Top 7 Google Chrome Adds For Optimizing Your Workflow
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Working on your computer sometimes might be not a really productive process. A never-ending will to close down your Word window and start exploring your social media feed can be too strong sometimes. Also, struggling with finding all the needed information in no time and working at the office where your colleagues constantly distract you, makes it almost impossible to come up with efficient work. A big part of networking requires using an Internet browser - Google Chrome is one of the most popular ones. It is fortunate, that there are dozens of various add-ons and plugins for this browser that can help you make your workflow more comfortable and less time-consuming - some of them are completely free of charge.
This brief article will introduce you to some of them.
Adblock Plus
Advertising banners are everywhere on the Web. Distracting ads appear when you don’t want them to and make you waste your valuable time and lose attention. Advertising is becoming more targeted, which means you mostly see the ads that promote goods you are interested in, which is sometimes a bit creepy. This is possible because the data concerning your previous Internet activity is being collected. To minimize the effect of digital promotion on yourself, try installing Adblock Plus, which is probably one of the most popular extensions for Google Chrome ever. This small utility will make you forget that the Web is overloaded with ads and focus on your work. Installed once, you will never want to delete it and browse without this lifesaver again.
Panic Button
Have you ever been in a situation when you just surfed the net and accidently saw your boss or whoever else approaching your desk? In this type of moments you try to close all the unwanted tabs desperately, so that no one will ever know how you spend your working time. Panic Button extension for Google Chrome is here to help you in these situations. When applied, this add-on looks like a small but visible red button you will never miss - just click it once to fold all your browser tabs and return to your homepage automatically. Pressing the button another time will return you back to the content.
Block Site
A desire to take a break and scroll your social media feed or watch some videos on YouTube is sometimes impossible to cope with. Affording this little weakness to yourself might grow into a total lack of motivation to go on doing your tasks. Block Site add-on for Chrome is a great solution. This extension and its numerous substitutes serves to protect you from wasting your time looking through some memes and dumb videos. If you know which websites steal the most time from you, block them or limit the time spent there daily with this service. Of course, it won't stop you from checking Facebook or any other site, but it will definitely make it much more difficult since you have to go to the options and disable the permission you have set once.
VidIQ
If social media is a big part of your life and work, it is unlikely that you would like to block them. Instead, it is more reasonable to enhance your social media using experience - easy with some advanced Google Chrome extensions. VidIQ is a free plugin that can be a helping hand to SMM managers. Posting on YouTube, for example, is not as simple as you may think - it is important to use appropriate keywords, to create an attractive thumbnail and a catchy video title to gain as many views as possible. The extension helps the content creator define the most relatable and popular tags that allow users to find your video. Also, VidIQ provides advanced statistics for other videos for you to learn about bloggers’ income, views by country, social network sharing performance.
Dark Reader
Working on your computer all day long is damaging to your eyesight. Staring at the bright light the screen produces is a main reason for it. Although, there are ways to minimize this problem: making short breaks every hour spent at the computer and lowering the brightness if possible. Anyway, major half of the process is looking into white colour, which is the brightest on your monitor. Some websites and apps develop their ways for optimizing the problem by adding “dark theme” or “night theme”, for example. This option inverts colors on your screen and makes the text white on black instead of black on white. Dark Reader for Google Chrome allows you to make any site dark to protect users’ eyesight. The add-on is easy to control - turn it on and off if needed or use custom settings to set your browser to turn dim automatically at certain time.
The Great Suspender
Google Chrome is a quite energy-intensive application - it requires large amounts of RAM on your computer to function. It can be a problem on weak computers that will result in your workflow speed and total productivity loss. For those who can relate to this problem, there is a perfect solution - The Great Suspender extension is a small but efficient utility to optimize your Google Chrome resource use. It allows user to “pause” the inactive tabs for the economy of RAM. This add-on works automatically and “freezes” numerous tabs opened in your browser by a certain period of time that can be set up by user.
UPDATE: The Great Suspender has been taken down for allegedly containing malware. Here you can find safe alternatives.
Momentum
If you hate using Evernote or your smartphone notes to create to-do lists and you want everything to be integrated to Chrome in the most fancy way, you are lucky to learn about Momentum. This extension creates a spectacular home page with background pictures changing each 24 hours - never get bored of your wallpapers again. Furthermore, there is a large clock in the center of the screen, to-do list section, additional tab for your saved links and weather in your town. An extra option in this application is a line where you can put your main daily goal or focus not to forget what is important to you.
Something, that makes up for a big part of your daily routine is pretty much your life. Spending days at your laptop can be discouraging at times. However, creating maximum utility and comfort of your most used instruments is utterly important. It requires some time, but it is definitely worth it - investing your time once will save you much more in future.
Text by
Eduard Oksem