Must-Have Browser Extensions

Technology
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browsing the corporate web is a chore, especially with the poor user experience that is often everywhere.

i figured it’d be fun to kick off a list of browser extensions you like to use and feel are necessary in order to browse the web (independent or corporate!).

the ones i really enjoy are:

got more? let’s make a list!

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Probably the ones I use the most after the ones you listed are https://getindie.wiki/ (auto-redirects fandom wiki links) and https://unhook.app/ (lets me turn off all the stuff that distracts me on youtube).

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My list of must-have extensions is:

  • uBlock Origin (for ad-blocking, naturally)
  • Bitwarden (easy-to-use, cross-platform password manager)
  • ClearURLs (to automatically delete those tracking things that get added to the ends of URLs – the “utm_source” and “utm_campaign” stuff)
  • Raindrop.io (for easily bookmarking stuff on the web I want to be able to find again. Not necessarily saying that Raindrop.io is better for this task than other bookmarking tools, it’s just the one I use)
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My essentials that haven’t already been listed are:

  • Tree Style Tab new tabs are opened as children of the current tab. This creates a tree structure, which matches how I logically think about my tabs in my brain. Great for those of us who have a million tabs open at all times. I understand the Floorp fork provides options for this out of the box, but I use some custom userChrome.cssto make my Firefox look like this:

scrn-2024-02-20-20-33-09
scrn-2024-02-20-20-33-091095×1045 139 KB

  • Firefox Multi-Account Container - Allows you to open tabs in isolation, with separate cookies, sessions, etc. Helpful if you have multiple accounts on a service or are perhaps setting up a forum and need to see how it looks to regular users ;)

  • StreetPass for Mastodon - This logs all verified (i.e. links back with a “rel-me” link) Mastodon profiles you come across while browsing the web. It’s great for discovering people you want to follow on the fediverse!

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Ones already listed:

  • uBlock Origin
  • Indie Wiki Buddy

Ones not already listed:

  • Bypass Paywalls Clean — helps tricking news websites with poorly implemented paywalls
  • Feed Preview — Shows an icon when sites have RSS feeds and also previews them. Things Firefox used to do itself! :frowning:

Less necessary but really nice to have:

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For Firefox: uBlock Origin, uBlacklist, Container Tabs, does the trick

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One I’ve been using for a long time in Firefox is called Web Developer. Looks like it’s also available for other browsers.

It has a handy collection of shortcuts like:

  • Delete cookies
  • Disable CSS/JS
  • Clear all forms
  • Outline all images
  • Make frames resizable
  • etc.

All things you can do easily in the standard dev tools but it’s cool to have as a one click shortcut. Disable CSS alone is super useful when a page doesn’t work with the built-in “reader mode”.

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i use these extensions (on firefox):

  • LibRedirect, which redirects you to alternative frontends for major platforms (e.g. Fandom to BreezeWiki, YouTube to Invidious, etc.)
  • Tabliss, which lets you customize your “New Tab” page with widgets and whatnot
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I tend to use these extensions in Firefox:

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I think essentials are:

  1. Adblocker (my choice is uBlock Origin)
  2. Password manager (my choice is Bitwarden)
  3. Consent-O-Matic – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US) (for EU people)
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Surprised nobody’s mentioned Privacy Badger yet!!! It’s really good in addition to ublock origin to make sure all trackers get blocked. I also have ColorZilla to colorpick from stuff on pages; very helpful for making sure all the colors on my website work nicely with each other!!

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SingleFile is a Web Extension (and a CLI tool) compatible with Chrome, Firefox (Desktop and Mobile), Microsoft Edge, Safari, Vivaldi, Brave, Waterfox, Yandex browser, and Opera. It helps you to save a complete web page into a single HTML file.

Can’t recommend it enough, particularly for archival purposes! I recently used it to backup the posts I received for last month’s IndieWeb Carnival.

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Here are mine!: :smile:

  • deque axe (Firefox, Chrome) - My favourite accessibility testing tool!! :mechanical_arm:
  • +1 for Bitwarden (Firefox, Chrome) - Open source password manager
  • Dark reader - Dark mode, everywhere!! Good for days when you have increased light sensitivity or migraines
  • Fraidycat - Cute, simple RSS feed reader
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Oooh singlefile looks cool, I’ll have to try that one out!

As for the general thread to be honest I just use uBlock Origin as many others have mentioned, and Dark Reader for websites that don’t have their own dark theme and the bright white background is straining my eyes.

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Interesting, I use RSSHub Radar. Not sure how it stacks up to yours, but it seems mine is more consistently updated. But I don’t think they serve the same purpose… Maybe I’ll try yours out!

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Feed Preview is pretty bare-bones, as you can tell from the screenshots. It lists the available feeds in an unadorned pop-up list, and previews them. I suppose there’s no real urgent need for frequent updates. :smiley:

The one you linked seems to integrate strongly with the RSSHub service (?). I’m not familiar with it, but if I understand correctly it’s a tool to aid with generating RSS feeds from websites that don’t necessarily have them. How do you like it?

I also can’t tell from the add-ons page whether RSSHub add-on actually previews the RSS feeds.

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The best approach to browser extensions is to by default not trust them. If you must use them, turn them off when you’re not using them. Unless they are something very important like a password vault or an ad blocker.

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Some of my extensions have already been mentioned:

  • uBlock Origin
  • Web Developer
  • Tree Style Tab

But I also have

  • Pure URL (a tracking parameter remover)
  • Want My RSS (puts the RSS symbol back in the address bar, does a simple preview with subscription link; where the subscription button goes is configurable)
  • ARIA DevTools (shows the tree structure of the website as a screen reader or other assistive technology would see it)
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&udm=14 – Get this Extension for :fox_face: Firefox (en-US) (mozilla.org)
&udm=14 - Chrome Web Store (google.com)

“Modifies Google Search URLs to include ‘&udm=14’ when enabled.”
Removes bloat from Google searches.

1 Like