It seems that yesterday’s post where I listed some of my favourite extensions was quite well received, as I had a number of people contact me to say they found it useful. So I thought I’d add a Part 2 list with a few more. Remember, there are literally thousands of amazing extensions available in the Chrome Webstore, so do take the time to have a browse.
In the meantime, here are a few more, again in no particular order…
PixelBlock – Sending an email which includes a graphic is a technique that some companies use to track whether you open their email or not. Sometimes they do this sneaky thing where they hide an invisible single pixel in an email – you can’t see it, but it helps them track you. PixelBlock does exactly what it says, and blocks that invisible pixel.
Google Calendar – Gives you a nice glanceable preview of your Google Calendar, from any webpage, without needing to open your actual Google Calendar. But if you do want to open your actual Google Calendar, then here’s a pro tip, just click on the words “Google Calendar” at the top and it will open – you guessed it – your Google Calendar.
Google Calendar Scroll Disabler – Just in case I didn’t say “Google Calendar” enough in that last tip, here is a neat little extension that fixes one of Google Calendar’s most annoying traits – accidentally scrolling back and forward from month to month. This extension stops that behaviour and lets you scroll using the forward and back buttons in Google Calendar, making your Google Calendar behave the way normal people would expect it to.
Draftback – Takes the revision history of a Google Doc and turns it into a replayable “movie” of the document being created so you can watch how the Doc was written. Draftback adds a button to the top of every Google Doc and makes your students’ thinking more visible be letting you see their writing process unfold in front of your eyes.
1-Click Timer – For all those times when you need to give your students 5 minutes to complete a task, or get a reminder about something in 30 minutes, or cook the perfect three-minute egg. Whatever it is you’re timing, 1-Click Timer is a neat way to do it, right from the comfort of your Chrome Browser.
ColorZilla – There are a ton of colour picker extensions out there, but I have always kind of liked this one. Like most of these other extensions, this one lets you select any colour on your screen and sample it to find its RGB or hex code value. Especially useful for web design work, or anywhere you need to match exact colours.
Undo Closed Tabs Button – We all do it. You accidentally close a tab you didn’t mean to close. Damn it! You probably know you can just use CRTL+SHIFT+T to reopen a closed tab (What? You didn’t know that? You do now.) But what if you want to reopen a tab that you closed 12 tabs ago? You could just use CTRL+SHIFT+T another 12 times I suppose and go back through them all. Or, better yet, you could just use the Undo Closed Tabs Button extension and reopen the exact tab you want.
Share with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Email – Despite the somewhat unwieldy title for this extension, (and the fact that Google+ is basically dead) it does exactly what is says and lets you share your current browser page to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or email (or your Kindle too). Great for sharing that hilarious thing you just found on the internet with your friends, simply and easily.
Mercury Reader – Remove the clutter on a webpage and improve accessibility and readability so you can focus on the actual content. It’s particularly great for reading articles on cluttered news pages. You know the ones, surrounded with ads, links to other stories, promotions and so on. Mercury Reader removes all of that crap and just leaves you with the actual page content. You can also adjust text size, font and colour contrast for readability.
Authy – If you don’t use 2FA, or 2 Factor Authentication, then you need to go back and read this or this, and then stop being so bloody obstinate and go turn it on. Now. I’ll wait… OK, now you’ve got it turned on*, you’ll need something to generate the 2FA codes. You could use something like Google Authenticator but that only works on one device at a time and is a pain if you need to move it to another device. So check out Authy, it does the same thing but syncs across multiple devices, including your Chrome Browser using this handy extension.
Kami – If you need to work on PDFs, especially if you want to comment on them, annotate them with pen or voice notes, then check out Kami. It has a lot of features for working with PDF files, although there are limits on what you can do with the free version. Still, it’s worth looking into if PDFs are your thing. It also has some nice direct integrations with Google Classroom.
Noisli – Some people like a little background noise when they work. Not necessarily music, as that can be distracting to some people, but just some ambient noise, like the sound of a coffee shop, or the sound of a crackling campfire, or wind in the trees, or a rainy thunderstorm. Noisli allows you to generate a gentle soundscape of your choice so you can immerse yourself in ambient sounds that help you focus. It also has a customisable timer that, by default, conforms to the timings of the Pomodoro Technique.
Session Buddy – I mentioned OneTab before as a way to manage your tabs in Chrome, but you might also like to check out Session Buddy. It doesn’t gather your tabs together in the same way that OneTab does, but I do like the way it gathers sets of tabs into collections for later retrieval. Check it out and and see what you think.
Asyou can see, there are a ton of great extenstions for Chrome and I hope you find some of these useful. What other extensions do you like? Please share them in the comments below.
*You did turn 2FA on right?
What’s in your Extension List, Part 2 by Chris Betcher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.