I do more work in my web browser now than I do in desktop apps, and I’d wager a guess that you might be in the same boat. Today, we’re going to focus on making the browser itself more useful by rounding up 10 of the best Chrome extensions for productivity, including tools for organizing tabs, keeping you on-task, saving highlights, and more.
We’re going to focus on Google Chrome, as it’s the most popular browser and the one that I use. However, a lot of these extensions are also on other browsers.
For each one, I’ll link to versions in alternative browsers as well if they exist. I’ll note that it’s also possible to install Google Chrome extensions in Microsoft Edge directly from the Chrome Web Store, as it’s built on Chromium.
Supported browsers:
I’ll admit it; I’m a tab hoarder. I’m often engaged in multiple research projects at once, and before I know it, I’ve got 50 tabs open. I can’t find anything I’m looking for, Chrome is using all of my computer’s RAM, and the fans are spinning so fast that the entire box is probably about to head for the moon.
Because I’m such a hoarder, Workona is my new favorite extension. The whole app is designed to gather and organize resources across different websites, so you can group them by project. It also has a freaking awesome tab manager built-in.
It also has a great tab manager, which lets you drag your open tabs into project folders. Once done, you can keep only one project’s tabs open. If you want to switch over to another project, it’ll close the current project’s tabs within the window, and open the new project’s tabs.
It also keeps an auto-saved list of the tabs open in each project, which you can edit if you need.
Importantly, you can save tabs as Resources within projects. This allows you to close them without losing them – they’ll always be in the Resources section of the project unless you delete them.
Supported browsers: