better by synching among all browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE—on the same or multiple computers.
PRODUCTIVITY
Any.DOA popular task list service in itself, Any.DO has created what is arguably the best to-do list extension for the browser yet. It syncs with the service, lets you drag and drop new items and attach notes, and even turns Gmail messages into tasks. The Android and iOS apps let you take tasks on the road.
Because it doesn't track you like Google does, DuckDuckGo is a search engine gaining fame among those with serious privacy concerns. With this extension installed, a Google search also shows the top results for DuckDuckGo—or you can go directly to searching with DDG by clicking the drop-down menu.
Ginger –Grammar and Spell Checker
Ginger puts an advanced spelling and grammar checker at your fingertips. In a Word doc for instance, you can see errors in real-time as you write. With Ginger, you can see things that need correcting in forms used in Facebook, WordPress, Gmail, and more.
Lingualy
Ready to learn a foreign language, but don't want to spend the money on fancy Rosetta Stone programs? Lingualy boosts your foreign vocabulary as you surf with translations, quizzes, and article recommendations. It currently supports Spanish, French, Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
RescueTime Chrome Productivity Meter
Stop wasting time online. RescueTime measures how much time you spend at every website you visit (it pauses if the keyboard and mouse go untouched for two minutes or more), all in the background. Later, you can get a report of just which sites are your biggest time sucks.
RSS Feed Reader
If you are a fan of Firefox's Live Bookmarks, which puts an RSS feed right on the bookmarks toolbar, then you'll love RSS Feed Reader. It instantly tells you when there are new posts on your favorite RSS/Atom feeds and makes it easy to subscribe. It also has different themes so you can change how it looks.
StayFocusd
Use this tool to enable your self-control by limiting the amount of time you're allowed to spend on websites in Chrome. If you give yourself one hour a day on Facebook, that's it—StayFocusd won't let you back on the site. It can block specific pages, whole sites, and even Flash apps or games. Couple this one with RescueTime (above) and you'll be much more productive.
Lookup Companion for Wikipedia
Wikipedia may be second only to Google for searches throughout the day (at least on my computer). Lookup Companion gives you toolbar access to search, with results showing up in the drop-down that easily open in a new Chrome tab.
SECURITY
Click&Clean
Enter your hot zone of privacy and security with this add-on. The drop-down menu from Click&Clean provides access to your browser cache, cookies, plug-ins, extensions, and history, but also quick ways to erase them. You even get a full browser test to see how well Chrome is protecting you. It'll help you scan for malware using Bitdefender, clear your private data, and a host of other security options you're neglecting. Customize all the options you can to get full coverage with Click&Clean.
Disconnect
There's one goal with this extension: block all third-party cookies from social media and advertisers that follow you as you browse. Disconnect claims this helps speed up browsing by 27 percent on some pages. You can see the cookies you're blocking in case you want to let some through.
Ghostery
There's a lot going on behind the scenes as you surf the Web. Things called bugs, beacons, pixels, and more are used to track what you're doing. Ghostery is there to tell you what is happening in the background and give you control over these "extras." If you don't like a company or what it is doing, Ghostery can block scripts, objects, even whole images so you can retain your privacy.
HTTPS Everywhere
Visiting sites with "https://" in front of the URL (look for the green "lock" icon in Chrome's Omnibox for another indicator) means you're vising a site using SSL encryption—a must for ecommerce at the very least. This extension ensures every site you visit that has "https://" as an option uses it, giving you another layer of security.
LastPass
LastPass remains a five-star PCMag's Editors' Choice for filling out forms and saving passwords to websites. It works across all operating systems, mobile devices, and, of course, Web browsers. It also imports stored passwords from other tools, as well.
Personal Blocklist (by Google)
Make sure the sites you no longer want to visit—or even see in search results—are blacklisted from Google searches forever. You can block a site by domain name or even subdomain.
View Thru
URL shorteners make it easy to send a link, but not every shortened link you get is one you want to click. This extension displays the full URL so you can check it before clicking.
WOT
The Web of Trust is an online community that rates a website based on one major criterion: can it be trusted? The WOT extension is the first line of defense against sites with a bad reputation, providing red, yellow, and green icons next to search results and giving you a heads-up notice before you click a link.
SHOPPING
Add to Amazon Wish ListThe Amazon Wish List is the de facto online standard for making a big-honkin' list of items you crave, mostly because Amazon sells almost everything. Yes, almost everything. Using this extension, when you see an item for sale on a different site you can add it to your Amazon list. Now people shopping for you can branch out to buy all the stuff you want, not just what's sold on Amazon.
The Camelizer
The Camelizer displays the full price history for an item, with some comparison to third-party sales. It won't tell you when savings are on the way, but it can help you decide when the cost is most likely to drop. It's dubbed "the Amazon Price Tracker" but The Camelizer now supports Best Buy too.
InvisibleHand
InvisibleHand automatically scours the Web for lower prices. A little bit of your own legwork is still recommended, but with a pool of over 600 retailers in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, it's a great tool that should only get better with time.
Shopping Assistant
Whenever you shop on a site, Shopping Assistant shows you what the product in question costs on other sites. It also includes a price history from Amazon products, so you can track the price fluctuation.
SOCIAL/SHARING
AddThis –Share & Bookmark (new)Set up an account at AddThis.com and install this extension. Click the drop-down menu on the tool bar (or right-click anywhere on a page) to instantly add content to social sites, translate info, bookmark pages, or print. AddThis supports more than 300 services including the big name social networks, blog systems, and webmail services.
Buffer
If you'd like to schedule your social status updates to sites like Facebook and Twitter, you need a buffer.Buffer has apps on all services and extensions for every browser. The Chrome extension puts Buffer in the toolbar where you can use it to make a post that shares the page you're viewing, and you can schedule posts to go live later.
exfm music
If you love music and visit a lot of music sites, exfm music is an extension worth investigating. When you hit a page with MP3s on it, the exfm player pops up to stream the music, and continues to play even after you leave the site. If you want to share or find out what your friends are listening to, social networking links are standing by to assist you.
Facebook Notifications
If you're a Facebook user—and what are the chances that you aren't?—this extension alerts you when there's traffic to your pages or groups. It provides pop-up status info and access to notifications or the Facebook Messages inbox from the toolbar.
Google Search from Facebook
Do you love Facebook so much, you never, ever, want to leave that blue/white interface behind? This app lets you search the rest of the Web using Google, but with Facebook's own search bar. That's either lazy or genius. You decide.
Instagram for Chrome
Instagram addicts know how great the smartphone app is. This extension brings that same degree of photo-heavy Instagram-atical excellence to the desktop browser experience.
Send to Kindle
Readability can handle this job, but Send to Kindle does this one thing and one thing only: it sends articles online to your Kindle. Set up your Kindle account to accept emails from the makers of the extension (Klip.me) and send articles galore to your favorite ebook reader for future perusal.
Shareaholic for Google Chrome
Shareaholic is a classic for any browser and a must for those who need instant access to social networks. From the drop-down menu, post directly to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Gmail, Evernote, and 250+ other sites with this one extension. It has the Goo.gl URL shortener (mentioned above) built in.
Social Fixer
This extension works with Facebook exclusively to provide desperately needed improvements to the interface. You get a tabbed interface for your feed; better post filtering; an option to hide read posts; a record of those who dare to unfriend you; customized skins; and quick access to Pages, groups, and events. Facebook addicts should not go without it.
Silver Bird
Silver Bird, once dubbed Chromed Bird, is a full Twitter client that lives in your Chrome browser. Gain direct access to your Twitter feed or trending topics from the toolbar, use it to upload images with your tweets, and manage multiple accounts in a unified timeline.
Unsocialize: The Link Unsocializer
Everyone hates those links on Facebook that either try to make you use a Facebook app merely to read something, or even worse, post updates on your wall. This extension bypasses those hyper-annoying links so you get directly to the content without giving up your personal info.
TABS
Awesome New Tab Page
When you open a new tab in Google Chrome, you get a page with some shortcut options, usually based on your most-used bookmarks. This extension puts a new interface on that New Tab page. It supports its own customizable, dynamic widgets, which you can move to fit your needs, all in a Metro UI-inspired look. You can customize search options for just about any site that has a search box, right from this page. Save the final results and you can import it to other computers using Chrome and Awesome New Tab Page. New widgets are being introduced all the time. It is, in fact, pretty awesome.
Currently
The New Tab screen can become a lovely site launcher, but it can also be a simple information source. Currently is the most beautiful version of that, instantly showing you two vital things: the time and weather.
Empty New Tab Page
The name says it all. With this extension installed, if you click to get a new tab you get one that's utterly empty.
Great Suspender
Got tabs? Don't forget the dozens you have open eat a lot of memory. Installing the Great Suspender helps reclaim some of those system resources. Leave a tab alone long enough and it "unloads" the tab to give your computer a break. You can always go back to the tab and reload it, or whitelist the sites you open that need to always be available, such as email or IMs.
Incredible StartPage
This extension optimizes your productivity when beginning your browsing session with a splashy look that displays your top bookmarks, notes, and recently closed tabs. Your Chrome Web Apps get a separate tab for launching, and you can customize the appearance with beautiful background images.
Panic Button
Sometimes you visit sites you shouldn't. Sometimes your co-workers and bosses come up behind you. What do you do? Hit the Panic Button. It instantly hides all incriminating sites, which you can restore once the coast is clear.
TabCloud
If you open a lot of tabs and want to revive them after you've closed the browser on your computer—or on other computers, or your Android handheld—TabCloud can help. It saves tabs for later access, or at the same time on multiple systems.
Tabs Outliner
A favorite with PCMag readers, Tabs Outliner provides a look at all your tabs in a resizable, vertical window—tree-style, like you find in Windows Explorer. Closing a tab doesn't remove it from the tree, making it ultra-easy to return to that page, so there's no difference between an open or "saved" tab. When you're sick of all the work, there's a button to close every tab and you're out.
TooManyTabs for Chrome
Sometimes you just open too many tabs. Exceed 20 and the interface is nearly impossible to use. This extension manages the overflow, providing a bird's-eye view of open tabs. It lets you search the open ones and sorts them by domain, title, or creation time.
VerticalTabs
Tabs can hog a lot of space at the top of the browser window. If you don't like that configuration, VerticalTabs places all your tabs in a vertical drop-down menu accessible from the toolbar.
VIDEO
Hola UnblockerYou can install VPNs to get around regionally-blocked videos, but it's a pain and often slows your Internet connection. Hola Unblocker promises the same function, but builds the VPN proxy service into your browser. Also available for Firefox.
Magic Actions for YouTube
YouTube videos get a beautiful, configurable makeover with Magic Actions. When installed in Google Chrome, you can use your mouse wheel to control volume, select HD or cinema mode (with darkened background), and turn off the auto-play as desired, among other options. It even hides the ads in videos.
MediaPlus
Typically you only get to watch video or view images in a webpage at the size the page creator intended. MediaPlus however, gives you control over Flash content and other media, so you can move them around the page, resize them, open them in a new window, add effects, and download them to play offline.
YouTube Options
There are a lot of hidden options for watching videos on YouTube. This extension gives you access to all of them, and a few you didn't even know you wanted to fix. It's a lot like Magic Actions without the pretty interface, so it's perfect for the gear-heads.
Source: PCMag
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