Internet, Networking, & Security > Browsers 99 99 people found this article helpful The 16 Best Plugins (Extensions) for Chrome in 2023 Top plugins for home, work, and everything in between By Alexander Fox Alexander Fox Twitter Writer University of the Arts Alexander Fox is a former Lifewire writer who loves translating tech for consumers. His work appears in AppleGazette, MakeTechEasier, and SpyreStudios. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on February 11, 2023 Tweet Share Email Tweet Share Email Browsers Chrome Safari Firefox Microsoft Google's Chrome is a popular, secure, and powerful web browser. Part of the reason Chrome boasts more than 60 percent of the web browser market share is its massive library of available extensions, also called plugins. We've gathered a list of some of the most useful Chrome plugins available from the Chrome web store. Check them out and see which ones can make your life easier and more productive. You can install free items from the Chrome Web Store. For any paid plugins, apps, or extensions, you'll need a Google Payments account. 01 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for Blocking Ads: uBlock Origin What We Like Free and effective ad blocker with no gimmicks. Open-source, with tools for advanced users. What We Don't Like Not easy to permit specific assets on specific pages. Can obscure exactly what's being blocked. Ad-blocking is a popular and important Chrome plugin category, as users try to navigate websites filled with intrusive ads that slow page-load times to a crawl. uBlock Origin has emerged as the top contender in the content-blocking space, appreciated for its easy-to-use interface as well as tools for power users who want to dive deeper into individual scripts. With overwhelmingly positive user reviews and millions of downloads, uBlock Origin is the best Chrome plugin for wide-spectrum content-blocking. Add uBlock Origin to Chrome 02 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for Cookie Management: Click&Clean What We Like Dramatically expands Chrome's cookie-management capabilities. Empowers users to defend their own online security. What We Don't Like Persistent notifications if you don't clean cookies regularly. Removing individual cookies can be time-consuming. Despite Click&Clean's cute name, online cookies are serious business. They're the basis of online-tracking utilities. A company might set a cookie on one page, but as you navigate around the web, that cookie accrues more and more personal information. While many privacy-oriented users likely clear their cookies regularly, the rest of us can rely on Click&Clean to make cookie cleaning an effortless routine. With just a click, delete cookies and your cache as well as typed URLs and your download and browsing history. Add Click&Clean to Chrome 03 of 16 Best Chrome Extension to Stop Online Tracking: Privacy Badger What We Like User-friendly interface is easy for even novices to use. Clear indications of what content is being blocked. What We Don't Like Often over-zealous in blocking content. Users can't import custom blocking lists. Many companies love tracking your online activity, and they're quite good at it. Gain more privacy and security with Privacy Badger. With a variety of tools, Privacy Badger disables tracking tools or obfuscates the data. Toggle blocking on and off for specific sites and trackers to make sure the plugin doesn't break your favorite website. Add Privacy Badger to Chrome 04 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for Privacy Obsessives: Edit This Cookie What We Like Searching for and removing individual cookies is simple. Provides detailed insights into cookie activity. What We Don't Like It can be hard to determine what each cookie does. Since cookies are so crucial to online tracking, controlling them is essential. Edit This Cookie is a cookie manager that lets you add, delete, edit, search, protect, and block cookies. Its interface is easy to use, but its options are powerful. Prevent domains from setting one type of cookie, but allow others. If you frequently switch browsers or computers, export your cookies to track your login status across all your favorite sites. Add Edit This Cookie to Chrome 05 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for Saving Tabs: OneTab What We Like Creates a quick tab-based to-do list. Saves you from keeping tabs open in the background indefinitely. Provides ultra-lightweight session-saving and restore. What We Don't Like No facility for syncing tabs between browsers or devices. Sharing tab collections can be awkward. Chrome takes up a lot of RAM, and the more tabs you have open, the more RAM Chrome needs. OneTab closes all your tabs immediately, condensing them into a page of links. These links then appear each time you open a new tab, giving you the option of reopening the whole window or just a few tabs. Rather than keeping tabs open indefinitely, save them in OneTab for when you're ready to use them. Add OneTab to Chrome 06 of 16 Best Chrome Extension for Saving Money: The Camelizer What We Like Reveals whether a product is truly on sale, or if the retail price suddenly increased. Provides purchasing insights that actually save money. What We Don't Like Doesn't work with other retailer's websites. Amazon prices change constantly, and it's often hard to discern a product's actual retail price. The Camelizer shows you a product's historical pricing data via graphs of previous prices. While you're on an Amazon product page, select the Camelizer icon. You'll get a pop-up box with Amazon price data drawn from the enormous and reliable database at CamelCamelCamel.com. Add The Camelizer to Chrome 07 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for Google Search: View Image What We Like Replaces what should be a mandatory function in Google Image search. What We Don't Like That this extension is even necessary. When Google took away the View Image ability in Google Image search results, many web users were disappointed. This simple plugin reimplements the Google Images "View Image" and "Search by Image" buttons, and they work exactly as they did before Google removed them. Add View Image to Chrome 08 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for YouTube: Enhancer for YouTube What We Like Adds new functionality to YouTube. Reduces some YouTube annoyances. Many dark mode themes to suit your tastes. What We Don't Like Sometimes interferes with Picture-in-Picture on Chrome. Among the many apps that spruce up YouTube, this is our favorite. Enhancer for YouTube includes a slew of options for theming and functionality. There are more than a dozen selectable dark-mode themes, ads are blocked automatically, and videos can be maximized within a browser window, filling the whole screen without going into full-screen mode. Once you get used to Enhancer for YouTube's perks, regular YouTube will feel archaic. Add Enhancer for YouTube to Chrome 09 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for Gmail: Checker Plus for Gmail What We Like Provides instantaneous updates when new mail arrives. Eliminates the need for a persistent Gmail tab. What We Don't Like No visual customization options available. Icon badges can be dismissed only by opening unread emails. Gmail inboxes can fill up quickly, leaving users feeling overwhelmed. Checker Plus places an icon in your toolbar that automatically updates when new Gmail messages arrive. Select the icon, and you'll get a short preview of the message. Select the message, and it opens within the extension. In fact, you can do almost all email reading from within Checker. You'll need to open the primary Gmail browser interface only when it's time to compose a message. Add Checker Plus for Gmail to Chrome 10 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for Userstyles: Stylus What We Like Provides the greatest control over your web browsing experience. Deep customization options for those willing to explore. What We Don't Like Requires knowledge of CSS to create custom themes. Themes break regularly as websites and browsers are updated. Theming web pages with CSS isn't exactly common anymore, but it should be. Using the Stylus Chrome plugin, change how websites display by adding your own styling code on top of them. This allows users to hide annoyances, change colors, or replace text. Stylus is also an awesome tool for the recent dark-mode interface trend. Once you have Stylus installed, check out userstyles.org to see the biggest collection of userstyles online. Add Stylus to Chrome 11 of 16 Best Chrome Extension for Reading Mode: Postlight Reader What We Like Cuts out ads and auto-playing videos. Text and image view is clean and consistent. What We Don't Like Not universally effective. Sometimes truncates text or removes relevant images. Chrome doesn't have a built-in reader mode, like Firefox and Safari, but fortunately, Postlight Reader (formerly Mercury Reader) is an excellent add-on tool. Postlight Reader instantly clears away the clutter from all of your articles, removing ads and distractions, and leaving only text and images for a clean and consistent reading view on every website. Add Postlight Reader to Chrome 12 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for Saving Memory: The Great Suspender What We Like Saves battery and memory space. Speeds up browsing by automatically shelving unimportant tabs for later. What We Don't Like Trying to save a session with suspended tabs sometimes doesn't save the tabs. If you're running Chrome on an under-provisioned computer, you might have a hard time with an excessive number of tabs. The Great Suspender helps by suspending tabs, keeping the tab alive in the interface, but temporarily unloading it. When you visit the tab again, you can "unsuspend" it and reload the page. Add The Great Suspender to Chrome 13 of 16 Best Chrome Extension for Multitasking: Recent Tabs What We Like Keyboard-based task-switching is a huge productivity boost. What We Don't Like Only allows certain keyboard shortcuts. Chrome doesn't come with an Alt+Tab-style tab switcher, making it harder to toggle between tabs when working in the browser. Recent Tabs is great for Chrome-based multitaskers, letting you set a keyboard shortcut that flips between your current tab and the last tab you had open. It's a lifesaver. Add Recent Tabs to Chrome 14 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for Keyboard Shortcut Junkies: Vimium What We Like Practiced users can move through pages at lightning speeds. Great for users who don't like the mouse. What We Don't Like The learning curve is a bit steep. If you feel like your mouse is holding you back, Vimium can replace all browser navigation with keyboard shortcuts. Select links, scroll, and perform all your tasks with just the keyboard. It takes a little while to get a handle on all the keyboard shortcuts, but if you want to leave your mouse behind, this is the plugin for you. Add Vimium to Chrome 15 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for Writers: Find & Replace What We Like The only functional find-and-replace utility available in Chrome. Removes the need to compose text outside Chrome. What We Don't Like Can be a little buggy, requiring a tab reload after multiple searches. If you write long-form text on the web, you probably use some kind of content-management system that probably doesn't have a find-and-replace feature. The Find & Replace Chrome plugin steps in nicely, allowing you to experience Microsoft Word-style find-and-replace functionality within the browser. Add Find & Replace to Chrome 16 of 16 Best Chrome Plugin for a Bigger Perspective: Earth View From Google Earth What We Like Beautiful start page loads quickly. New images added regularly. What We Don't Like No additional new tab page features. Fill your new tab page with a beautiful satellite image drawn from Google Earth. This new tab page extension doesn't slow down your browser with unnecessary functionality, such as a calendar, clock, or to-do list, but it still provides a better visual experience than a blank page. The images are hand-selected, so they'll always be high-quality. The Earth is a beautiful place, so see more of it with Earth View. Add Earth View From Google Earth to Chrome Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Subscribe Tell us why! 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