10 must-have Google Chrome extensions

Despite Microsoft’s IE gaining its market share and numerous Mozilla Firefox loyalists, Google’s Chrome enjoys a large share of millions of users. To further enhance your browser experience and increase productivity, the search giant (as we like to call it) has a lengthy list of Chrome extensions. These add-ons are simple to install and make your browsing experience swift. Among the numerous extensions made available by Google, we have listed out our 10 must-have Chrome extensions for you.

As the name suggests, this extension keeps all those annoying ads at bay. This is one of the most, rather the most popular browser extension and is also available for Mozilla Firefox. It claims to not infringe on the user’s privacy and Chrome warns all extensions that modify web pages. It is a community-driven open source project that aims to better the use of Internet by negating irritating ads.

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Block them all…

Smartr Inbox For Gmail

Now, we know Google has added a full fledged Labs feature to upscale the productivity of users. But we just couldn’t sideline this one from our list. Smartr Inbox for Gmail is a smarter way of managing your contacts and relevant details about them in one place. The Gmail Inbox offers all essential contact information, including e-mail history and also updates from social sites like, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Moreover, it does so automatically by finding people. Users can also opt for Pro to further connect contacts across platforms, like Gmail, Android, Outlook and BlackBerry.

This extension is an excellent way to tackle the numerous tabs that some people often tend to open at a time. Numerous tabs sometimes even make it difficult to see the favicon on the tab and here’s when the TooManyTabs extension comes handy. It brings a 22’s eye view of all the tabs and lets you preview the content of each tab. It’s a nice way to make instant tab searches. 

If too much to handle

Awesome Screenshot

Awesome Screenshot is simply awesome at capturing the screenshots of a page or a particular portion, and then also lets you annotate it. You can highlight content with circles, rectangles, arrows, lines and even add text, to indicate what you are trying to say. It supports .png format and also horizontal scrolling. You can save and share these images.

Points out clearly

Here’s yet another Chrome extension, which is a Gmail app to support offline access. Though in beta, this extension seems quite handy. Gmail Offline automatically synchronizes messages and queues them into action any time Chrome is running or an Internet connection is available. 

Google Dictionary

This is yet another useful extension to rely on, each time you come across a difficult word on a webpage. You don’t need to reach out to an online dictionary or turn pages (for those who still prefer the good ‘ol dictionary!). If you just double click on a word, an instant bubble will give you the meaning of the word. While using the toolbar dictionary, you can view the complete definition of any word. Besides English, it supports languages like Chinese, French, German, Spanish and more.

Mind your words

If you indulge in a lot of reading or researching online, then this extension is simply awesome. On installing YouRhere, you will notice a small white arrow that follows your mouse on hovering over a web page. Just double click on a line where you’ve stopped due to some interruption and the extension will highlight it for you, and take you to the same line when you want to continue reading. Simply click on the YouRhere icon and it takes you to the same line. Basically, it lets you read, mark and share (via social sites) web pages with mere clicks. 

This is a solid manager for all your passwords. Now, talking about someone managing your passwords may not seem sensible to many, but this password manager is helpful, if you have like 100 of accounts, such as blogs, forums, and so on. It generates one single master password that does the reset, without you needing to type in the password. It also helps at completing your forms, if any. 

Click&Clean

This extension will do all the cleaning for you with instant clicks. It is meant to clean all your browsing history, typed URLs, flash cookies and all traces of online activity in order to protect your privacy. It scans the PC for malware and erases temporary files. It is also capable of cleaning up your hard drive to make available more disk space, including secure file deletion using external applications, such as CCleaner or Wise Disk Cleaner. 

On a cleaning spree

Taskforce

It puts an end to juggling and copy-pasting emails to stay organized. It can convert emails into tasks without leaving Gmail and the productive extension will save you all the time. Taskforce is completely collaborative and just by entering an e-mail address; it adds another person as a collaborator, in case you need to communicate with others to get the work done. It enables your e-mail to be read, responded to, searched and archived, even when offline.

Task..simplified..

Take a look and see which one suits you best, also share your list of must-have Google Chrome extensions in our comments section below.