I decided to go all in with Google for my productivity apps this year, getting everything into some combination of Inbox by Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Keep. While I loved playing with Asana and Trello and Remember the Milk over the years, I never fully adopted them the way I have my Google apps.
But Google’s products aren’t always as user-friendly or customizable as I would like. That’s where Chrome extensions can be a big help. Here are 10 that I’m actively using, not including all the “save this” and “clipper” extensions for programs like Pinterest, Evernote, and Pocket.
For Calendar
Zoom Scheduler and GoToMeeting for Google Calendar let you create new meeting links for their respective services without leaving Calendar.
Event Merge for Google Calendar is great if you have the same event on more than one calendar. This happens to me all the time when I have work meetings that affect our family schedule, so they appear on both calendars, and therefore twice in my master view. This creates one striped event using the colors from calendars where the duplicate event appeared.
For Inbox
Power Google Inbox cleans up the design of Inbox a bit, including compacting the size of the email and navigation menus.
Simple Gmail Notes (works with Inbox too) allows you to write notes to yourself on emails in your inbox and the first few words appear in the subject line bar in your inbox. I use this to remind myself why I am not answering immediately (usually because I need to look up something or think about a solution first) without having to re-read the email over and over.
For Keep
Category Tabs for Google Keep adds the ability to categorize and sort by color.
Input Tab for Google Keep lets you tab over in a note so you can make indented lists. Until Keep lets you create subtasks, this is a great add-on!
For Chrome in General
Video Speed Controller lets you speed up or slow down any video.
ColorZilla lets you sample colors on any web page. Perfect for when you want something you are making to match something else.
Page Analytics lets you see some of the Google Analytics for any of your web pages without having to go into the rabbit hole of Google Analytics itself.
How about you? Feel free to share some of your favorite productivity Chrome extensions, and let me know if you like any of these!
