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It's been an up and down few years for Google's Chrome web browser.

When we first did a version of this story in January 2015, Chrome had about 22.65 percent of the browser market worldwide, according to Net Applications. As of July 2016, Chrome had 50.95 percent—it crossed paths with Microsoft Internet Explorer in March of that year, when both hit 39 percent. Today it's at 59 percent. IE continues to dwindle, as does Safari and Firefox and even Microsoft's Edge browser is down, from 5.0 percent in 2016 to 3.89 percent as of this writing. Only Chrome has gained.

But, it has lost some kudos—from us. After several years as PCMag's favorite browser, a resurgent Firefox took our Editors' Choice award. The reason: Chrome lags in graphics hardware acceleration, and it isn't exactly known for respecting user privacy (just like its parent company). And Firefox really kicked it up a notch with the release of Quantum.

That said, Chrome remains a four-star tour de force for web surfing, with full HTML5 support and speedy JavaScript performance. Obviously, there is no denying its popularity. And, like Firefox before it, it's got support for extensions that make it even better. Its library of extras, found at the Chrome Web Store, has rivaled Firefox's for years. Also, the store has add-ons to provide quick access to just about every web app imaginable. The latest version of Chrome even promises to block bad advertising.

Rather than have you stumble blindly through the Chrome Web Store to find the best, we've compiled a list of 101 you should consider. Several are unique to Google and its services (such as Gmail), which isn't surprising considering who made Chrome. Most extensions work across operating systems, so you can try them on any desktop platform (especially on a Chromebook); there may be some versions that work on the mobile Chrome, too.

All of these extensions are free; there's no harm in giving them a try—you can easily disable or remove them by typing chrome://extensions/ into the Chrome address bar, or right-click an extension's icon in the toolbar to remove it. Every extension must have a toolbar icon; you can hide them without uninstalling the extension by right-clicking and selecting 'Hide in Chrome Menu.' You can't get rid of the icons forever without uninstalling..

Read on for our favorites, and let us know if we missed a great one!

Screen/Page Capture

Awesome Screenshot
Don't limit yourself to basic screenshots. Make them awesome by annotating them with shapes, arrows, and text comments. One click uploads an image to AwesomeScreenshot.com for storage and sharing quickly to social media.

Full Page Screen Capture
Lots of webpages scroll on and on, and if you need to capture what the whole thing looks like, it may seem impossible. But Full Page Screen Capture will do it, scrolling through the page for you and capturing a JPG. Just don't use your mouse while it auto-scrolls the page.

Loom
Sometimes a video of what you're doing online is the best explanation. Make one quickly with Loom, a video screen recorder that allows voiceovers and can add your webcam mug in a corner. Shoot the current tab alone, or the whole full screen if you desire. There's no limit to how much you can record, even for free.

Diigo Web Collector
Dubbed a 'multi-tool for personal knowledge management,' Diigo is a nice mix of social bookmarking (remember Delicious?) and full info grabber like Evernote. This extension puts the service to work, letting you bookmark, archive, and annotate everything you see online. You get unlimited bookmarks for free, but Diigo will charge you $40/year to ditch advertising and add unlimited image storage and webpage backup.

Send to Kindle for Google Chrome
Lots of people prefer to read on their Kindle devices or apps. If you find a webpage with a long-form article on it, use Amazon's extension. It will reformat pages and send them directly to your Kindle of choice for reading later. You can even get a preview before you send it. (If you have another ebook reader that uses ePub format, try dotEPUB.)

Lightshot
Lightshot is a lightweight screen-capture tool that works with a touch of the toolbar button to capture just what's in the browser (or download the full program and tap the print-screen key to get anything appearing on the screen). It has an entire army of tools at its disposal, from upload-for-sharing to annotation. It will even instantly send what you capture to Google to do a search for similar graphics. There are also extensions for Firefox, IE, and Opera.

Evernote Web Clipper
This is a must-have for anyone embracing the Evernote life. Evernote is still the best way to clip and store everything worth keeping online. This extension makes it a breeze, even isolating what it sees as the main content of a page, and storing just that. It has built-in annotation features. When you save a screenshot, tag it—then you can search through it all later using Evernote.com or the offline software and apps (at least two of them).

OneNote Web Clipper
Microsoft's OneNote app/service does a lot of the same things as Evernote. Now with its own Clipper extension, it can do the same thing in Chrome: save anything you see online.

Save to Pocket
Pocket (now owned by Mozilla, the makers of Firefox) is all about letting you read content you find...later. Set up an account and start saving content with the Pocket extension, bookmark buttons, or apps. One click 'Pockets' the content so you can access it anytime—even offline—on all your devices—there are Pocket apps and add-on for everything. Content isn't limited to text; you can store video to watch later, too.

Mercury Reader
If you hate pages full of ads and weird formatting, install Mercury Reader with all alacrity. With a click (or keyboard shortcut) it reduces the 'noise' on page so you can see only the text you want to read, with a typeface you can manage, in a dark or light theme. You can share what's left via social media, email, print it, or send it to your Kindle to read later.

Screencastify
Need to make a video out of what's in a tab? Screencastify will do it without needing any other external software. And it works beyond the confines of the browser tab, recording the whole screen if you want. Animation tools like highlighting a mouse in a spotlight help with visibility. Videos are easily saved to YouTube or Google Drive. The free version allows videos up to 10 minutes long.

Nimbus Screenshot and Screen Video Recorder
Perhaps the most full featured recorder you can get in Chrome, Nimbus does screen grabs (even a whole webpage) which you can annotate, and full video recordings of a browser tab, part of a screen, or a whole screen. And you can even annotate the video with your drawings. Once it's made, you can edit it, share it, save it, print it, or copy it to the clipboard. It's also available for Opera and Firefox, and as full programs for Mac, PC, and Android.

Google Services

Data Saver
This could be handy if you've got a metered connection. Data Saver parses websites through Google's servers on the backend, compressing the pages down to a smaller size (data wise). It doesn't work on sites using HTTPS connections, nor on incognito tabs, so usefulness may be limited, depending on your needs.

Google Scholar Button
Google Scholar is a search engine from Google that just does scholarly articles and case law. This extension puts that ability into a drop-down menu on Chrome. It also makes it easy to transfer your web search into a scholar search. It works best if you're on your campus network, but can be configured to work when off, as long as your library gives you credentials.

Boomerang for Gmail
Ever written a Gmail message and wished you could schedule it to go out a few hours later? Boomerang handles that for you, and you don't even have to be online when it sends. You can track replies, but you only get a limited number of free messages per month.

Checker Plus for Gmail
Ever wanted to check your email but didn't feel like expending the extra energy to open a new tab? No judgments, we've been there, too. The best extension for users of multiple Gmail accounts—I've got three!—is Checker Plus. It gives you fast access via a drop-down menu in Chrome, desktop notifications, color coding, even voice input for writing messages. It also reads your mail to you—all without actually visiting Gmail. Users of the Awesome New Tab Page app get full integration. A donation of any amount unlocks even more features. This is a must-have for any Gmail junkie.

Checker Plus for Google Calendar
Never open Google Calendar again. This extension gives you full access to everything you like about Google Calendar from your Chrome toolbar, plus multiple methods of adding calendar events, such as right-clicking on a webpage to add it like an appointment. The notifications (including voice) are perfectly done. It runs in the background when Chrome is closed, so you never miss an engagement.

Office Editing for Docs, Sheets & Slides
If you don't have Microsoft Word or Excel or PowerPoint installed, you can still edit docs, spreadsheets, and presentations made by those programs. This extension lets you open up Microsoft docs you've stored in Google Drive within the Google Docs/Sheets/Slides web apps. You can view and edit the contents.

Google Dictionary
Load it up, double-click any word on any webpage, and you'll see a pop-up with the definition. Or search for words from the toolbar. Multiple languages are supported.

Google Translate
Ever visit a foreign website and wish you could read it? For certain languages, Chrome will automatically offer to translate the whole page to the language of your choice. With the extension, though, you can highlight a line of text and translate just that, rather than the whole page.

Goo.gl URL Shortener
Access Google's own URL shortener service (found at Goo.gl) via the Chrome toolbar with this extension. It instantly truncates the URL you're visiting and copies the new address to the clipboard for use. It will even generate a QR code of the URL. Click on Details and you can see where and how often the shortened URL has already been used.

Google Voice (By Google)
Google's voicemail service is still useful, and can be plugged right into your browser. This extension offers on-the-fly access to your voicemail messages (with transcriptions) and SMS texts (to which you can reply), and you can initiate VoIP calls over Google Voice. It also makes every phone number you see on a website clickable for calling (if it's not a link, highlight and select use the pop-up menu when you right click to call).

Save to Google Drive
Google Drive may be your primary workplace and storage area, but it's sometimes tricky to put what you want in the cloud repository. This extension makes it a breeze. Save an entire webpage, or just the downloadable elements such as images or documents, shunting them directly to Google Drive. It will even import Microsoft Office documents.

Interface/Utilities

Highly Highlighter
Like highlighting passages in a book or document to make them more readable, or to share with others so they know what you consider important? Then you should install the Highly extension—it lets you highlight the web itself. Anyone accessing the same webpages with the extension can see your highlights (or friends can see it even without installing it), as you see that of others. It's also on Firefox and Safari, plus there are apps for iOS.

FoxClocks
When you need to know the time in other timezones instantly, anywhere in the world, consider FoxClocks your friend. It sets in a status bar at the bottom of Chrome, constantly updating the zones you've designated for monitoring. Or you can click the icon in the toolbar for a drop-down menu with the same info.

AdBlock and Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus is a community-driven extension ported from Firefox, while the unrelated AdBlock adds video ad blocking on sites such as YouTube and for Flash-based games. Considering the video-ad blocking extras, and that Adblock Plus whitelists some ads it deems 'acceptable,' AdBlock (also available for Safari, Opera, and Firefox) is probably the slightly better pick among two excellent products—and that's beyond what Google is already professing it does to block 'bad' ads in Chrome.

µBlock Origin
Looking for an alternative to Adblock or Adblock Plus that's a little less resource intensive? Try µBlock.

Chrome Remote Desktop
There are many times when it would be handy to be able to control someone else's computer from afar, or let others take control of yours for tech support. Many tools exist to make this happen, but arguably none are as easy to implement as Chrome Remote Desktop, since it's all done via the browser extension. It works cross platform for Windows and Mac users—even Chromebooks. Take control of the PCs from your mobile devices—Android, naturally, but also on iPhone.

Hover Zoom
There are a lot of thumbnail images on sites like Google Images, Flickr, deviantART, and social networks. This extension shows you the full-size image when you hover your mouse over any tiny thumbnail, assuming there's a larger image available.

Image Downloader
Bulk download all the images on a single webpage with this extension. It will display all the images, and you can specify which ones you want before the download starts.

Noisli
Like your ambient noises to help you keep the focus? Noisli in Chrome provides a drop-down menu full of them to play, with a sleep timer to turn them off after a pre-set time. You can also use it from the web or get the apps for iOS or Android.

IE Tab
In days of yore, many websites were optimized for Microsoft's Internet Explorer. If you encounter some in your browsing travels along the Information Super-Highway—or perhaps something at work you have to use that the developers never bothered to update—use IE Tab. It loads the page using IE's rendering engine, while still remaining within a Google Chrome tab. (Note that it now requires you to install an extra program called IETabHelper.exe for it to work.)

Stylish
If you've ever used Greasemonkey on Firefox, you'll appreciate Stylish. This extension works with scripts you download from userstyles.org to transform the look of websites. There are thousands of theme scripts that can help you improve your browsing on Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, Google, Twitter, and elsewhere.

Xmarks Bookmark Sync
Chrome has its own excellent method of syncing bookmarks, tabs, passwords, and settings (using your Google account), but Xmarks goes one step further by syncing among all major browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE—on the same or multiple computers.

Readism
When you read a story on Medium, you get an estimate of how long it will take to read the article. Readism applies that same thought to every page you visit, in theory helping you better manage your time. Right-click a link, and you'll get the estimate without even visiting the page.

Speedtest by Ookla
Ookla has ported its internet speed tester from Speedtest.net to an extension that lives in the Google Chrome toolbar. Instantly check your download and upload speed as you visit new sites, to see how they impact performance. You can also check your Internet speed right here. (Disclosure: Ookla is owned by PCMag parent company Ziff Davis).

Productivity

SimilarWeb
Ever wonder what the traffic is like for a site you're visiting? SimilarWeb will instantly provide a snapshot of 'engagement statistics' for the site you're visiting.

Page Monitor
Sometimes you need to keep tabs on a webpage. And if RSS won't do the trick, enter the URL in Page Monitor. This extension tracks any changes and alerts you (via Visualping) when something is different.

Forest
The Pomodoro technique is meant to make you work 25 minutes, break for 5, then start it all again to increase productivity. There are many timers out there to help, but Forest is unique—as it counts down, it grows an animated tree as long as you refrain from visiting blacklisted sites (ahem, Facebook, cough). By the end of the day, you could have a whole forest. There are also mobile apps to keep you focused.

Assistant.to
Install Assistant.to and it becomes part of your Gmail and Google Calendar—you'll be making meetings so much easier. It's the assistant that you've wanted, providing an easy interface to contact people and create the best possible meeting time for all involved.

DuckDuckGo for Chrome
Because it doesn't track you like Google does, DuckDuckGo is a search engine liked by those with serious privacy concerns. With this extension installed, a Google search also shows the top results for DuckDuckGo—or you can go directly to searching with DDG by clicking the drop-down menu.

Lookup Companion for Wikipedia
Wikipedia may be second only to Google for searches throughout the day (at least on my computer). Lookup Companion gives you toolbar access to search the user-built encyclopedia of everything, with results appearing in the drop-down that easily open in a new Chrome tab. (If you want to search with a right click, try Right-Click Search Wikipedia.)

Pushbullet
Notifications are all important for mobile and desktop users these days, but they're seldom in sync. Pushbullet hopes to change that, with this extension that matches up what you get on the Pushbullet apps on iOS and Android. You'll see calls come in even on your desktop, be able to forward files from PC to smartphone, and even send SMS texts from your desktop (if you have an Android phone). There's also an extension for Firefox, and Pushbullet has an IFTTT channel, making it almost infinitely extensible.

MightyText
You're at your PC. Your Android phone is in your pocket. You get a text. Don't waste time fishing it out. MightyText shows your texts in Chrome (even on your tablet). All the messages sent and received, even with pictures and video, are synced, as long as you have an Android phone with the MightyText app installed. You'll also get low-battery alerts about your phone in the browser, and photos and videos will sync up. There's an extension specifically to get MightyText messages in Facebook or Gmail, too.

RescueTime
Stop wasting time online. RescueTime measures how much time you spend at every website you visit (it pauses if the keyboard and mouse go untouched for two minutes or more), all in the background. Later, you can get a report of just which sites are your biggest time sucks. The full version, with alerts and site-blocking features and the ability to measure things you do while away from the computer, costs $9 per month or $72 per year.

Project Naptha
If you've ever wanted to work with the text you see in an image online, Naptha is the key. Using optical character recognition, it makes the text in images copyable and editable. It will even help translate text from other languages.

RSS Feed Reader
Put an RSS feed right on the bookmarks toolbar. Feeder instantly tells you when there are new posts on your favorite RSS/Atom feeds and makes it easy to subscribe. It also has different themes so you can change how it looks. The Pro version with more features (like no ads and one-minute updates) is $4.99 per month.

WikiWand
Wikipedia's presentation is a lot of things—dense, interesting, and busy—but few would refer to it pretty. Wikiwand makes it so. It optimizes all Wikipedia content with its own interface, and ensures whenever you click a link for Wikipedia, you see Wikiwand's much-improved look instead. Customize it, so the fonts and images come in just the way you like. You can also get Wikiwand for Firefox and Safari.

StayFocusd
Enable your self control by limiting the amount of time you're allowed to spend on websites in Chrome. Give yourself one hour a day on Facebook, that's it—StayFocusd won't let you back on the site. It can block specific pages, whole sites, and even apps or games. Couple this one with RescueTime (above) and you'll be much more productive.

Zotero Connector
We gave the Firefox version an Editors' Choice a few years ago, and Zotero, even on Chrome, is still a researcher's (and student's) dream. It's a free way to track, manage, and share citations. Learn a lot more about putting it to use at Zotero.org; it also has extensions for Firefox and Safari.

Timer
Sometimes, you just need a countdown. Timer is a clean, clear on-screen timer that even works when your Chrome browser is offline.

Auto Text Expander
Don't type so much. This add-on lets you write little snippets that expand into full, frequently used text. Never type that annoying email out again—just write it once and then type 'jerks' whenever you want to use it (for an example that can't possibly come from real life).

Security

DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
DuckDuckGo is the search engine that doesn't track you, but it extends that philosophy to this extension that wants nothing more than to keep your privacy going all the time. It provides a guide of sites you can trust, forces encryption when available, blocks ad trackers, and of course makes it easy to search—privately.

Privacy Badger
A product from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Privacy Badger does exactly that, it protects privacy. Specifically, it blocks invisible trackers and all those ads that seem to follow you around the web. It's also available for Firefox Quantum.

Betternet Unlimited Free VPN Proxy
Betternet's VPN claim to fame: it can unblock sites based on the country—so you can surf like you're in the United States even when overseas, and vice versa. Best of all, it promises to be free and ad-free and not to share your data. (If you have other privacy needs or concerns, you may want to stick with a paid VPN.)

Authy Chrome Extension
The best-looking two-factor authentication app for mobile is also available as a Chrome extension. That means when you do a 2FA login (for more on 2FA, read this), you don't necessarily have to have your smartphone available. Get the digits needed to authenticate your login right in the browser, to instantly copy to the site in question. If you're nervous about the security of websites at all, turn on 2FA whenever available.

Secure Mail for Gmail (by Streak)
This extension might not be strong enough for the likes of Edward Snowden, but for those who need some basic open-source encryption on messages, it helps. Also known as SecureGmail, it prevents anyone snooping on your messages, by building in encryption/decryption tools. You'll be able to append a password to messages you send—and the recipient won't be able to open it unless they are also on Gmail, also have the extension loaded, and get the password from you.

Click&Clean
Enter a hot zone of privacy and security with this add-on. The drop-down menu from Click&Clean provides access to your browser cache, cookies, plug-ins, extensions, and history—and quick ways to erase them. You even get a full browser test to see how well Chrome is protecting you. It will help you scan for malware using Bitdefender, clear your private data, and a host of other security options you're neglecting. Customize all the options to get full coverage with Click&Clean.

Disconnect
There's one goal with this extension: block all third-party cookies from social media and advertisers that follow you as you browse. Disconnect claims this helps speed up browsing by 44 percent on some pages. You can see the cookies you're blocking in case you want to let some through.

Ghostery
There's a lot going on behind the scenes as you surf the web. Bugs, beacons, pixels, and more are used to track what you're doing. Ghostery is there to tell you what is happening in the background and give you control over these 'extras.' If you don't like a company or what it is doing, Ghostery can block scripts, objects, even whole images so you can retain your privacy. It's on every browser (even Opera and Edge!) and also via apps on Android, iOS, and Amazon.

HTTPS Everywhere
Visiting sites with 'https://' in front of the URL (look for the green 'lock' icon and the word 'Secure' in Chrome's Omnibox for another indicator) means you're vising a site using SSL encryption—a must for e-commerce at the very least and preferred everywhere. This extension ensures every site you visit that has 'https://' as an option uses it, providing another layer of security.

LastPass
LastPass remains a PCMag Editors' Choice for free password managers (LastPass Premium also gets a nod for paid versions). It works across all operating systems, mobile devices, and, of course, web browsers, thanks to extensions like this one. It also imports stored passwords from other tools, as well, and there's no limit to the number of passwords stored and synced, even on the free version.

Personal Blocklist (by Google)
Ensure that the sites you no longer want to visit—or even see in search results—are blacklisted from Google searches forever. Block a site by domain name or even subdomain.

WOT
The Web of Trust is an online community that rates websites based on one major criterion: can it be trusted? The WOT extension is the first line of defense against sites with a bad reputation, showing red, yellow, and green icons next to search results, providing you a heads-up notice before you click a link.

History Eraser
A five-star rating in the Chrome Store from over 12,000 reviews makes this extension an obvious must-have. It saves your bacon if you've got something to hide by providing one-click removal of your browser history. Not just that, it clears the cache, downloads, saved passwords, and form data, and will even do it for just a limited time period that you specify.

Mailvelope
Use the open-source OpenPGP standard for encryption/decryption to secure your web-based email messages. Mailvelope works with Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail, and other mail services; it's also available for Firefox.

Shopping

AmazonSmile 1Button for Chrome
Did you know Amazon has a service called Smile that will make sure a percentage of every cent you spend at Amazon goes to your favorite 501(c)(3) charity? The requirement: always buy stuff by going to smile.amazon.com, not amazon.com. This extension puts a button in the toolbar that takes you there—and also makes sure if you just type 'amazon.com' in the address bar, or even click a link to Amazon, it switches to the 'smile' subdomain instead.

Add to Amazon Wish List
The Amazon Wish List is a de facto online standard for making a big-honkin' list of items you crave, mostly because Amazon sells almost everything. Almost. Using this extension, when you see an item for sale on a different site, you can add it to your Amazon list. Now people shopping for you can branch out beyond Amazon.

Honey
Honey not only automatically sees what shopping site you're on, and provides a drop-down list of applicable coupons (or links right on the site to get better deals—that's how it works with Amazon); it will automatically apply all the coupons it can to your checkout service on select sites, so you're not cutting/pasting/typing obscure, long codes. Check out the demo.

The Camelizer
The Camelizer displays the full price history for an item, with some comparison to third-party sales. It won't tell you when savings are on the way, but it can help you decide when the cost is most likely to drop. It was once dubbed 'the Amazon Price Tracker' but now supports Best Buy and Newegg, too; you can get the extension for Firefox and Safari.

InvisibleHand
InvisibleHand automatically scours the web for lower prices. A little bit of your own legwork is still recommended, but with a pool of over 600 retailers in multiple countries (US, UK, and Germany, specifically), it's a great tool that works not only with online stores, but also with airlines. You can also get it for Firefox.

Offers
Offers.com—a sister site to PCMag under our parent company, Ziff Davis—offers up coupons and promo codes galore to save on name-brand stuff all over the web, at over 10,000 partner stores. Best of all, Offers tests all the codes it gets first so you don't have to waste time trying expired coupons.

Social/Sharing

Netflix Party
Ain't no party like a Netflix Party! Rather than chill, this extension lets you start a Netflix movie or show, then start a party with any remote friends also running the extension, so you can watch together, even while in different states, while chatting with all the spectators in group chat.

HabitLab
Got a few websites you want to spend less time visiting? HabitLab will try to retrain you into doing so by using different kinds of interventions when you go to the site. For example, go to Facebook too much and it may hide your newsfeed. Whatever works best to keep you away will be used the most, until you're barely visiting those sites at all.

Buffer
If you'd like to schedule your social status updates to sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (or multiple accounts on each; it's limited to three with the free version), you need a buffer. The Chrome extension puts Buffer in the toolbar, where you can use it to make a post that shares the page you're viewing, and you can schedule up to 10 posts at a time to go live later. Buffer also integrates with lots of other services, like Pocket, IFTTT, Feedly, Instapaper, and has apps on iOS and Android.

Notifications for Instagram
Instagram addicts know how great the smartphone app is. This extension brings that same degree of photo-heavy Instagram-atical excellence to the desktop browser experience. You access Instagram right from the toolbar.

Shareaholic for Google Chrome
Shareaholic is a must for those who need instant access to social networks. From the drop-down menu, post directly to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Gmail, Evernote, and more than 250 other sites with this one extension. It has the Goo.gl URL shortener and Bit.ly built in, as well as Amazon Wish Lists for multiple countries.

Tabs

Awesome New Tab Page
When you open a new tab in Google Chrome, you get a page with some shortcut options, usually based on your installed web apps. This extension puts a new interface on that New Tab page. It supports its own customizable, dynamic widgets, which you can move to fit your needs, all in a Metro UI-inspired look. You can customize search options for just about any site that has a search box, right from this page. Save the final results and you can import it to other computers using Chrome and Awesome New Tab Page.

xTab
Lots of tabs can be a problem; xTabs prevents you from opening up too many tabs by killing off the oldest tab or least accessed tab you have open—thus retraining your brain to be judicious when opening them.

Dayboard
Turn your new tab into a to-do list with only the top five items next on the agenda. Plus, it'll block distracting websites you shouldn't be visiting.

SuperTabs
Getting quick access to a drop-down menu/list of your open tabs isn't that groundbreaking, but SuperTabs throws in a search of the tabs so you can jump to the one you need quick as a tabbing bunny. You can create keyboard shortcuts to make use of SuperTabs even faster.

Panda 5
Multiple tabs is already a good way to multi-task. But what about multiple tabs all in one tab? Configure Panda 5 to handle it—load all your news sites in one tab, or all your social media in one tab, etc. and you can get a quick at-a-glance look at what's happening out there. It'll become your new default homepage in Chrome; if you don't want that, try the web app version.

Empty New Tab Page
The name says it all. With this extension installed, if you click to get a new tab you get one that's utterly empty.

OneTab
You open a lot of tabs. That can cause your Chrome browser to slow to a crawl. You can save all that memory by letting OneTab consolidate all the clutter down to one tab full of links to all those same sites.

The Great Suspender
The dozens of Chrome tabs you keep open constantly eat a lot of memory. Installing the Great Suspender reclaims some of those system resources. Leave a tab alone long enough and the Great Suspender 'unloads' the tab to give your computer a break. You can always go back to the tab and click to reload it, or whitelist the sites that need to always be available.

Momentum
Inspirational, productive, beautiful—they could all describe a new tab page made with Momentum, which uses incredible images for backgrounds on useful text you need (like what time it is).

Papier
When every new tab can and should be filled with your new notes, you need Papier. Notes are backed up right to Chrome (but sadly, won't sync across multiple PCs with Chrome, even if they're all on the same Google account); add to them with each new tab opening. If you need the note immediately, a click in the ellipsis menu at bottom left can create an export. It even has a night mode with dark background.

Session Buddy
Still with 5 stars after 23,000+ reviews, what does Session Buddy do so well? Those with an egregious number of tabs open agree that this manager might be the best way to see and organize them all in one place, save them for later, recover tabs after a crash, and export tabs for sharing.

Tabs Outliner
Tabs Outliner provides a look at all your tabs in a resizable, vertical window—tree-style, like you find in Windows Explorer. Closing a tab doesn't remove it from the tree, making it ultra-easy to return to that page, so there's no difference between an open or 'saved' tab. You can even add notes from webpages. When you're sick of all the work, there's a button to close every tab and you're out.

TooManyTabs for Chrome
Sometimes you just open too many tabs. Exceed 20 and the Chrome interface is nearly impossible to use. This extension manages the overflow, providing a bird's-eye view of open tabs. It can search the open tabs and sort them by domain, title, or creation time.

Sidewise Tree Style Tabs
Tabs can hog a lot of space at the top of the browser window. If you don't like that configuration, this extension places them in a vertical, dockable menu.

Tab Snooze
Sometimes there are tabs open in Chrome that you just don't need at that moment, such as an article you're dying to read. If it can keep until after lunch, snooze that tab for later in the day, that evening, the next day, even the next week or the next month. Or pick a day. Or just mail it to yourself to read whenever.

Ultidash
Turn your new tab into a full dashboard with all the extras you can imagine, pushing you to new levels of productivity. The brand-new Ultidash builds in a to-do list, a site blocker with a Pomodoro Timer, and analytics about your work habits and sites visited.

Video

Magic Actions for YouTube
YouTube videos get a beautiful, configurable makeover with Magic Actions. Use your mouse wheel to control volume, select HD or cinema mode (with darkened background), go into the HD mode of your choice automatically, and turn off the auto-play as desired, among other fantastic options. If you want, it even hides the ads in videos and, best of all, hides the comments, where trolls live. It's also on Firefox and Opera.

Super Netflix
If you primarily watch Netflix in the browser, this extension will give you a lot more control. You can speed up movie playback (or slow it down to half speed), change the quality, binge watch without spoilers popping up between shows (it'll blur them out), skip intros, watch in different brightness modes, even get customized subtitles.

Invideo for YouTube
Forgot your place in a YouTube video you'd been watching earlier, but can kind of remember what was happening? With Invideo, you can search for that spot in the video—type in what was being said, and it searches the closed-captions to jump you ahead to the right part.

Video DownloadHelper
There are lots of Chrome extensions that will download video—but not from YouTube. That would go against Google's rules. You can get around that by side-loading a Chrome extension like this one. It supports a huge number of sites, even a few of the more adult variety. (For more, read How to Download YouTube Videos.)

MediaPlus
Typically you only get to watch video or view images in a webpage at the size the page creator intended. MediaPlus however, gives you control over Flash content and other media. Move them around the page, resize them, open them in a new window, add effects, and download them to play offline.

For more, check out the Best Chrome Extensions for Gmail.

There are a bunch of great apps you can install on your Mac—no question there. Separating amazing apps from must-have apps is the hard part, and we don’t want you to spend hours analyzing the Mac App Store (or scouring the web) to find the very best and most useful apps. We’ve made a list of champions across four categories: productivity; Internet and communications; music, photos, and video; and utilities.

The Lifehacker Pack is an annual snapshot of our favorite, essential applications for each of our favorite platforms. For our always-updating directory of all the best apps, be sure to bookmark our App Directory, where we profile amazing apps for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS each week—browser extensions, too.

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Everything you ever wanted to know about App Directory. News, stories, photos, videos and more.

Productivity

Alfred (free-ish)

You can do a lot with Spotlight in macOS, but Alfred is still our favorite application launcher for yourMac. This easy-to-use tool can do so much more than pull up apps, files, and and keyword-driven automation. Plunk down £19 for the Powerpack, and you’ll get a clipboard history, access to workflows (that you can use to combine different actions, hotkeys, and keywords to do even more), hotkeys, 1Password integration, and even text expansion. In other words, paying for Alfred covers a number of activities that you’d have to download separate apps for—some featured in this very Lifehacker Pack. If you’re a new Alfred buyer and feeling little overwhelmed, be sure to check out our beginner’s guide to the app to get a handle on all the amazing things you can do with it.

If you don’t want to pay anything for an app launcher that has similar (but fewer) features under the hood, check out LaunchBar 6: free, if you don’t mind a little bother here and there. That, or consider tricking out Spotlight.

Bear (free-ish)

This cutely named app is one of the best note-taking apps you can get, with one small caveat—to synchronize notes between your devices or use custom themes, you’ll need to pony up $15/year for the app’s subscription. Otherwise, Bear is completely free to use (and looks great).

Within the app, you organize your notes by hashtags rather than unwieldy folders. You can also link notes to one another, which makes it a lot easier to chain together related thoughts instead of having to dump everything into one giant Super Note or remember that you had a few things to say, split into different notes, about a particular topic. Install Bear’s browser extension for Safari, Chrome, or Firefox, and you’ll be able to create new notes from whatever portion of a webpage you select. Also, Bear makes it easy to import notes from other services, including Apple Notes, so you really have no reason to not give it a spin.

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If you need to sync notes and don’t feel like paying for it, consider apps like OneNote, Google Keep, or Simplenote—all good choices, but none that can beat our Bear for usability and looks.

aText ($5)

Who would have thought that text expansion, otherwise known as typing shortcuts, would be so expensive? While it’s true that you can create these kinds of shortcuts yourself directly within macOS, a full-fledged text expansion app is going to save you a lot of time and trouble. We like aText if for nothing else than its price—$5—given that much-loved alternatives like Textexpander ($3.33/mo on an annual plan; $45 for an older standalone) and TypeIt4Me 6 ($20) are anywhere from a bit to a lot more expensive.

As for aText, using it is simple. You set it up so that whenever you enter little words or phrases, the app drops in something else. So, you can finally correct that annoying “ducking” issue forevermore,

Text expansion, also known as typing shortcuts, can save you hours of typing each day. You type a small word or combination of characters and it’ll expand into full, complex sentences that you often use. We love aText because it offers so many great features and only costs $5. If you haven’t yet jumped on the text expansion train, it’s time.

Todoist (free-ish)

For simple note-taking and note-organizing, you can’t go wrong with Todoist. The app is completely free—unless you want to pay $39/yearly for more advanced features like automatic reminders, backups, themes, and an activity overview, to name a few features. Otherwise, the basics are great. It’s easy to create and synchronize tasks (and subtasks) across all of your Todoist-using devices, and browser extensions (including a Gmail addon) will help you make Todoist, and your growing task list, an ever-present part of your daily life. You won’t have that same kind of experience with plain ol’ Notes, especially if you’re trying to access your items on multiple platforms.

If you’re a big Google fan, we also love Google Tasks, which you’ll find directly integrated into the latest version of Gmail (and as a direct app for iOS and Android). You can also add to-do items into our note-taking app, Bear. The app Things 3 is a super-comprehensive task manager, but it costs quite a bit: $50 for Mac, $10 for iPhone, and $20 for your iPad. If the first item on your to-do list is “rob a bank,” however, it’s a gorgeous, fully featured app. And if you want to harass yourself about things you have to get done on your Mac, consider giving the quicky Effortless a try—which drops a countdown timer for your tasks directly into your Mac’s menu bar.

Google Drive and Office Online (free)

We don’t really have to introduce Google Drive, because Google’s offerings should be pretty well-known by everyone at this point. Docs and Sheets are great, free tools for creating and collaborating on documents and spreadsheets (of course), so much so, that a number of businesses solely rely on Google’s offerings instead of anything fancier or pricier.

If you’re a Microsoft convert, or you really love Word and Excel, you can access basic, online versions of both programs directly from Microsoft—no Office 365 subscription needed. If you’d rather work offline, Apple’s Pages and Numbers are the obvious, free choices, and LibreOffice is still the best open-source office app around.

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Airmail ($5)

If you really don’t feel like fussing around with Mail, which is fine enough for most macOS users, consider giving Airmail a try. It’s been our favorite third-party mail app for some time given its low price and ample customization. It also hooks into a ton of other third-party apps and services, including Trello, Evernote, your favorite cloud storage service, and Apple’s mighty Workflow app (on iOS, that is).

If you don’t need power options and want easy, simple email, the free Spark is definitely worth checking out—especially since it can help you automatically sort your inbox to make it feel less like an ever-growing pile of things you’ll never read. Boxy 2 is great if you’re a Gmail user who wants the powers of its Inbox app on your desktop (and don’t mind paying $5 for it), and Mailplane 4 ($30) is a solid app if you prefer an interface that looks like the regular ol’ Gmail. Power users might want to investigate Wavebox ($20/year), which lets you access Gmail, Inbox, Outlook, and all sorts of other amazing web apps directly from one, easy-to-use interface.

Internet and Communications

Google Chrome and Firefox Quantum (free)

The browser you use is likely going to be dictated by the browser you’ve been using. In other words, if you’re a Google Chrome loyalist, it’ll probably take a lot to get you to switch over to Firefox Quantum (if you’re at all intrigued). And if you’ve been with Firefox from day one, you’re probably a lot less likely to want to move all of your bookmarks, extensions, and other settings over to Chrome.

So, which browser is best? It’s not so much that one excels over the other; it’s more important to say that both, finally, are pretty competitive. Depending on the benchmarks you look at—here are a bunch from ZDNet, for example—the browsers appear evenly matched for speed. I haven’t gone through and assessed the most-recent version of each, but I have used both Firefox Quantum and Google Chrome, and they both feel, well, fast. That said, Chrome still feels a bit like a hog when you’re trying to load a ton of tabs at once, but it’s pretty good about using less of your CPU and memory than other browsers.

If you don’t like either, Opera is a viable alternative that’s actually pretty speedy in its own right—and we can’t complain about its built-in VPN, either, nor its awesome integration of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram directly into an easy-to-launch sidebar.

Goofy and Franz (free)

Years ago, it felt like everyone used one chat client to cover a bunch of services (ICQ, AIM, IRC, Jabber, et cetera). Most people nowadays probably have their favorites locked in: Messages for texting, Facebook Messenger for everything else, WhatsApp for sending government secrets or expiring pictures of your booty, Discord for any and all things gaming, Slack for all things not-gaming, et cetera. So, rather than go into detail with all the more obvious apps, we’ll highlight two unique ones.

Facebook Messenger, as you know, requires you to be on Facebook to use it. If I’m correct, you used to be able to essentially connect Facebook’s service to Messages itself, so you could send and receive your Facebook chats without having to have your browser open all the time. And if I’m right (again), you can no longer do that. Instead, you’ll want an app like Goofy, which basically drops the Facebook Messenger interface into a simple application that you can access from your desktop.

We’re also fans of Franz, which offers the same treatment for a variety of other services (as well as Facebook Messenger). If you don’t want to keep 20 programs open to chat with people, Franz lets you access apps like Slack, WeChat, WhatsApp, Skype, Google Hangouts, and Facebook Messenger all from one, single interface.

Skype (free)

Everyone also probably has a video chat app they love to use. And there are plenty to pick from: FaceTime, which comes baked into macOS by default; the aforementioned WhatsApp; Google Hangouts; Houseparty; and even good ol’ Facebook Messenger itself.

If you’re looking for a standalone messaging app that can do it all—for personal and business use, too—we still recommend Skype, which Microsoft recently overhauled. Its interface feels cleaner (and comes with a dark mode), it’s still as easy as ever to send text messages, video messages, and files to contacts, and you can even @ message your friends to get their attention.

That said, we live in an time where most messaging apps have some kind of video or calling component—or so it feels. So if you need that human contact beyond simple texting and emoji, odds are good that you can already do it in the chat app you love.

Music, Photos, and Video

VLC (free)

VLC is the best media player you can put on your Mac, period. It works perfectly with minimal fuss once you install it, and it can play almost any file you throw at it. If you’re a power user, it has a sea of options that would take the entire rest of this article to describe to you.

We enjoy all the improvements VideoLAN tosses VLC’s way, including its new support for 10-bit color depth and HDR, 360 videos, and improved decoding that allows less-powerful systems to play full 4K videos—even if that’s overkill for your Mac’s display resolution. You can drop a number of plug-ins and extensions into VLC to extend its functionality, and you can even use the app to stream videos to your Chromecast, if you’ve allowed Google to get a foothold into your Apple-only household.

HandBrake (free)

HandBrake is a free video conversion tool that, when coupled with an app like MakeMKV, will turn you into a ripping and converting powerhouse. HandBrake is pretty easy to use, but there are still plenty of settings that might give you a little anxiety when you first load the app. We have a guide to help out with that. Once you’ve mastered the basics, queuing up multiple videos and converting them to all kinds of different formats will feel second-nature. Also, don’t forget to grab VLC, mentioned above, so you can actually watch all of your creations.

Adobe Bridge CC, digiKam, and Google Backup and Sync (free)

Apple’s standard Photos app does a pretty decent job organizing your sprawling photo, thanks to collections, tags, and the ability to view photos by when (and where) they were taken. You can even do a little light editing, too.

If you need a little more organizational oomph, consider Adobe Bridge CC—completely free to use, even though you might have assumed it was a paid app. You can’t do a lot of editing in Bridge (well, any retouching, really), but what it lacks in tools, it makes up for in data. You can easily see all sorts of compelling metadata about the images you’ve taken, and organizing them via ratings, keywords, and labels is easy. Well, setting it up is easy. Actually organizing your sprawling photo library might take a little time, but it’ll be worth it in the end, trust me.

The open-source app digiKam has organizing, editing, and a UI that’s fairly similar to what you’d find in Adobe Bridge CC. If you’re not used apps like Adobe’s Lightroom, digiKam might feel a bit advanced—possibly even overkill for your needs—but it’s a powerful app for pro users that would rather spend their cash on camera hardware than more software.

Google Backup and Sync isn’t a photo organizing app itself, but it’s what you’ll want to use to get your photos uploaded into Google Photos—a great online tool and compelling alternative to iCloud as a result of the unlimited storage space you get for photos. It’s easy to create collections and share photos with others (Google will even make suggestions for you based around where and when you’ve taken your shots). And we also like that you can get pretty creative with your searches when sorting and organizing your sprawling photo library.

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Spotify ($10) and Amazon Music Unlimited ($8)

Which music streaming service you pick is largely a matter of preference: one might carry your favorite band, one might have an app interface you greatly prefer, one might have all your friends on it. If you aren’t into Apple Music for these, or any other valid reasons, Spotify is the next obvious choice (sorry Tidal). It has a huge library, its social features are great, and we love the thought it puts into its playlists—human-curated and automatically generated.

If you’re already an Amazon Prime subscriber, you should also consider checking out the company’s Amazon Music Unlimited service. You’ll have to pay $8 on top of your Prime subscription, but that still makes it slightly cheaper than an Apple Music ($10) or Spotify Premium ($10).

Pixelmator ($30) and Affinity Photo ($50)

Pixelmator is one of the best image editors on the Mac, but it’s no longer the only game in town. Though its $30 asking price might seem high, it’s a bargain considering all the incredible editing tools you get to play with—rivaling more comprehensive apps like Adobe’s Photoshop CC for a fraction of the price. (And if you want features like Touch Bar support, automatic color adjustments, and advanced compression—as well as HEIF exporting—you’ll want to pick up the pricier Pixelmator Pro for $60)

Affinity Photo is a compelling, albeit costlier alternative to Pixelmator that’ll set you back $50 for a professional-grade suite of tools, including full RAW editing and a UI that looks a lot like the Photoshop you might prefer (but don’t want to pay a subscription to get). That includes support for “Personas,” which mimics Photoshop’s Workspaces feature by allowing you to set your screen’s many options and buttons based on whatever it is you’re working on—if you prefer one set of tools for a simple editing and another set of tools for something more complex, like pre-processing images for print.

If you’re looking for basic image editing and your Mac’s built-in Photos app isn’t enough, you can always give the open-source app GIMP a try. What it lacks in polish, it makes up for in price.

Utilities

Dropbox, Google Drive, and Mega (free-ish)

These cloud storage services should all be household names at this point. We’ve covered their costs, and their peers’ pricing models, pretty extensively. Which one you go with depends on your budget, preferences, and needs. Dropbox is a great, all-encompassing solution for cloud storage, but you’ll need to get creative to get more than 2GB of free space with the service. Google Drive is a no-brainer, since you get 15GB of space and can easily synchronize files to your laptop or desktop to work on them offline.

With Mega, you get 50GB of free cloud storage to play with and a handy app (MEGAsync) that you can use across your Windows and Mac computers. Mega does have an annoying transfer quota of around 1GB or so in a 24-hour time span, but that’s a small price to pay for a free 50 gigs. Take that, thumbdrives

qBittorrent or Deluge (free)

Ever since Transmission had all those malware issues some time ago, and uTorrent filled its installer full of crap and cryptocurrency miners, we’ve been on the hunt for a simple BitTorrent app, and we’ve settled on qBittorrent. It’s an open-source downloading tool that should look pretty familiar for anyone who has used an app like uTorrent or Transmission previously. No big surprises with qBittorrent’s UI or features. We like that the app is ad- and crap-free, is completely open source, and can automatically quit or shut down your PC when your download is done. Deluge is a good BitTorrent app alternative, but the app hasn’t been updated since May of 2017 (when we wrote this), and we prefer something with more active development.

Backblaze ($5/mo)

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If you want to keep your important files on the cloud, rather than a Time Machine backup, that’s fine—you might not have spare storage sitting around, after all. Backblaze is our new top pick for backup services, since it costs half the price of Crashplan (previously great) and does all the same things. Install the app, pick the files and folders you want to back up (encrypted, no less), and hope you never have to use the service’s restoration features.

The Unarchiver (free)

If you have file archives that your Mac can’t open, give The Unarchiver a shot at them. It’s free, it’s quick, and it does a good job of opening that which your Mac cannot open itself. It also works directly out of Finder, so you won’t have to (annoyingly) open up a separate app before you take a crack at your archives.

A good alternative is Keka, which is also free, also opens a bunch of different archive formats, and can even be faster than The Unarchiver depending on the archive format and size. If you have issues with one app, try the other, and you might find that it does a better job extracting your files.

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(This story originally ran in July 2016, written by Alan Henry. It was updated in July 2018 by David Murphy.)

Contents

Screen/Page Capture

Google Services

Interface/Utilities

Productivity

Security

Shopping

Social/Sharing

Tabs

Video

App Directory - Tips, Tricks and Hacks for Doing Everything Better | Lifehacker

Themes For Mac Osx

Productivity

Alfred (free-ish)

Bear (free-ish)

Best Chrome Themes For Mac

aText ($5)

Todoist (free-ish)

Google Drive and Office Online (free)

Best Chrome Themes

Airmail ($5)

Internet and Communications

Google Chrome and Firefox Quantum (free)

Goofy and Franz (free)

Skype (free)

Music, Photos, and Video

VLC (free)

HandBrake (free)

Adobe Bridge CC, digiKam, and Google Backup and Sync (free)

Free Chrome Download For Mac

Spotify ($10) and Amazon Music Unlimited ($8)

Pixelmator ($30) and Affinity Photo ($50)

Utilities

Dropbox, Google Drive, and Mega (free-ish)

qBittorrent or Deluge (free)

Backblaze ($5/mo)

Themes For Chrome Browser

The Unarchiver (free)

Magnifique Mac

Best Chrome Dark Theme