The 10 Best Chrome Extensions for Productivity

- Hello, my name is Thomas Frank and I have a browser tab problem.

I just can't seem to help myself from having 50

or 80 browser tabs open at one time

and completely taking up all my computer's ram,

which is why I now have this little extension

that automatically hides the browser tabs I'm not using

and groups them into projects,

and that's not all?

Today we're gonna break down 10 of the best browser extensions out there for

boosting your productivity.

And this video is sponsored by Hover.

So we're gonna focus mainly on Chrome in this video since it is the

most popular browser out there

and it's the one

that I happen to use,

but if you're using something else like Firefox or Safari fear not,

a lot of these extensions are on multiple browsers

so when I call each one out you're gonna see some icons to show

which of the major browsers

that extension is also on.

So with all of

that out of the way let's get into our first extension,

the one that I teased in the intro, called Workona.

This is probably my new favorite extension on Chrome

because to make a bit of an admission here I'm a really bad tab

hoarder.

My friends love to make fun of the fact

that I often have 50

or 100 tabs open,

but that's just my nature.

I always have multiple research projects going on

and before I know it the browser header bar on my computer screen is

just this unintelligible mess of tiny slivers of tabs.

I can't even see what they are at

that point and that's the problem

that Workona helps people like me to solve.

It basically gives you this dashboard where you can create multiple projects

and then group your tabs into those projects.

Now if you've watched my past videos you've probably heard me talk about an

extension called TabCopy,

which lets me basically copy all the tab links to my clipboard,

but I gotta say this is better.

In addition to letting you do that,

if you wanna just paste your links somewhere else,

it also saves all of your tabs in organized projects

and you can even close those tabs after saving them

as resources so you can keep a bunch of different websites in a specific

project without having to keep them open.

You can also switch between projects

and Workona actually suspends the tabs

that you're not using

and hides them if they're not an open project

so you only see what is relevant to the project

that you're working on.

So basically Workona makes context switching a lot better within Chrome

but it also encourages you to be working on one specific project at a

time because you know the grouping of tabs you have open are only related

to that project.

Our next extension is called Habitica Pomodoro SiteKeeper,

which is kind of a mouthful

but it is now my pomodor app of choice.

So, if you're unfamiliar with the pomodoro technique,

I've got a whole video on it

and I'll link to

that down in the description below,

but in short it is probably the most effective

and easiest to use productivity technique out there.

You simply pick a task you wanna work on, set a timer,

an actual timer for 25 minutes,

and work on just

that task during the duration

then you take a break

and because you're using an external timer to guide you

and because you're reframing your task

as work for just 25 minutes,

it's an extremely effective way to get over the resistance you feel to doing

a tough task.

I use pomodoro sessions all the time to get myself doing things

that I don't want to actually do.

And I've tested a lot of pomodoro apps out there.

This is now my favorite one because I use a habit tracker called Habitica.

Now, if you haven't used Habitica before it uses RPG

and video game elements to sort of build a habit-tracking app

that keeps you a bit more motivated to track your habits,

especially if you're a nerd like me.

But I will note that even if you're not into the RPG stuff,

Habitica is a fantastic habit-tracking app,

possibly one of the best out there because it's open source,

which means it has a ton of advanced features

that don't cost anything where other apps

that have similar features always want you to pay,

which is pretty nice.

And in keeping with

that way of doing things this extension for pomodoro timing has a lot of

cool features that a lot of other pomodoro apps

that I've seen want you to pay for,

like tracking your pomodoro stats.

A lot of 'em want you to pay for that.

This one does it for free

and it does a few other cool things

as well,

namely it connects to Habitica and adds pomodoro-based habits to your habit tracking.

It also has a site blocker

so you can add whatever sites you want to its block list

and during pomodoro sessions all of those sites are gonna be blocked.

You can also add costs to websites

and if you add a cost to a website it's gonna be blocked all

the time,

even outside of pomodoro sessions

and you can get into them for a limited amount of time by paying

gold from Habitica.

Now, personally I love having this extension connected to Habitica since I use the

crap out of it,

but if you don't happen to use

that or you want something a little less nerdy,

there is another extension called Tide, which has a pomodoro timer,

it's got the stat keeping for free, it's got the site blocker,

so it's very similar but it doesn't have the Habitica connections.

So check that out as an alternative.

Next up on our list is an extension called AudioBlogs,

which translates written articles into podcast narrations that you can send to your phone,

which are narrated by a scarily good AI narration algorithm.

This thing is way better than it has any right to be

and I have never heard a text-to-speech algorithm

that works anywhere near

as good as this thing.

Sometimes it gets inflections wrong, sometimes it's a little wonky,

but 95% of the time it's perfectly listenable. - This guide was originally published

in March 2012.

Since then, hundreds of students

and even non-students have created their own personal websites using it. -

And the reason I have this on my list is

because for me one of my top priorities

and values in life is daily,

low-level movements, walks and bike rides in addition to my sessions in the gym

and more intense exercise.

For me, this is a non-negotiable priority in my life

and when I go for these walks

and bike rides I love to listen to usually audiobooks

so I can keep learning

or keep myself entertained

while I'm out on them.

Right now I'm actually listening to a book called Walkable City,

which is kind of making me hate the way we Americans design our cities,

but I digress.

Sometimes, I'm on my computer, I come across an article,

and I wanna read

that but I also wanna go out for a walk

or a bike ride.

So AudioBlogs let's me turn

that article into a podcast narration

and listen to it

while I do that.

Next up on our list we've got uBlock Origin,

which is a great lightweight ad-blocking extension for most browsers.

There are a lot of ad blockers out there.

I like uBlock Origin because it is again lightweight,

it doesn't use a lot of resources,

and if you want you can add sites to a white list

so you can support them

and see their ads

if you trust them.

But I have long held

that an ad-blocking extension is almost

as necessary for computer security

as an antivirus program

and here is why.

A lot of website owners do not place their own ads.

They have third party ad placement extensions

that they put on their pages

and they trust the third party to place those ads

and there have been many instances where those third party networks have placed ads

that contain malware or exploits.

So I am not going to trust my computer security to every website in

the world that I happen to go to.

I use an ad blocker

as a default and

then I white list sites

if I trust them.

And one other really nice thing

that uBlock Origin let's me do is add filters,

which can block certain elements of websites.

For instance, that what's happening section on Twitter is always full of these like

sensationalist headlines that just suck me in

and waste a ton of my time.

I never wanna see what's happening on Twitter ever again

and luckily in the my filters section of uBlock Origin I can paste this

little line of code

and that is exactly what happens.

It gets hidden and that is just. (chef's kiss) Readwise,

the next extension on our list is Readwise

and if you've seen my previous videos you will know

that I absolutely love Readwise.

This is a wonderful highlighter app

that allows you to make highlights from Kindle books,

from podcast episodes, from actual print books

if you use their phone app with the camera

and the built-in text recognition feature

and in anything that you read on the internet.

With the extension installed, all you need to do is highlight some text,

right-click, and send that highlight to Readwise.

This is a great way to keep a collection of the things

that you want to remember.

If you saw my iPad productivity video from a couple of months ago you

will know that I talked about an app called Command on the iPad,

which is a browser

that let's you make highlights

that actually stay on the webpage even

if you refresh and

then automatically sends those highlights over to Readwise,

which is freakin' sweet and I really wish that Command was on desktop browsers.

Unfortunately, it's not but for now we at least have the Readwise extension

which while it won't leave those highlights on the webpage will send them to

your Readwise account and

if you have one of their sync options turned on can send the highlights

over to RemNote or Rome Research

or if you're like me,

to Notion.

And while we're talking about Readwise we also have to talk about Pocket,

which is the next extension on our list.

Unlike Readwise, Pocket is an extension that just lets you save webpages.

Readwise really wants you to make a selection

and kind of save a snippet of text.

Pocket is just for like eh,

I wanna save this cool webpage

that I found for later

and that's exactly what I use it for.

If I come across an article

that I don't have time to read

and wanna read later

or if I come across just like a cool app

that I wanna share with my audience I will hit

that Pocket button in my browser

and it saves it to my little Pocket list,

which I can go and review later on.

And another cool thing about Pocket is their mobile apps have the ability to

download articles for offline reading.

So, if you're somebody who commutes on the subway

or you take a lot of flights

or you somehow have a lot of time

or you're offline,

pocket can be a really, really useful app and extension combo.

Next up on our list we have an extension called Notion Boost.

So, as you probably know,

if you follow this channel or my other channel Thomas Frank Explains,

I am a huge user of Notion.

I basically run my entire business through it.

I've got my task management in it

and I write all my articles

and do all my research in it.

I absolutely love Notion

but there is a feature

that I have wished Notion would add for a really long time

and it's a feature that's in a lot of other notetaking

and writing apps.

That is a floating sticky outline.

I wanna be able to see all of my headings

and be able to zoom to them

and a lot of other apps have this.

Google Docs has it, Dropbox Paper has it, Obsidian has it, Slite has it,

unfortunately Notion does not.

They do have a table of contents block

but when you put

that somewhere it just stays where you put it

and you have to scroll up to find it.

Not that useful.

So Notion Boost adds Notion, at least in the browser,

to that hallowed collection of apps

that have the beautiful sticky floating outline on the sidebar.

It does a few other things as well,

but that is absolutely the coolest thing for me that it does.

I've got a lot of really long articles I write in Notion,

I've got huge research documents, and having that sticky sidebar is really,

really nice for being able to zoom to different sections.

Next up we have Web Clippers.

There are web clippers for Notion, for Evernote,

and for OneNote and these extensions basically take the entire content of a webpage

or at least the text part

and pour it over to the note taking app

that you're using.

Now personally I don't use web clippers very often

because I've got a combination of other apps

that basically do the same thing for me.

If I want to make sure a bunch of tabs are saved in my

resource section,

well I've got Workona for that.

If I'm reading an article and I wanna highlight something,

I've got Readwise for that.

And if I wanna just put something in my big jumble of stuff

that I can go look at later,

I've got Pocket for that.

But for some people Web Clipper is going to be the thing

that fits the bill.

So we're mentioning it here and I'm gonna mention specifically the ones for Notion,

OneNote, and Evernote because they're the ones that I know about.

Before I move on to the next extension on our list,

which might possibly be the most useful one for most people watching this video,

I do wanna say

that if you're enjoying this video maybe consider hitting

that Subscribe button.

I've actually got a brand new best note taking apps video in the works

that's gonna compare some of the newcomers like Rome Research

and Obsidian with our old standards.

So if you like these kind of videos

that one is coming in the very near future

and you're gonna want to be subscribed

so you don't miss it.

Plus, according to my analytics,

only 30% of you are actually subscribed when you watch my content.

And I know every YouTuber says that these days, it's kind of a trope,

but subscribing really does help support the channel

and push it out to more people on this platform.

So if you do enjoy this content and you wanna help support it,

you wanna help support me as a creator,

consider hitting that subscribe button and thank you if you do.

All right, next extension on our list is called News Feed Eradicator for Facebook.

Even though it says for Facebook in the title,

this is an extension

that can eradicate the newsfeed in a ton of different social media websites;

in YouTube, in Twitter, in LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Instagram may not be on the list there

but most of the distraction usual suspects are

and ya gotta do is hit a little checkbox

and the feed on

that website is going to be deleted essentially.

It's gonna be hidden so that allows you to use social media,

if you're somebody like me who needs to make posts on social media

or you wanna check your mentions

and engage with your audience,

without getting sucked into your feed.

It's something that I keep on almost all the time only turning off

if I really wanna check the feed for a specific reason.

And that brings us to our last extension of the day

which is called Reader View

and Reader View,

like the Reader View on mobile Safari takes a page full of distracting elements

and boils it down to its essentials,

namely the content that you wanna read.

It also gives you typography options, which is pretty sweet.

You can change the font size, you can change the line height,

it's pretty nice.

Now, some web designers like yours truly,

design a website so extensions like this aren't needed.

If you go on any of my websites; collegeinfogeek, thomasjfrank, we've got single column,

minimalist, distraction-free columns of text.

It's designed for pleasurable reading.

But designers like me seem to be in the minority.

It seems like almost every website out there these days has a popup asking

you to subscribe,

their email newsletter, there's a sidebar, there's mid-content ads,

all kinds of crap that is just distracting and makes the page load slower.

So an extension like Reader View is really,

really nice for being able to get rid of all of

that and just read the thing

that you came to read

and there are a couple of other cool features

as well built in.

There's a dark mode filter and actually some light theming options.

There is a text-to-speech mode, which is honestly pretty bad.

I would just use AudioBlogs if you really want that,

but there's also a built-in higlighter and like in Command,

the highlights you make persist even if you refresh the page.

Now it's not gonna send your highlights to Readwise

as well so there is a couple of different actions to take

if you want both those things to happen.

That's why Command is still the gold standard for researchers

as far as I'm concerned,

but it is pretty cool having that highlighter feature at least.

So, for all this video we've talked about extensions

that can make you work more productivity on the internet

but what about making the internet work more productively for you?

Well, that's exactly what happens

when you have your own online presence where you can connect with people

or you have your own platform

or you own your content

and where you can maybe make connections with potential employers,

potential clients, people who you could work with.

That's exactly what I do on my website thomasjfrank.com.

It shows off my work

and helps me build my personal brand

and if you haven't started building an online presence for yourself,

it's something you should definitely think about

and at least take the first step to doing,

which is getting your own domain name.

Even if you're not ready to build your own website yet,

getting that domain name locked down is crucial

because if somebody goes out

and registers it before you can get it,

well you're kind of out of luck.

That's how I am with thomasfrank.com.

I couldn't get that so I at least got thomasjfrank.com,

but that could've been taken as well.

So, as soon as you can go over to Hover

and register yourself a domain name.

Hover is a great place to do it

because unlike a lot of other places out there they have a completely hassle-free

and speedy checkout process.

They're not trying to upsell you on a bunch of stuff like a lot

of other websites and registers are.

They also have over 400 extensions to choose from, your.coms and.mes,

which are great for your professional presence,

but also more fun ones like.lol and.ninja.

I use thomas.lol for my music stuff.

And once you have your domain, they also have a feature called Connect,

which lets you easily hook

that domain up to online website builders

and online store builders.

So, if you're ready to claim your domain,

make sure nobody else can take it,

go on over to hover.com/thomasfrank to buy it.

Along with your first purchase using

that URL you're gonna get 10% off

and you're gonna be able to support my channel.

I work really hard to make sure

that my content is research backed

and detailed and has a high production value

and,

because most of the stuff that I create is free,

supporting the sponsors who support me is actually the best way to support this

channel if that's something you wanna do,

and if it is, thank you!

Beyond that, make sure you're subscribed to this channel.

If you like content like this

and you wanna see some more in the future,

like I said, I've got that note taking app comparison coming up.

That's a much more detailed topic than this one

but I am hoping to get it up in the next month

or two and if you would hit

that Like button.

YouTube's algorithm absolutely uses engagement factors like likes

and comments when it's determining how far to push a video,

so big thanks to you

if you do hit

that button and if you have other extension recommendations you wanna make,

let me know down in the comments.

Let me know what I missed, let me know what's good for other browsers.

And beyond that I've got a couple of other videos right here

and here you can check out.

Make sure you're subscribed right there

or don't do any of

that and go I don't know drive a motorcycle off a ramp through a

bunch of flaming hoops like Evil Knievel 'cause

as always,

I'm not your dad but I will see you in the next video.

Thanks for watching.