My 6 Favorite Chrome Browser Extensions
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How many times have you been doing some kind of work online and suddenly find your browser going too slowly, or see ads popping up everywhere, or you want to sign into an account but you can’t remember the password and you have to stop what your doing and remember where exactly you wrote it down and then go searching for it?
Or maybe you accidentally close your browser window and lose all tabs you just had open.
Any one of these things can make you want chuck your computer out your window. But before you do that (I mean unless you can totally afford a new computer no problem), take a look at my favorite Chrome Browser extensions that help you deal with everything I just described!
Now, when talking about Chrome browser extensions, the reality is there are ENDLESS options available, but in the interest of time and helping you out, I’m just going to be talking about a few of the ones I use on a regular basis that tend to help me be more efficient in my work the most. And what’s even better, all of the extensions I’m going to share with you today are all free!
As any entrepreneur knows, anything that can save you the smallest amount of time each day can drastically add up and save you loads of time overall, and that is so important when you are responsible for everything running smoothly and successfully in your business.
But what if you don’t use the Google Chrome Web Browser? That’s completely fine! Many of these extensions or ones just like them are typically available for whatever web browser you use! So just stick around and maybe you’ll get some new ideas to save you time and make you more productive!
As a quick preview, here are my 6 favorite extensions:
Toby
Fonts Ninja
LastPass
Video Speed Manager
Adblock Plus
Ad Block for YouTube
Want to dive deeper? Me too!
So first off we have Toby.
Now this is a really great tool in the Chrome browser that allows you to save processing space and energy when using the internet.
Sometimes, if you have a lot of windows open all at once, your browser can tend to slow down and the window you're in starts dragging. It gets to be a little bit much, right?
Toby is an extension that helps with that kind of problem.
With Toby, if you're working in a bunch of different tabs and you need to work on something else or change gears you can actually save all of your tabs and then close them all at once, saving your session in Toby.
Then, when you’re ready to resume your session, be it in a few hours or a few days, you can open Toby and relaunch all of your tabs. This is important because it can help keep your computer from slowing down from trying to process too many things at once.
Even better, you can open Toby and name any of the sessions that you've saved, such as “Printer Research” so you can easily find that session again in the future.
Additionally, you can share your saved sessions with other people. So if you're working with multiple people on a project, and you did a portion of the research for it, you can simply share that session with your team and they can just as easily open all the tabs in your saved session up as if they had saved them themselves.
I love love love Toby.
So next up is Fonts Ninja!
This is a really cool extension that I use all the time because I do design work for a lot of my clients.
So if you're working in, say Canva (don’t know what Canva is or need some Canva help? See my previous podcast Canva tutorial by clicking here) or some more simplistic design program that lets you make your own content, Fonts Ninja lets you figure out what font you are seeing on any web page so you can utilize that same font on whatever design platform you’re using.
I mean, how many times have you been on somebody's website and you've gone, “I love that font! I want to know it font is!” (I know I’m not the only nerd that does that!!) In that case, you’ll love this extension. It's super simple to use: you just click on the extension and then you roll over exactly on the web page where you see the font you like and it tells you what the font is.
So then you can go and hunt it down and download it for yourself, or at least know what to look for if you're using a program that already has that font in it.
The next Chrome Browser extension is something I used every day, all day. It’s called LastPass.
We all know about the importance of online security. And we all know each of our accounts are supposed to have different passwords, how many of us actually do that? And for those of us that do, how do you remember all of those different passwords without constantly having them all written down and near you all the time.
That’s where LastPass comes in. It’s a web tool that is sort of like a vault for your passwords. You can put all of your passwords and usernames into LastPass for storage and you can also have it automatically generate passwords for you so each one is unique and complex.
Then, when you go to a website that LasPass has stored, it just automatically fills in the login credentials for you. No need to remember anything or have a notebook sitting right there next to you.
And you don’t necessarily have to go in and enter the information. When you create an account somewhere or log into an existing one after you first install the LastPass extension, LastPass will automatically ask you if you want it to update or store your information.
Another really cool feature of LastPass that I use with several of my clients is you can share your login credentials with someone else without them actually seeing your password. So that means in my case, a client can share their login credentials with me via LastPass for, say their Facebook page, and when I go to Facebook, I can have the LastPass extension automatically fill in the clients information and I never see their password. So it’s a really safe way to get help from other people without having to give them your password or worry about changing it after you’re done working with them.
Next is a great extension for those of us who may have a short attention span or who don’t have time to watch a lot of videos.
Get yourself Video Speed Manager.
With Video Speed Manager, you can speed up any video on your browser up to sixteen times as fast as the original. YES, sixteen times! I typically will watch videos at 1.5 or 2 times speed. But if you are in a rush and want to get to a certain place in a video or rewatch an instruction video you’ve seen before, getting it quickly to the point is a great option!
These last two extensions are somewhat related and are both a non-negotiable for me.
The first is Adblock Plus.
We know how many ads are in everything everywhere. So while, Adblock Plus doesn’t get rid of all of ads all over the internet (for example, you’ll still see ads on Facebook, of course), but it does a pretty fair amount of blocking.
And after you start using it, you won't even realize how many ads it really block until you turn it off on a site and then you're like, “Whoa!!”
So it’s really awesome and you don't have to do anything after you install it. It just runs in the background and alerts you if something needs attention. Some sites won’t let you see their content unless you turn it off and to do so is quite easy, just click on it and whitelist that site.
And the very final one I’m going to talk about today is also an adblocker, but one exclusivly for YouTube.
It’s called Ad Block for Youtube.
Just like the other adblocker, you install it once and it runs in the background. And what does it do? It literally blocks all ads on YouTube videos.
So you know when you start a video and it says, “You can skip this ad in 3 seconds” or “Your video will play after this ad.”? Yeah, that’s not a thing anymore when you use Ad Block for YouTube. You click on a video and it just plays.
Period.
Game changer.
And that’s it! My 6 favorite Chrome extensions!
Thank you so much for reading today. I hope you found some value and ready to install some new extensions to get your browser moving more quickly, your design skills kicking up a notch, and you’re browsing with less interruptions!
Till the next blog, keep the magic in your biz!
