14 Best Chrome Extensions For Enhanced Productivity In 2023

Table Of Contents

• What is a Google Chrome extension?
• Where do you find extensions in Chrome?
• How do you install and use Chrome extensions?
• The 14 best Chrome extensions to improve your productivity
• Frequently asked questions about the best Chrome extensions
• Bottom line

‍We all have nominees for the best Chrome extensions that help us be more productive and simplify our lives. As the most widely used browser in the world, Google Chrome has evolved into more than just a browser. With extensions that are crowd-sourced and professionally made, professionals are turning to Chrome for better productivity tools.

Today, Chrome extensions are faster and safer than they ever used to be. There are multiple extensions for a single purpose, giving you more options.

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What is a Google Chrome extension?

Let’s begin by addressing what a Chrome extension is. Simply put, it is a program installed within the Chrome browser. Extensions help add more functionality to browsers and turn them into productivity tools for professionals and casual users. Companies and entrepreneurs who develop the best Chrome extensions aspire to solve the problems of internet users. They use CSS, JavaScript, and HTML technologies to build these extensions.

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Where do you find extensions in Chrome?

Like your mobile phone’s application store, Google Chrome has its own store for extensions. It is called the Chrome Web Store, and it categorizes extensions based on their purpose.

This categorization makes it easy to look for the highest-rated ones and install them. The installation process is simple and quick.

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How do you install and use Chrome extensions?

Once you have identified the best Chrome extension for yourself or your organization, click on it. Read the ratings, reviews, and details about the extension before installing it.

After you’re convinced about the integrity and efficacy of the extension, click Add to Chrome. You will receive a prompt informing you about the access the extension will have to your data and programs. Once you’re satisfied, you can install it.

That’s all it takes to install a Chrome extension. If you wish to uninstall it, click the three dots on the top-right corner of your browser (under the close button), go to “More tools,” and then “Extensions.” You can easily uninstall the extension you want here.

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The 14 best Chrome extensions to improve your productivity

The challenge with Chrome Extensions is that there are too many to pick from, no matter how specific your need is.

Developers keep creating and improving their extensions to match the changing needs of internet users, new technologies, and evolving applications. Over time, you can identify the best extensions that will suit your needs and allow you to be productive like never before.

We have enlisted the fourteen best Chrome extensions to help you with your productivity goals. Download them, try them, and tell us what you like about them.

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1. Loom

Screen recorders have been around for a while as cumbersome apps. Loom makes life easier because it records your screen directly from the browser. Since most of your work activity takes place on your browser, it makes perfect sense to have a tool that can record your browser.

Over 14 million people use Loom to record their screens and share their ideas with peers for better coordination. Loom records your screen with the best resolution possible and creates a ready-to-share link when ready. If you do not want to fill up your local storage, you can have your videos uploaded directly to the cloud.

Those viewing your videos can comment on them, like them, or just view them. What matters is that you get a notification whenever your file is accessed.

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2. Google Calendar

Google Calendar is the best Chrome extension from Google that helps you organize your life and carry out business obligations without missing a date. It makes planning your life and events more manageable.

Many who work in corporate setups populate and manage their work calendars manually, whether it is an Outlook calendar, Slack or Asana calendar, or a Google Calendar. The latter is among the most popular and seamlessly integrates with a user’s entire Google ecosystem. This cross-device integration is why Google Calendar is easy to use.

Google Calendar allows you to create new events and set them as reminders for yourself in the future with clever notification options. You can also use Google Calendar to make meetings, marking attendees who you feel should be a part of the meeting by adding their email addresses. They can then accept or deny your invitation non-verbally. The extensive usage of Google’s ecosystem is why many people use Google Calendar today.

💡 Note: When logged into your Google account on Chrome, you can view your Google Calendar directly by clicking on the menu.

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3. Scribe

Do you need to create step-by-step guides regularly?

Scribe is the best Chrome extension for you. It is an excellent tool for a manager who needs to train employees regularly with manuals and lectures that follow a chronological scheme. With the ability to record, Scribe captures the steps of any standard operating procedure (SOP) to be followed.

It also offers a comprehensive view of your workspace to share with your colleagues and associates. Being application and platform-agnostic gives Scribe an edge over other workflow tools. With the ability to create your step-by-step guides, you do not have to rely on designers to make process documents with a visual design.

The app’s site claims that using Scribe can save teams over 20 hours a month with instant documentation and easy screenshots.

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4. Buffer

The days of using complicated tools and software to schedule and manage your social media are behind us. Buffer is the best Chrome extension that manages your social media for free across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

Social media professionals and marketing teams can gain tremendous value from using Buffer. It helps create content that makes your social media branding look consistent and post this content with an innovative scheduling feature. Only a handful of tools like Buffer give you a single interface to upload and manage content across these varied platforms.

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5. Vimium

Have you ever had to stop working because your laptop’s mousepad or your desktop mouse went bust? Working with your keyboard alone requires a lot of patience and practice. Vimium is here to simplify surfing the internet using only your keyboard.

As a productivity tool, Vimium is a browser that gives you the freedom of shortcut keys that let you browse the internet using only your keyboard. Most of the shortcuts this platform provides are exclusive only to Vimium, making it an exciting new way of working and learning.

Read more about Vimium here.

It has a notorious reputation as “The Hacker’s Browser” because the essential functions you enter as shortcuts sound like gibberish when tried to be interpreted. They appear as strings of letters that do not mean anything, making it impossible for hackers to pry into them.

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6. Noisli

Distractions are the biggest challenge for those seeking high productivity. Noisli helps cut out the sound from the chaos around you and focus more on the noises that help you concentrate. Noisli has curated playlists to help you focus even with chaotic background sounds.

The extension lets you create Combos of sounds to help you focus and concentrate better. Over time, you will begin discovering Combos created by those you’re in touch with and sharing your Combo with them, even with the benefit of a vast catalog of audio tracks and the convenience of accessing content that will help you stay focused.

To keep you from burning out because of excessive work, Noisli also integrates a timer so that you can take breaks regularly and return to your work energized and refreshed.

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7. Todoist

Among the leading and highest-rated productivity extensions on Google Chrome is Todoist. It comes as an app and an online tool as well. Todoist has 25 million users who use it to organize and plan their lives. It is a great productivity tool to constantly check the things to be done, whether on the work front or in your personal life.

The wide range of activities you can add to your Todoist list makes the tool favorable and versatile. From the link to a blog you want to read to an important email you need to send out, Todoist keeps reminding you of your essential tasks so that you do not miss out on anything.

It’s an excellent tool for dealing with too much stress, as it does all the remembering for you. After all, not all of us have a secretary at our heels, taking notes of things we must remember and dishing out memos on our behalf.

Todoist connects to other productivity platforms so that you can easily fetch tasks from them and create a comprehensive dashboard for everything you need to keep in mind.

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8. StayFocusd

Unlike other productivity-enhancing websites, StayFocusd isn’t subtle in getting you to focus on your work. It simply polices your online activity so that you can focus only on what you’re supposed to do and not dive into the distractions of social media, news websites, gaming websites, and others that you define as distractions.

With shrinking attention spans and growing internet usage, StayFocusd has found its niche in developing an extension that overcomes the temptations of the internet. It allows you to choose websites you would like to block at specific intervals.

StayFocusd is all about having a solid resolve and living up to it. It only works if you do not hold yourself back when defining the sites that distract you in great detail. Be specific with how much time you want to allocate to your work. You can access your favorite sites as soon as you complete your job.

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9. LastPass

Remembering all your passwords is a thing of the past. LastPass is the best Chrome extension and a free password manager. It organizes your passwords intelligently. It makes these passwords accessible to you whenever you need them, eliminating the need to jot down passwords on scraps of paper, which could be dangerous.

The award-winning tool requires you to remember just one master password and can give you access to all your essential log-in information from any computer or mobile device, making it a great collaboration tool for your team. LastPass also stores your credit card information for you in a secure vault. Once you mark a device as trusted, LastPass can enter these login credentials automatically by taking your consent.

Another productivity boost that you can enjoy with LastPass is its form-filling feature. It fills in the fields on your forms automatically. Enjoy all of this for free.

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10. Hunter - Email Finder

You tend to waste ample time finding the email addresses and contact information of stakeholders with whom you want to do business.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a challenge only for data entry operators and secondary researchers but for anyone who wants to get in touch with important people from a company. Hunter is the best Chrome extension—an email-finding extension that solves the problem in a blink.

You can visit any domain, and Hunter will find all the essential email addresses associated with that domain. It has filters that can identify department email addresses and the email patterns they use. To help the larger community, Hunter encourages finders to verify emails to make sure they are legit.

Nearly three million people use this tool to build lists and set up quick communication channels with potential business partners.

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11. OneTab

Here’s one for those who hate clutter. OneTab is among the best Chrome extensions for those challenged with multiple open tabs on their browser. While this looks terrible, it also slows down your computer. Google Chrome doesn’t always nest tabs of the same type. OneTab comes into the picture and does just this.

Imagine having 40 tabs on Google Chrome opened. Of these, 10 are YouTube channels for research, 10 are documents you are populating, 10 are on research websites, and 10 are connectivity and social media tools.

OneTab clears up the clutter of multiple tabs, saving 95% of your computer's processing power. This extension can be a lifesaver for those looking for the tabs they had opened at an earlier instance but cannot relocate again. OneTab organizes, declutters, protects, and keeps you connected.

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12. RescueTime

RescueTime is a time capsule for the day. It tracks what you do on the browser and for how long, records this information, and plays it back to you so that you can increase or decrease focus on less important areas.

RescueTime can measure the time you have spent on a specific Chrome page. It analyzes based on your behavior on the open tab. RescueTime is intelligent enough to track when you have stepped out of your computer and can pause the way it tracks at will. It scores the websites you spend time on a scale of “Very Productive” to “Very Distractive.”

13. Ghostery

It is an unspoken truth, but ads affect productivity. Ghostery is a privacy extension that blocks ads, stops shopping trackers, and helps you work more efficiently.

With ads blocked, employees who work on their computers all day find comfort in accessing their content without ads. Advertisements also disrupt the smooth flow of ideas and processes. Ghostery also protects your critical business information from trackers and websites that snoop on your personal data.

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14. Save to Pocket

Sometimes, you come across an interesting piece of content on the internet but do not have the time to read it or view it. This situation is where Save to Pocket comes into play.

It is your virtual save button on the internet. The content you save gets added to Pocket, your virtual library of everything you have saved. This library can be accessed across all your devices whenever you need to revisit the content or have the time to view it.

If you keep populating your Pocket with content you find engaging, then you will never have a dull day. Whenever you are relaxed and have nothing else to do, visit your Pocket and indulge in the different kinds of content you saved.

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Frequently asked questions about the best Chrome extensions

What are some commonly asked questions about the best Chrome extensions? Get your questions answered with these three FAQs.

1. Are Chrome extensions safe?

Since both Brave and Chrome are based on Chromium, they share compatibility with the vast majority of add-ons available in the Chrome Web Store. Furthermore, the vast majority of add-ons available there are risk-free to use.

2. Do Chrome extensions consume RAM?

Add-ons and plugins for Chrome increase its memory consumption. Chrome will use more system resources for each additional plugin or extension you install. Chrome requires more memory (RAM) to run if you have more extensions installed.

3. Are there hidden extensions in Chrome?

Chrome hides some extensions from the Extensions page. Most malicious software, such as browser hijackers, is hidden in Chrome extensions that aren't readily apparent in the browser.

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Bottom line

Productivity begins with you. As a tool, any extension can simplify life and give you more time to do better work. Simply downloading the best Chrome extension that suits your needs isn’t enough. It is essential to use it regularly and to hone your skills to the point where you can build a seamless ecosystem with the extension at its heart.

Whether you’re an accountant, a lawyer, a secretary, an artist, or a musician, there’s always a Chrome extension available to make work better for you. So, feel free to experiment with extensions that promise better performance, and go ahead and recommend your favorite ones in the comments below.

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