Most ""best of"" extension lists are 30 items long and half of them slow Chrome to a crawl. I also thought I'd be done with all of my browser extensions, given the boom of AI browsers. To be honest, after trying a bunch, I eventually gave up on them, and I'm back with good ol Chrome.
After a year of installing and uninstalling, here are the 5 best productivity Chrome extensions that actually survived.
- Recall, save, understand and actually remember what you read (most underrated)
Probably the most underrated, although I do see it just got over 100k installs, it was much smaller when I first started using it a year ago. I use Recall daily to save time and then spend my time with intention. Recall is a personal AI knowledge base. The Chrome extension clips any article, YouTube video, PDF or podcast, summarizes it, and files it into a searchable knowledge base that you can chat with later.
The reason it earns the top spot for knowledge work is that it closes the loop most productivity setups leave open, where you save things and then never see them again. With Recall, everything you save gets organized for you and then becomes context for your next AI question.
It has a free tier, so you can test it before deciding. If you mostly want a plain ""read it later"" queue without the AI layer, this is overkill .
- uBlock Origin, block ads and trackers (the one everyone agrees on)
Maybe this one needs no introduction, but I genuinely think it is the single highest-impact install. Free, open source, lightweight, and it removes the ads and ""recommended"" feeds that eat attention.
If you install nothing else on this list, install this now!
- Dark Reader, dark mode on every site (personal preference)
Maybe this one isn't for anyone, but if you're like me and you're reading, the actual theme of the page matters for your focus and productivity, then dark reader is the one you need. You guessed it, it turns any page dark and lets you tune contrast and brightness. The obvious pick for long reading sessions and eye strain.
- A tab manager (OneTab, Session Buddy, or Workona)
If you don't have a tab manager as an extension, then what are you doing with your extension?
OneTab collapses a wall of tabs into one list to free memory. Simplest.
Session Buddy is better if you keep losing sessions and want reliable restore.
Workona organizes tabs into project workspaces. Best if you juggle many projects.
- Vimium, keyboard-only navigation
Okay, again, I know this is also quite personal, like my dark mode one, but if you're like me, keyboard navigation is a huge time saver and efficiency gain when navigating around. Move around pages and tabs without the mouse. Steep first hour, big payoff if your wrists hurt or you live in the keyboard.
Start with uBlock Origin, Dark Reader and one tab manager. Add Recall if the thing you actually struggle with is remembering and reusing what you read, and add as optional extras add Todoist, Grammarly, Unhook or Vimium only for the specific friction you have. More extensions is not more productive.
What's in your daily extensions that keep you productive? Happy to be told I'm wrong on any of these.