latest
Google Chrome's top extensions of 2023 focus on personalization and productivity
The Chrome Web Store is full of goodies
Google Chrome is the most-used web browser in the world for good reason, even with its well-documented history of being a resource hog on all platforms. Besides its seamless synchronization with all of its users’ Google accounts, it’s got another trick up its sleeve in the way of the Chrome Web Store. Take a trip here, and you might find your shopping bags are full of things you really didn’t need to enhance your web-browsing experience. Chrome extensions can legitimately change the way you surf the web, for better or for worse. Back in November, the company awarded the best Google Play apps and games of 2023. Google has now named its favorite Chrome extensions for 2023.
Google's refreshed Chrome Web Store is now up and running for everyone
The new look is a dramatic departure from the old design
The Chrome Web Store was stuck in a bit of a time loop, rocking the same outdated look for what seemed like an eternity. But, in a recent move, Google previewed a sleek, redesigned Chrome Web Store that ditches its stale design for a fresh coat of Material You paint, aligning it with the latest Android versions and a slew of Google apps. Google has now unleashed the makeover for everyone.
Google Chrome Web Store gets its long-overdue Material You makeover
But there's more to the changes than meets the eye
A one of the best web browsers across operating systems, Google Chrome has a responsibility of giving its users the latest features, while the UI stays in sync with Google’s brand image and values. The company announced a transformative new UI design philosophy called Material You, with Android 12 a few years ago. The design guidelines, immediately identifiable by dynamic theming support, were quickly implemented across core Google apps and third–party apps on Android. Eventually, the design permeated auxiliary Google-owned services like Workspace utilities and their web apps. It’s now the Chrome Web Store’s turn for a makeover, right on time for the browser’s birthday celebrations.
New Chrome Web Store badges make discovering safe and helpful extensions a lot easier
They'll highlight individual add-ons and publishers
There's no shortage of reasons to stick with Chrome as your main browser these days, but one of its biggest strengths comes in the form of extensions. With countless apps and add-ons at your disposal, tweaking and enhancing your online experience can be done with just a few clicks of your mouse. Finding useful ones can be challenging, though, especially if you don't have a specific use case in mind. With its latest update, Google is working to make discovering the best extensions on the Chrome Web Store a little easier.
Google remotely deletes The Great Suspender Chrome extension after malware accusations
And it's gone from the Chrome Web Store, too
The popular Chrome extension The Great Suspender has been itself suspended from Google's Chrome Web Store. The extension is also being remotely disabled on customer's devices, with a warning that it is "dangerous" and "may contain malware." Reportedly, this is because of some sketchy changes that happened when the extension traded hands last year, including tracking code discovered in the extension.
Apple's iCloud Passwords extension arrives on the Chrome Web Store, but it's not working yet
It's supposed to be functional for Windows users
Read update
No matter how hard companies pitch the benefits of being in their ecosystem, more often than not, consumers end up buying products from different brands that render some ecosystem-exclusive features useless. In an attempt to make iCloud Keychain accessible to those with Windows PCs, Apple has released a Chrome extension. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work at the time of writing.
Google adds new privacy protections for Chrome extensions
The Chrome Web Store will display each extension's user data practices
It finally seems like people are becoming more aware about the importance of privacy online. Google has been working to improve its public image when it comes to user data privacy recently, including setting new privacy standards for Chrome extensions last year. Now the company is announcing an update to its developer policy that limits what developers of extensions can do with user data, as well as provides increased transparency regarding data-use practices.
Google preparing to end support for paid Chrome extensions
Developers can only use third-party payment providers going forward if they wish to offer paid functionality
While many extensions are great for enhancing your browsing experience, they can be a tacky business for people who aren't at least somewhat familiar with the inner workings of browsers. Google noticed an influx of fraudulent paid extensions in January this year, and the situation only got worse when lockdowns first started and some people tried spreading misinformation or profiting off the pandemic through any channel they could find. With that in mind, Google has now decided to scrap paid extensions altogether.
Chrome Web Store apps have been flailing for a while now. Google announced in 2016 that these Chrome Apps would be phased out by 2018 — that obviously didn't happen. Earlier in the year, Google committed to a timeline to slowly end support for them, but the company has just released a revised schedule that extends end-of-life dates on all platforms due to "feedback from customers and partners."
Google's new Chrome extension lets you link to any text on a page
Now you can really highlight your point when you send articles in the family group chat
The internet would be nothing without links. They let us share everything from videos, to images, to articles. But what if you wanted to share a specific section of an article, or maybe highlight a sentence you found particularly impactful? Until now, that's been relatively difficult. A new Chrome browser extension called Link to Text Fragment promises to make the process much more seamless.
The Chrome Web Store is still something of a wild west — seemingly every month, there's a story about some popular extension stealing user data or doing something else it's not supposed to do. Google has already made several policy changes lately, and its next target is spammy extensions.
The Chrome Web Store is undergoing a transformation, as Google seeks to phase out Chrome apps entirely. Extensions are still sticking around, but now the company has placed a ban on paid extensions, leaving some developers frustrated.
Apps for Google Drive and add-ons for Google Docs app suite are getting a new home. Formerly found in the Chrome Web Store, they'll soon be available from the G Suite Marketplace, a thing you probably didn't know existed until now.
As Uncle Ben said, "With great power comes great responsibility." Browser extensions can be incredibly powerful tools, but many of them demand full access to all web pages. Stories about popular extensions stealing user data or running cryptocurrency miners have become all too common. Google today announced a series of upcoming changes to Chrome extensions, some which aim to make them more trustworthy.
The first Chromebooks were extremely dependent on an internet connection, so to help alleviate that problem, Google published a 'Gmail Offline' app on the Chrome Web Store. It allowed users to read and respond to emails while the computer was offline, but the app hasn't been updated since 2013.
Google's web browser got a makeover with the release of Chrome 69, bringing it up to date with the search giant's current iteration of Material Design, Material Theme, informally known as Material 2.0. Now, Chrome Web Store has a new look to match.
Chromebooks are mostly inexpensive devices, and as such we don't expect many of them to be able to do fancy things. They do tend to have cameras, though — they'd be pretty useless for video calling if they didn't. Every Chromebook comes with a rudimentary web app for the camera, similar to what you might see on Windows or MacOS machines.
The Chrome Web Store is a hotbed of sketchy browser extensions, with seemingly little intervention from Google (except for the occasional crack-down). The company already takes down extensions that secretly mine cryptocurrency, but now it is going a step further. Starting today, all extensions that mine cryptocurrency will be barred from the Chrome Web Store.
Read update
- According to a post by Googler Francois Beaufort, you can see what's going on behind the scenes by heading to chrome:net-internals#bandwidth. There you can view data reduction proxy settings such as primary and secondary URLs, along with recent events.
Tucked away in the settings area of mobile Chrome, there's an option to reduce how much data you use by having Google compress websites before loading them. The feature, known as Data Saver, made its way over to the desktop version of the browser sometime this week.
Developer Koushik Dutta, Koush for short, is well known around these parts for any number of apps. There's the ClockworkMod ROM Manager. There's AllCast. And if you want to back up specific apps and the data that goes with them, there's Helium (formerly known as Carbon).