I always used a lot of extensions with Google Chrome to tailor it to my liking and to streamline my workflow. This was especially true when I was working as a web developer as I needed a lot of tools that were otherwise completely unnecessary for everyday use. Let’s see what I still use in May 2020.
So, this is my Google Chrome extension collection as of May 2020. Although I experimented with a lot of other plugins, I will only include those that I really use daily.
Frequently used tools
These are the plugins I use all the time. They are always turned on and I don’t see much of a performance impact as a result thankfully.
- Augmented Steam
This started as Enhanced Steam a long time ago, but development was taken over by the isthereadeal.com guys. It has a lot of features, but to me, the most useful was that while browsing steam, games I own or are on my wishlist are highlighted and properly tagged. - Checker Plus for Gmail™
This plugin adds an envelope icon that notifies you of incoming emails in the extension bar. You can also view and even reply to emails here so, you do not need to open up your email client if you are not a heavy user. - Extensity
If you use a lot of extensions, but do not use them all the time, this extension is a godsend as now you can enable/disable extensions with a click of a button right there on the extension bar. - Google Translator
Pops up a translation when you highlight text on a website. Much faster than copying the text and pasting it to a separate translator tab. - Grammarly for Chrome
A really cool spell-checker for the English language. I’m using it right now as I type this text. - Picture-in-Picture Extension (by Google)
This plugin can pop out videos of the Chrome window and you can place it anywhere on the screen. Very useful if you like to multitask like me. Recently many embedded video players provide a similar solution, but this is way better still. - Reddit Enhancement Suite
The default Reddit experiment is pretty awful in my opinion. I especially hate the new design that seems to mimic a mobile app instead of the powerful, but stupidly simple layout that was available before. When you log in, you can get the old layout back with a lot of extra features, but to me, the most important is image auto loading and resize by drag. - Tabby Cat
This is just a stupid new page plugin that shows a random cartoon cat every time you open up a new tab. Great conversation starter in the office 🙂
Ad blocking
Ad blocking is not a nice thing to do to content creators and I usually have it turned off. However, sometimes you cannot enjoy the content if there are too many obtrusive ads on the page.
- uBlock Origin
This is a general-purpose adblocker if you just want to get rid of all the ads on most websites. - YouTube AdBlocker
If you ever got interrupted by an ad while watching (or listening to) a YouTube video, this is what you need to install.
Web development tools
Though I’m not as active as I have been years ago, I still have a few ongoing projects like https://typing-speedtest.com and https://phpsel.org. These plugins stayed with me all through the years, didn’t fing better ones yet.
- ColorPick Eyedropper
Simple color picker, nothing fancy. - Emmet Re:view
Helpful to simultaneously test responsive views of a website side-by-side. - Full Page Screen Capture
A simple screenshot utility if you need a screenshot of a page that doesn’t fit on your screen without scrolling. - Page Ruler Redux
A simple ruler to measure stuff on the sites you are building. Useful in certain situations when you don’t need 100% exact dimensions. - PerfectPixel by WellDoneCode (pixel perfect)
With this plugin, you can overlay the design you want to implement on your work-in-progress website. Very useful, but you have to vary that ever since we are developing responsive websites, your design can’t be implemented 100%. In my opinion, we have to strive to be exact vertically, while horizontal differences can be acceptable. - Viewport Dimensions
This plugin shows you the viewport dimensions when you resize the browser window. Exactly as the name implies… - Wappalyzer
You can check what technologies a website uses with this plugin. Useful if you need to make a quote for a similar site as it often happens in the webdev business. - WhatFont
This is my favorite webdev plugin of all time and saved my neck a thousand times. You can use it to ideintify what font is being used with exact parameters without diving into the Chrome DevTools.