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The average employee is productive for two hours and 53 minutes a day (source). That’s just 31% (less than a third!) of an 8-hour workday.
Surprised? Us, too. Then again—ask us how much time we spend researching ways to increase productivity. Can’t find us? We’re probably in the Google Chrome Store, perusing the 180,000+ extensions promising to make our lives easier, faster, and more efficient.
Don’t have time to see what’s winning hearts and minds? That’s where we come in—with an obsessively curated list of best Chrome extensions for productivity in 2023.
Find our top picks below for minimizing the time you spend sitting in meetings, dealing with distractions, managing tasks, avoiding repetitive questions, streamlining everyday communication, and making work faster and easier.
Tango is a browser extension (and desktop application!) that takes the pain out of documenting processes by automatically generating how-to guides while you work.
Perform a task from start to finish on any website or software, and Tango will capture step-by-step instructions with perfectly cropped screenshots—in seconds. With Tango, you can document, share, and scale your knowledge in a fraction of the time.
Tango is for anyone who teaches software. Anyone who owns a training program, knowledge base, or system. Anyone who determines processes and best practices for their teams. Anyone who has been called a top performer or tenured employee. And everyone who believes shared knowledge = the most valuable knowledge.
Making how-to guides is…not fun. Documenting a single process can take hours. And because videos and PDFs are so hard to keep current, even when you finish, your work is never really done.
Grammarly is an AI-powered tool that provides real-time writing suggestions everywhere you write online.
Grammarly uses advanced machine learning and human expertise to analyze written sentences to check grammar, spelling, and punctuation, tweak tone, clarify ideas, and find the perfect words.
Grammarly is for students, professionals, business people, creative writers, non-native English speakers—and anyone who wants to communicate with confidence.
We all make mistakes. 🤷🏽
BlockSite is an aptly named browser extension. Use it to block any website, for any period of time.
BlockSite intercepts requests to visit websites added to your personal block list—and redirects you to a customizable “blocked” page until you update your list or the block schedule ends.
BlockSite is for anyone who wants to improve their focus so they can spend more time enjoying life.
Fun fact: The average U.S. office worker spends two hours and 11 minutes procrastinating every day (source).
OneTab is a memory-saving browser extension that converts open tabs into a list.
“OneTab to rule them all” isn’t just clever copywriting. To store open tabs you haven’t finished working with yet, click the funnel icon in the top right corner of your Chrome browser. When you’re ready, re-open them individually or all at once.
OneTab is for anyone with too many tabs open—and anyone worried about the amount of memory their browser is using.
It’s hard to keep track of lots of open tabs, and it doesn’t always make sense to bookmark them individually.
The ChatGPT Chrome Extension provides quick access to OpenAI's ChatGPT on the web. What’s ChatGPT? The AI-powered chatbot taking social media by storm—and giving Google a run for its money.
As a large language model, ChatGPT is trained on massive amounts of data to predict the next word in a series of words. Ask ChatGPT a question you’d typically pose to a search engine, and expect a remarkably human-like response in return. Looking for a more nuanced, immediately useful reply? Prompt ChatGPT to act as a subject matter expert and answer using specific parameters.
ChatGPT may be the new kid on the block (with some still determined to give it the cold shoulder), but its use cases are endless. Students and knowledge workers alike are using it to expedite ideation, research, search engine optimization, content creation, translations, product recommendations, email responses, data analysis, appointment scheduling, custom code development, and more.
If you haven’t been asked to work smarter, not harder—teach us your ways. 🙏🏽
Pocket is a browser extension that hangs onto interesting articles, videos, images, etc.—so you can absorb them when you’re ready.
Pocket captures eye-catching, web-based content in three ways. You can save links you love by clicking the Pocket button in the toolbar, right-clicking a link and selecting Save to Pocket, or by using keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+Shift+P for Windows; command+Shift+P for Mac).
Pocket is for anyone who has ever wished for a save button for the internet.
There’s a lot of stuff worth reading on the Internet. But it’s hard to consume it all as you come across it. And it’s even harder to remember how to go back and find it, when you do have time to dig in.
Loom is a video messaging tool that helps circulate important information through shareable videos.
Loom’s Chrome extension has three recording settings. You can record both your screen and camera, just your screen, or just your camera. When you click Start Recording, you can share an update, make an announcement, run through a demo, give feedback, answer a question, create a tutorial, and more. Creators can control access, include links to relevant resources, and see engagement insights. Viewers can add comments and reactions.
Loom is for anyone who wants to move fast and stay connected—especially while working asynchronously. It’s also a huge win for educators and trainers, sales and customer support teams, content creators and marketers, and product managers and developers.
What’s not great? Spending a day in back-to-back meetings. Emptying your inbox only to have it fill back up again. Struggling to share information that would be best shared visually, with a voiceover.
Fireflies is an AI-powered voice assistant that helps record, transcribe, search, summarize, and analyze your Google Meet calls.
Once your Google Meet call starts, Fireflies will auto-capture and transcribe the meeting directly from your browser. You can stop transcription at any time. After you wrap up, you will receive an email and a record of the meeting in your Fireflies Notebook.
Fireflies is for anyone who wants to make the most of every meeting.
It’s far too easy for knowledge to get buried on calls and during team meetings.
Todoist is an online task management tool and to-do list.
Todoist allows you to create tasks and organize them into projects with sub-tasks, labels, filters, comments, due dates, and more. You don’t need to read the 50,000 Chrome extension reviews to know that users rave about three things: organizing their to-do lists right from the extension, adding websites as tasks, and completing tasks without leaving Chrome.
Todoist is for individuals, teams, businesses, and anyone who wants to achieve more every day.
Keeping track of projects and tasks isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Checker Plus for Gmail™ is a Chrome extension that lets you manage all your Gmail accounts with one click.
Checker Plus for Gmail™ makes all of your accounts available at a glance—so you can see new notifications and read, listen to, archive, and delete emails without opening Gmail.
Checker Plus for Gmail™ is for people with places to go and people to see—and many inboxes to manage.
Getting notifications, reading, listening to, and deleting emails without majorly disrupting your workflow is a herculean task. Especially if you monitor multiple inboxes!
Add Checker Plus for Gmail™ to Chrome
Speechify is a text-to-speech app that turns any book, document, or website into audio.
Speechify leverages AI to scan words on an active browser tab and read them aloud, without any lag.
Speechify is for anyone who wants to read faster and listen on the go.
So much to read; so little time.
Dark Reader is an open-source browser extension that applies a dark color scheme to any website so you can avoid straining your eyes at night.
Dark Reader enables “night mode” by inverting brightly colored webpages on the fly. The result? Websites that are high contrast and easy to read.
Dark Reader is for night owls who want to take good care of their eyes—and anyone sensitive to blue light.
Viewing bright websites in low light environments can cause eye fatigue and interfere with sleep.
Productivity isn’t only about what to take away. (Unnecessary meetings, enabled pop-up notifications, every social media platform ever—we’re looking at you.)
It’s also about what to add. (Chrome extensions, screen time limits, a designated workspace, noise-canceling headphones, a literal Do Not Disturb sign—you do you.)
We can’t promise downloading the best Chrome extensions for productivity will solve all your problems. But if you teach people how to use software, and you’re finding:
We’ve got the Chrome extension for you. 🤗
A Chrome extension is a software program that adds extra functionality or features to a Google Chrome browser. They make the browser easier to use and can be personalized to suit your preferences. Want to block ads while you browse? Track how much time you spend on a certain site? Capture a step-by-step process in seconds? It’d almost be easier to come up with a list of what Chrome extensions can’t do.
You can install a Chrome extension in just a few clicks. From the Google Chrome Web Store, click Extensions. Browse or search for your extension of choice and select Add to Chrome. When the pop-up window appears, click Add Extension. That’s it! 🎉
You can disable a Chrome extension—and re-enable it if you change your mind—using the same blue slider. To find it, click the three-dot icon in the top-right corner of your Google Chrome web browser. Hover your mouse over More Tools. From the pop-up menu, select Extensions. Click the blue slider next to the extension you want to disable. If you click the Extensions button (the puzzle icon) in the top-right hand corner of your window and don’t see the extension in the drop-down list, you’re all set.
You can completely remove a Chrome extension in your Google Chrome web browser in two steps. First, enter chrome://extensions/ into your web browser address bar. Then click Remove next to the extension that you wish to remove.
To pin a Chrome extension to your toolbar, click the puzzle icon next to your profile avatar in the top right-hand corner of your Google Chrome web browser. A dropdown menu will appear with a pushpin icon to the right of each enabled extension. Click the pushpin icon (so that the icon turns blue) for any extensions you’d like to access more quickly and easily.
The short answer: “yes, and.” You can trust Google Chrome extensions because they’re reviewed by Google before being made available in the Chrome Web Store. And, it’s not a bad idea to be cautious when downloading and installing extensions that can be developed by anyone. A few tips to use Chrome extensions safely: Only install extensions from the official Chrome Web Store. Review the requested extension permissions. Read the reviews of other users before installing a new extension. Minimize the number of extensions you use.
We'll never show up
empty-handed (how rude!).
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