A list of 25 must-have Chrome extensions and apps compiled specifically keeping in mind the need of bloggers.

Google Chrome is the most widely used browser in the world—and for good reason. It’s fast, features a clean design, has a great tab management system, and takes seconds to install. But what makes Chrome truly outmatch all other browsers is its sheer extensibility. Using the Chrome Web Store, users can browse through a vast library of apps and extensions to customize their browsing experience.

In fact, there is such a large number of apps and extensions of so many different types in the Web Store library that it can quickly become too confusing. So we’ve put together this list of 25 must-have Chrome extensions and apps specifically keeping in mind the need of bloggers. If we missed something that you think deserves to be on this list, do let us know in comments. Okay, let’s get started:

1. Grammarly

Grammarly keeps a check on your spelling and grammar when you’re writing online and ensures that you never make a typo or end up looking dumb because of misplacing an apostrophe. It works almost anywhere you may be writing online—including but not limited to Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Tumblr.

Grammarly scans your text in real-time for proper use of more than 250 advanced grammar rules, spanning everything from subject-verb agreement to article use to modifier placement.

2. Crystal for Gmail

Have you ever wondered how you should begin an email when writing to someone for the first time? Should you go with a formal “hello” or a more casual “hey”? Should you be brief or verbose? Subtle or direct? With Crystal, you’ll never have to wonder again.

Crystal helps you tailor your emails based on the personality of the person you’re writing to. Crystal makes profiles of people based on public data (tweets, blog posts, forum posts) available on them and then uses this information to help you understand what kind of communication they would respond best to—it actually works a bit like magic.

3. Pocket

Pocket won the Webby award for best productivity app of 2014 and has a user base of 15 million people. It’s a simple tool that helps you to save articles, videos and more for later consumption.

With Pocket, all of your content goes to one place, so you can view it anytime, on any device. You don’t even need an Internet connection. Don’t lose track of things by emailing yourself links or letting tabs pile up in your browser.

4. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is an analytical tool used to tell you quick details of a website. The details include website rank (globally and category-wise), monthly traffic, bounce rate, and average visit duration. This tool can come in handy with competitor analysis or while examining a domain for collaboration.

The free version of this tool offered quite detailed report including geography-wise distribution and source (organic, direct, reference, and more) of traffic. These factors all affect SEO in some way. If you want to know about a competitor’s digital presence, you should try SimilarWeb extension.

5. Block site

It’s almost too easy to waste time on the Internet these days with content-rich websites like Cracked, Upworthy, Reddit, 9GAG, BuzzFeed, YouTube, TED, and what have you. Sometimes a little self-imposed restriction is just what’s needed to squeeze out that little extra bit of productivity.

Block site allows you to selective block websites that you know are taking up a significant chunk of your time and causing drops in productivity. Apart from websites, you can block content by keywords, set time durations for when Block site should be active and set uninstall protection.

6. Buffer

Buffer is the easiest, smartest and most frictionless way to share content on social media. Whenever you come across something interesting that you want to share on your social networks, all you need to do is click on the Buffer button and a box will show up which will let you choose multiple networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+) and either share the content instantly with one click or schedule it to be shared at a later time. It’s so easy to use; you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

7. Keywords Everywhere

If you are a keyword enthusiast, then this extension is for you. It shows the volume and CPC of keywords along with similar keyword searched, without having to enter them in a panel to generate the report.

This can be a perfect tool for publishers or bloggers constantly looking for low competition keywords in their respective niche. Furthermore, you can mark certain keywords as favorite and it will be saved on the extension. Afterward, access all the data including keywords in Excel, CSV or PDF format. This tool is also available for the Firefox browser.

8. Feedly Mini

Feedly is one the best (if not the best) RSS readers out there. And this official extension makes it even better by adding additional functionality. Using Feedly Mini, you can easily add websites to your Feedly, save pages for later viewing, email pages, tweet pages, share pages on Facebook, save pages to Evernote, and curate and tag pages.

Another Feedly extension you may want to look at is Feedly Notifier which gives real-time notifications of new updates in your Feedly and lets you view updates from within the extension without having to open a new tab or window. It also adds a bunch of functionality apart from this.

9. LastPass

As any web security expert will tell you, having a universal password for all the websites is not a good idea—if one gets hacked; all others are at risk too. Maintaining a unique password for every website can quickly become unmanageable.

That’s where LastPass comes in. It’s a feature-rich password management suite that stores logins and passwords for every website you choose to add into its encrypted database and auto fills them whenever you visit that website next so that you don’t have to do it manually. Apart from its core functionality, it has tons of other useful features to make your online experience smoother and more secure.

10. Clearly

Clearly takes the clutter out of reading online and makes it a pleasure again. With one click, Clearly removes all unnecessary page elements such as sidebars, ads, and social buttons from blogs, articles, and web pages—allowing you to focus on the thing that matters to you most—content. It also allows you to view multi-page articles on a single page.

If you’re an avid Evernote user, you’re in luck because Clearly is designed by Evernote and therefore offer seamless integration with it.

11. Right Inbox for Gmail

Right Inbox saves you time on repetitive tasks and helps you to send better emails, in less time consistently. By installing Right Inbox in Gmail, you’ll get all the functionality that you wish Gmail included as standard. The features include email tracking, email follow ups and email reminders so you never lose track of important emails again. Right Inbox is free to use up to certain limits (can be checked on their pricing page).

12. Google dictionary

Stop searching online dictionaries each time you come across a new word and let this extension by Google do it for you. It’s pretty simple. Just install the extension, double click on any word whose meaning you would like to know—and voila!—a tooltip will appear offering its dictionary definition. It also allows you to save a history of all the words that you’ve looked up and access them later, helping you build a better vocabulary over a period of time.

13. Writer

Writer is a minimalist writing environment used by 6,42,000 writers across the world. There are countless text editors in the world, but Writer’s uniqueness lies in its simplicity—the writing experience here has been distilled to its purest form—there are no fonts, no bold, no italics, nothing but words.But just because it’s minimal doesn’t mean it lacks functionality. It comes with a host of features such as automatic saving, offline access, color customization, word counter, and export to PDF or text.

But just because it’s minimal doesn’t mean it lacks functionality. It comes with a host of features such as automatic saving, offline access, color customization, word counter, and export to PDF or text.

14. Evernote Web Clipper

Subject research takes up a big chunk of any blogger’s time. Using the right tools can save you a bunch of time at this stage. Evernote is one of the best note-taking and archiving software in the market and this official extension makes the process of saving content to Evernote a lot simpler.

With a single click, you can save webpages, PDFs, Gmail conversations, articles, selected text, and images, and then share them via email or your social networks.

15. Session Buddy

If you’re anything like the average Internet user, you probably have 10+ tabs open in your browser right now. It’s an easy thing to do, one link leads to another link leads to another link and before you know it, you have so many tabs open that you can’t keep track of them.

And then you don’t close the tabs because you’re afraid you’ll lose track of them forever. You also can’t keep them because they hog memory.Session Buddy solves this problem by letting you to save and restore entire sessions whenever you like. It also helps restore sessions in case the browser or the system crashes in the midst of work.

Session Buddy solves this problem by letting you to save and restore entire sessions whenever you like. It also helps restore sessions in case the browser or the system crashes in the midst of work.

16. Google Publisher Toolbar

Google’s publisher toolbar helps web publishers and professional bloggers view data about their AdSense, Ad Exchange, and DoubleClick for Publisher accounts from one interface within the browser.

The toolbar allows publishers to block any unsuitable creatives that they don’t wish to display on their websites. Post installation, all the ad units on your website also get an overlay which conveniently displays useful information such as the buyer name, display URL, and a summary reporting on the ad unit including performance metrics, such as clicks, RPM and estimated revenue.

17. Google Keep

Tired of losing track of your ideas? Keep track of them easily with Google Keep. It lets you quickly save notes, lists, and photos. If you’re in a rush, you can just record a memo and Keep will automatically transcribe and save it for you.

You can color code and add labels to organize your data and can also easily find it using the search function. Keep offers real-time collaboration so you can work together with friends, family, and coworkers. Lastly, it is compatible across all devices so you have all your notes available to you anywhere, anytime.

18. Bitly

In this age of online sharing, URL shortners are a godsend, and Bitly is among the best of them. Its official extension lets you save content from your browser to your Bitly account, customize Bitlinks with calls-to-action and other messaging, share Bitlinks via email and social networks, organize your Bitlinks through notes and bundles, and adjust privacy settings for your Bitlinks easily as you create them.

19. MOZbar

MOZ offers an all-in-one SEO toolbar with this extension. It gives you instant metrics for a site’s page and domain authority ranks. Next, this tool analyzes the links of the site to give a detailed report and shows an error with them. Also, it checks the overlay of your site and provides a detailed to improve it for better search engine ranking.

This tool is available for free at the Chrome app store or you can visit the website to get it from there. It claims to be a leading SEO tool with more than 500,000 installs.

20. Sidekick

Every hero needs a sidekick and Sidekick is that sidekick to the hero that your email is. All of us rely so much on email and yet for years there hasn’t really been anything in the way of innovation from most email providers save for improvement of existing features.

With Sidekick, you’ll be able to see detailed contact profiles of people including their title, company, social profiles, and recent tweets right in your inbox. You’ll also be able to see when and how many times they’ve opened your emails—so you never have to feel like you’re shooting in the dark ever again.

21. Checker Plus for Gmail

Checker Plus is Gmail on steroids. It expands the functionality of your favorite email client by adding a host of new features such as instant desktop notifications for new emails, popup mail preview window that lets you read, reply and archive emails without leaving the current tab, multiple account management, voice-based notifications, and the ability to monitor custom labels.If you’re a power Gmail use and have more than one account, this is a must-have extension.

If you’re a Gmail power user, this is a must-have extension.

22. Fireshot

Fireshot eliminates the whole print screen, paste, edit, and save routine by letting you quickly and easily grab screenshots of webpages and save them as a JPEG, PDF, GIF, PNG, and BMP from within Chrome. You can capture entire web pages, capture only the visible part of a webpage or even manually select the area that needs to be captured.Apart from that, you can crop, resize, add text and arrow annotations, blur areas, and apply other effects to your captures.

Apart from that, you can crop, resize, add text and arrow annotations, blur areas, and apply other effects to your captures.

23. Break Helper

Sometimes we get so caught up in the work that we’re doing that we completely lose track of time. While that may be good for your work, it may not be so good for your health. It’s been proven that sitting for prolonged periods of time is literally killing us. And even if hypothetically you don’t care about your health, working at a stretch without taking breaks results in sharp declines in productivity.But Break Helper is here to help. It’s just a simple extension that lets you know when you need to take your next break. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Don’t be Jack.

But Break Helper is here to help. It’s just a simple extension that lets you know when you need to take your next break. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Don’t be Jack.

24. Google Quick Scroll

Google Quick Scroll is a handy little extension that gets you to what you’re searching for faster than ever before. Once you land on a page from Google search, a popup message from Quick Scroll may appear in the bottom right corner of the screen, showing one or two pieces of text that may be relevant to your search query.Clicking on this text will take you straight to that part of the page so you don’t have to spend time scrolling through the entire page looking for something specific.

Clicking on this text will take you straight to that part of the page so you don’t have to spend time scrolling through the entire page looking for something specific.

25. Alexa Traffic Rank

Amazon’s Alexa offers a Chrome browser extension to check the ranks of various sites on-the-go. Along with the Alexa site rank, you can also check global traffic on the site, similar sites, and average load time of the page. From the extension panel, you can visit the Alexa website to further get more details related to the site and continue with your research. With Alexa Traffic Rank tool, you get a comprehensive look of the site statistics at one place.

The Alexa extension accompanies you as you surf, providing you with Alexa data about the sites you visit without interrupting your browsing. For instant traffic rank results, this tool can be helpful for publishers.

FAQs

1. What are chrome extensions?

A Chrome extension is a software program built on web technologies (such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) that allows users to customize their browsing experience. 

2. Is it safe to add Chrome extensions?

Google Chrome and Brave are both Chromium-based web browsers; they support most extensions from the Chrome Web Store. Most of the extensions you find there are safe.

3. What are the risks of Chrome extensions?

Chrome Extension Risks:-
i. The Chrome browser warns you when you add extensions that might access your data. 
ii. There are some bad actors who put malicious extensions in the Chrome Web Store.


Author

Shubham is a digital marketer with rich experience working in the advertisement technology industry. He has vast experience in the programmatic industry, driving business strategy and scaling functions including but not limited to growth and marketing, Operations, process optimization, and Sales.

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