5 Chrome Extensions to improve your Productivity as a Software Developer in 2022
Updated: Oct 13, 2022
Save time and improve your productivity as a developer with these useful (and free) Chrome Extensions.
What is a Chrome Extension?
A Chrome extension is like a small “app” that can be installed in the Google Chrome browser. Chrome Extensions enhance the functionality of the browser. It is built using pure HTML, CSS, and JavaSript, and may make use of some APIs. I and many others use Google Chrome as their main web browser. If you use Google Chrome, let me tell you about a few extensions that can improve your productivity.
I have found some really useful extensions that help me in my daily life as a Software Developer. Lots of extensions are available on the internet, but let me tell you about some useful ones.
My favorites Chrome extension as a Web Developer
How many times do you require to type your email? Do you also hate having to search for the hexadecimal code that you had copied in the past? Put an end to these time and energy thieves with TextBlaze.
Text Blaze (or Blaze Today) is an extension that allows you to eliminate repetitive typing using a personalized template.
For example, you can add a template that automatically pastes your email, say youremail@gmail.com, by only writing /email. I use this feature to use my own email every time I need to register on a webpage. You can copy texts, emails, hex codes, and a lot of other stuff. Give it a try, it will definitely save you lots of time.
Link: Text Blaze
Imagine that you’re working and you need to solve a bug. You have no idea how to solve it, so you start searching on Google for a solution. While you’re searching you find a really interesting article about how you can write better code in JavaScript, but you can't read it at that time ( as your priority is solving that bug! ). You open the article on a new page and you forget about it. When you finish your work you close your browser and end up losing the article.
As a result, you missed out on the article which could have taught you how to become a better developer!
Do you want to avoid falling into this type of situation? Use Instapaper. This extension is like a box where you can put stuff to read later. You can save a Medium article, a website, cooking recipes, videos, lyrics, and a lot more. Whatever you come across while browsing, only with one click.
Link: Instapaper
An example of an error highlighted by Grammarly
We’re developers and it involves lots of communication. We have to communicate with our colleagues, write emails to clients, describe our work in pull requests, etc. To sum up, we have to write and communicate, mostly in English.
Whether English is your native language or you only use it at work, you are likely to make mistakes like spelling errors, punctuation mistakes, incorrect sentence formation, etc. For this, I use Grammarly.
Grammarly for Chrome extension provides real-time suggestions to help you write your best online. It analyzes your sentences and provides color-coded underlines on words and phrases which require improvement.
Link: Grammarly
Do you use a color picker every day? Then you need this extension. If you work as a front-end developer, or you’re a person who is curious to identify colors, this extension is for you.
With this extension, you will get color information from any point on your browser screen. You can quickly adjust this color and paste the color hex code into another program or save it somewhere. Additionally, you have a webpage color analyzer to get a color palette from any site, a CSS gradient generator, and an eyedropper.
Link: ColorZilla
If you spend lots of time in front of your screen, you should take breaks. In my case, my eyes hurt when I spend hours coding without taking breaks. In addition to this, taking breaks make you more productive!
There are many different ways to organize your time to work and relax. One of the most famous is the Pomodoro technique. With this technique, you will work for 25 minutes and relax for 5 minutes (the technique is actually a bit more complex, I will write about it in the future).
You can obviously track the time with your mobile timer and try not to distract yourself but that involves more work. Using extensions makes the process easier. I use Marinara, but you can find other alternatives for Pomodoro timer extensions in the extension marketplace.
Link: Marinara: Pomodoro Assistant
Final Thoughts
If you use Google Chrome, you have so many options in the form of extensions, to make your life easier. Extensions are a good way to add new features to your browser and make your daily work simpler.
In this article, I’ve shared 5 Chrome extensions that I use daily. Based on my own experience these extensions have helped me become more productive as a developer. Not only can I save time with easy shortcuts, but also I can save resources for later.
Have you used any of these extensions? Do you have other recommendations? Let me know in the comments.
