There are a few applications and extensions for Chrome I would have a hard time being without. I am especially happy about the ones that work well with Android devices.
I have tried many many different apps/extensions but my favourite ones I thought I should give a mention. This is by no means a complete list, I don't claim anything of the sort. It's just the ones I use all the bloody time.
Always a good idea to jump onto the Chrome Web Store now and again to see what new goodies have popped up.
Pocket & Save to Pocket
Don't you always seem to find the most interesting pages on the interwebs when you are just about to head out the bloody door? ..or people send you links to articles you feel obliged to read but just can't be bothered to at the moment.
Save content with Pocket. It all goes into one place so you can read it later on your computer, tablet or phone.
I use Pocket for everything I happen upon I might like for later. I have begun making somewhat of a recipe collection too. I just tag "recipe" when I add recipes to Pocket and they are easily found on my phone, desktop or laptop later.
For many things I prefer using this method rather than bookmarking. Bookmarking can quickly become a messy deal to sort through. Not only that, but when saved to Pocket the article becomes easier to read. You don't have to try make heads or tails of what is article and what is advertising in a browser on your phone. I have still to experience Pocket making a mess of a saved page. It's always easy to read and uniform.
Boomerang for Gmail
Boomerang does quite a few things but the one thing I specifically use it for is scheduled email sending.
I always end up sending emails and getting shit done in the middle of the night. I really don't want companies I communicate with to know that. Either it's that, or I send an email to a company during the weekend and I want it to land in their inbox at 7am Monday morning. I think it makes me seem professional, which I am totally not, of course. lol
Although you can't use Boomerang from your Android device you can still look in the special Boomerang outbox where all your scheduled emails will lie until they send. It is possible to delete scheduled emails from your Android device before they send.
Google Docs & Google Sheets
Who uses Word and Excel any more, or OpenOffice for that matter? Docs and Sheets are obviously not as fully featured as their Microsoft rival, but most of us don't need all those features. And dare I say many people don't even know how to use half the features in Excel.
I love my Google Drive. I love being able to swap from my desktop, to laptop/tablet and to my phone when I am trying to force a bit of literary genius.
It does indeed work offline. But I have seen people complain that it doesn't. It makes me question their competence more than anything else. You have to specifically choose the doc/sheet you wish to have accessible offline on each device you want it on. I prefer this. You can be very selective with what documents you have on what device.
And of course if I sit and write on a document on my laptop without connection, it will only be able to update the document to the cloud when I get online on my laptop again. Not entirely sure if people expect it to update from an offline device by magic or something. lol
Some people are put off by everything opening in the browser. I simply use the Chrome Application Launcher, right click on the docs/sheets icon and tick "Open as window." This way, your Google Docs and Sheets will open as if it was a Word or Excel program, without an address bar or your bookmark bar.
There are also Google applications for Slides, Drawings and Forms. All of which are perfectly adequate for the average user.
create google alerts for selecte text
Yeah, that's what it's called. lol It doesn't seem very popular (maybe because of the typo in the name?!), but I find it most useful.
Google Alerts is a great tool. It's a content change detection and notification service that sends emails to the user when it finds new results that match the user's search terms. I have it send me an email once a week for a few things and some rarer things as they happen.
I am an avid user of Google Now but if you have it tell you to give you notification for all of your favourite shows it can quickly feel spammy. Getting 1 weekly email for every show each with a selection of articles isn't as spammy.
All this extension does is create a button (which I promptly hid) and enables you to mark some text and right click on it and make a Google Alert from it. It opens a new tab where you can enter the details for your Alert. Simple.
Clearly
I am not one to use Evernote. However, this little extension is very useful. Going back to the functionality of Pocket. It makes add-filled pages easier to read. If it's something I have no desire to save but would rather just read here and now, I use Clearly.
The extension creates a button that you can press (what else would you do with a button). Whatever page you are on Clearly will attempt to make a cleaner version of the page. It slides in in front of the original page. Here you can change a few things like background colour, font, text size. You can print the newly created document, although I have never tried printing it cos I rarely print anything. You are also able to right click on links and have Clearly open the page.
Click the lamp-button again and you go back to the original page. I haven't had any problems with this extension and it runs smoothly, but it has seen the majority of my usage on my gaming PC.
