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.
Today it's at 68.6 percent, and rival browsers can't even crack 10 percent.
Chrome has gained, but it has lost some love—from us.
After several years as Daxdi's favorite browser, a resurgent Firefox took our Editors' Choice award.
That said, there is no denying Chrome's popularity.
Plus, like Firefox, it supports extensions that make it even better.
Its library of extras, found at the Chrome Web Store, has rivaled Firefox's for years, and provides quick access to just about every web-based app imaginable.
Recognizing how popular Chrome is, Microsoft rebuilt its Edge browser as a Chromium version so it now supports all Chrome extensions natively while still supporting its own Edge extensions from the Microsoft Store.
(For more, read Tips and Tricks Inside Microsoft's Edge Browser.)
Rather than have you stumble blindly through the Chrome Web Store to find the best extensions, we've compiled a list of several dozen you should consider.
Some are unique to Google and its services (such as Gmail), but most extensions work across operating systems, so you can try them on any desktop platform (especially on Chromebooks); there may be some versions that work on the mobile Chrome, too.
All of these extensions are free, so 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-clicking 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 on Google Drive 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.
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.
Diigo Web Collector
Diigo is a nice mix of social bookmarking and a full info grabber like Evernote.
This extension puts the service to work, letting you bookmark, archive, and annotate everything you see online.
You get 500 bookmarks for free, but Diigo will charge you $40/year to ditch advertising and add unlimited image storage and webpage backup.
Evernote Web Clipper
This is a must-have for anyone embracing the Evernote life.
Despite some limitations, 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).
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 for macOS or Windows to tap the print-screen key to grab 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.
Loom
Sometimes a video depicting 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 full screen.
There's no limit to how much you can record, even for free.
Mercury Reader
If you hate pages full of ads and weird formatting, install Mercury Reader.
With a click (or keyboard shortcut), it reduces the "noise" on a page so you see only the text you want to read, with a typeface you can manage, in a dark or light theme.
Share what's left via social media, print it, email it, or send it to your Kindle to read later.
Nimbus Capture
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.
You can even annotate the video with drawings.
Once made, edit it, share it, save it, print it, or copy it to the clipboard.
Nimbus is also available for Firefox, but what you capture is accessible on almost every platform.
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 them in Chrome: save anything you see online.
Save to Pocket
Pocket (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, and content isn't limited to text; you can store video, too.
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, including your webcam thumbnail.
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.
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 longform article on it, use Amazon's extension.
It will reformat pages and send them directly to your Kindle device or app 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.)
Google Services
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.
It's free, but 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.
Google Scholar Button
Google Scholar is a search engine from Google that is limited to scholarly articles and case law.
This extension puts it 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 anywhere, as long as your school library gives you credentials.
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, you can highlight a word or line of text and translate only that, rather than the whole page.
Google Voice (By Google)
Google's voicemail-plus-call-around-number 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), plus you can initiate VoIP calls right in the browser.
It makes every phone number you see on a website clickable for calling (either explicitly or via a right-click menu).
Interface/Utilities
AdBlocker Ultimate
You've probably heard of Adblock Plus (a community-driven extension ported from Firefox) and the unrelated AdBlock.
But the better pick is AdBlocker Ultimate, which doesn't play games (like allowing certain "allowed" ads to go through to appease sponsors).
It's open source and also available on Edge, Safari, and Opera.
Bitmoji
If you love the customized avatar you can make with Bitmoji from Snap, Inc.—for my money, it's lightyears ahead of any avatars from Apple, Facebook, and the rest—you can build it right into Chrome to snag yourself saying something pithy to put on every message and post.
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 none are as easy to implement as Chrome Remote Desktop, since it's all done via the browser extension.
It works across platform; Windows, Mac, even Chromebooks.
Or take control of the PCs from your mobile devices—Android, naturally, but also via iPhone.
FoxClocks
When you need to know the time in other timezones instantly, anywhere in the world, consider FoxClocks your friend.
It sits in a status bar at the bottom of Chrome, constantly updating the zones you've designated for monitoring.
Click the icon in the toolbar for a drop-down menu with the same info.
Hover Zoom+
There are a lot of thumbnail images on sites like Google Images, Instagram, deviantART, and social networks.
This extension shows you the full-size image when you hover your mouse over any tiny thumbnail, assuming there is a larger image available.
This is an open-source version of the original HoverZoom (RIP).
Image Downloader
Bulk download 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.
NavigUp
This extension is simple, but you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.
Click the up-arrow icon next to your Chrome address bar when visiting a complicated URL.
It'll automatically send you to the parent address—back one level of the URL.
Keep clicking to get to the original domain name.
Master the hotkeys and you'll navigate up even faster.
Noisli
Need some ambient background noises to help you stay focused? Noisli in Chrome provides a drop-down menu full of them to play, with a sleep timer to turn the sound off.
You can also use it from the web or get the apps for iOS or Android.
The free version is limited to 16 sounds and only streams up to 15 hours per day.
Print Friendly & PDF
Sometimes you gotta print a web page.
And then you're stuck wasting ink printing advertisements.
This extension removes all the navigation and commercials from the page when you print, optimizing them for reading.
And of course, it can save them direct to PDF if you prefer.
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.
Speedtest by Ookla
Ookla has ported its internet speed tester 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, or use Web Speed to check page load time.
(Disclosure: Ookla is owned by Daxdi's parent company Ziff Davis).
µBlock Origin
Looking for an alternative to Adblock or Adblock Plus that's a little less resource intensive? Try µBlock.
Productivity
Auto Text Expander
Don't type so much.
This add-on lets you write little snippets that expand into full, frequently used text, from one word up to full paragraphs.
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 my real life).
Change Case
Microsoft Word has a function to change the case on words or an entire phrase or more, instantly to UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, sentence case, and more.
Now you can have it for any form or field in Chrome, too.
Distill Web Monitor
Stop refreshing web pages to look for changes.
You can put in the site and conditions you're looking for, and Distill will alert you via push, SMS, or email when a change happens.
You can monitor up to 25 pages/sites for free with updates every six hours.
Forest
The Pomodoro technique is meant to make you work 25 minutes, break for five, 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 sites you've blocked (ahem, Facebook, cough).
By the end of the day, you could have a whole forest.
There are also mobile apps to keep you focused.
Grammarly
You've probably seen plenty of ads for Grammarly, which wants very much to be the official spell- and grammar-checker for all your online writing.
It's worth the install for the extra check on every word you write in the browser, from emails to social media and beyond.
It even has a dictionary function, so when you double-click a word or phrase on a web page you get a definition, or a link to something related to the term.
It even works with Gmail and Google Docs.
(If you're a Microsoft person, try its competitor, Microsoft Editor.
Business users may want to check out Qordoba, but that one isn't free.)
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.
Results appear in a drop-down menu and open in a new Chrome tab.
(To search with a right-click, try Right-Click Search Wikipedia.)
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 (or Firefox, Safari, Opera, and IE).
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.
There's an extension specifically to get MightyText messages in Facebook or Gmail, too.
Office
Yes, that's Microsoft Office, now allowing you to create...
