Customize your browser with Chrome Extensions

Key Takeaways

from the literal day it was born the web was meant to be customized decades later that hasn't changed one bit with web extensions you can make Chrome the browser that works just for you we all know the struggle too many tabs a cluttered toolbar a new tab page that's anything but inspiring but fear not fellow power users because extensions can help us tame the browser beast and create a truly personalized experience from top to bottom [Music] let's start at that very top it's a site that can quickly give me anxiety an overflowing tab count there's another of extensions and extension apis that you can build on top of like the Chrome tab groups extension API that let you take the already amazing tab sorting built into Chrome and customize it to be specific for your needs saving precious space and mental energy right below that tab bar is arguably the most important part of chrome the omnibox it's not just a place to type in URLs it's a powerful and extensible input that you can build on with your extension the Chrome omnibox API lets you create your own keyword shortcuts to act as a kind of quick launcher you can query backends as you type and populate live search results with the results you can make your own dictionary where you query a online dictionary just type in the word dict and you'll get all the results directly in line continuing down the browser let's revamp that boring new tab page with extensions you can completely override a number of pages built into Chrome with the Chrome URL overrides value in the Manifest Json file it lets you update things like the new tap page with any HTML you want whether it's a Pomodoro Timer an event calendar or inspirational quotes you can make a nice clean blank page even whatever you want you can make it your own extensions like momentum and new tab redirect you can replace the default new tab page with beautiful dashboards featuring to-do lists and even quick access launchers to your favorite websites but new tab page isn't the only option for Chrome URL overrides you can also create your own history and bookmark page viewers you can even use the Chrome bookmarks API to have deep detailed access to Chrome bookmarks allowing you to automatically add or remove bookmarks as you see fit being able to automatically sort and organize bookmarks as they come in across all my devices helps me keep track of everything I want to remember in Chrome extensions like raindrop IO and Evernote Web Clipper offer powerful bookmarking features that let you organize your bookmarks into folders adding tags or clip entire web page Pages for later references and for those who crave even more screen real estate extensions built with the Chrome side panel API let you have a secondary window side by side with your main one but we're not just web users right we're web developers and this is yet another place that extensions really shine extensions let you extend Chrome's absolutely essential Dev tools to speed up your workflow extensions can create their own panels directly in Dev tools and hook into all sorts of browser life cycle events this is possible because extensions have nearly full access to the incredibly powerful Chrome Dev tools protocol that's the back-end RPC framework that powers all of Dev tools so any network performance or really just any other event or information you see in Dev tools you can build an extension to read and visualize that data exactly how you want it's why angular react preact and view are just a few of the mini libraries that have their own custom Dev tools experience built on the Chrome Dev tools API as you can see the possibility and customizations are really endless with the right extension and extension apis you can transform Chrome into a truly personalized and Powerful tool those extension apis let you build your own extensions to solve any problem or enhance your workflow in truly unique ways suited just to you so explore the Chrome web store experiment with the existing extensions or Unleash Your creativity and build your own until next time happy customizing [Music]